I am built backwards
I sleep most of the day
And stay up all night
From midnight till dawn
Those are the best hours
When I gaze out of my bedroom window into the darkness
I don't see a black void threatening to swallow me whole
But rather I see a calming and tranquil ocean of shadows
It makes me feel like i'm the only person alive
Because after I turn off all the lights
After I stop looking at my phone
All I am left with
Is the soft embrace of the silence of the night
Except not quite
Because within that silence
I can hear my beating heart
The air flowing through my lungs
The blood coursing through my veins
And my brain is flooded with thoughts

You've been living in my head
You’re three months behind on your rent
I posted countless eviction notices
But you ignored them all

You've barricaded yourself in there
You linger like a disease
You have infected my memories
And soon they will start to fester

When I smell fresh bread in the morning
You used to make breakfast
When I hear Ben Folds Five
That was your favorite band

In the middle of the night
In the darkness and the silence
I can hear you moving in my head
And it keeps me awake

It took a while to wake up today
My alarm went off before the sun had even risen
I kept delaying the inevitable by hitting the snooze button
But eventually I gave in and got out of bed
I bundled up, braced myself, and opened the door
Walking into the cold was like being submerged underwater
I could feel it trying to infiltrate every opening
It was slowly seeping through every layer of my clothes
I could feel it burning in my lungs
I could see it when I exhaled
It made the air seem quiet
And the sun seem dimmer
And in the dead of winter even time moved slower
The trees had long ago lost their leaves
And now the bare branches
Stretched upwards into predawn light
Like a thousand skeletal limbs

I haven't been able to concentrate today.
Everything is out of focus,
except for you.
You are in painstaking clarity.

You are flooding my mind
and I am drowning
Submerged in memories
that play on a loop

We've become entangled
and we enjoyed it
because we only considered the present
and ignored the inevitable future

Now its crashed all around us
I'm struggling to untie the knots
Because I don't want to
Because I'm afraid you'll drift away

But then I remember why I fell for you
Because we have an insane amount of things in common
Because you are fun to talk to
Because we make each other laugh

Thats when I know
that everything will be alright
That I can breathe easy
That we'll always be friends

I've been burning the candle at both ends
and the flame is strangely beautiful
it's white hot
seemingly eternal
and by these flames
I have learned to see
in terrifying clarity

I'll tell you more than the truth demands
Of a land hidden in the sands
A city only spoken of in tongues long dead
Whose name will linger like a spector in your head
And I must confess
That you will obsess
For half a century
From my curse i shall never be free
I don't know what keeps me going
Even if i die without knowing
I know it's too late to turn back now
I wipe the sweat from my brow
As the heat strangles the air
My companions and i all stare
They've all been with me for years
As our hope slowly disappeared
Only our friendship remained
We stared at the sands until it became ingrained
deep within our brains
it fanned the old flames
one more try, one more excavation
I should have chosen a different occupation

you are like a never ending poem
continually crashing on the shores of my mind.
your words, your rythm, the sheer grace of your cadences
Resonate within me