I've unpacked the letters you wrote,
and read them word for word and aloud.
I read them for the fire and for the sea.
I read them under millions of stars.
And I read them for you, love.
I read them for me.

I buried the wreck in the ground and walked away.
I promised to forget the noise.
Forget the pain and pretend away the bitter.
I try so hard to fix.
I try so hard, darling.
I remember everything.

I am remorse in the shape of coffins.
I am waves crashing against a shore of fretting.
I am worried hands fidgeting with the buttons on my coat.
I am the beads of sweat running down your back.
I am regret in the shape of a man.
I am the hollow sound of distant bells.
I am spoken word prayers ending up nowhere.

These things that we built are meant for decay.
We are proudly bound for pyres.
Words burn across the night sky and illuminate.
They tell us what we are. What we could be.
What we are not and should be.
What we were supposed to be.

Whisper me your secrets, dear.
I'll keep them. Press them tight to me.
I'm all read letters and buried wrecks.
I'm unanswered prayers to nowhere.
I'm disposable.
Use me. Let me course through you.
Let me find your heart by travelling your arteries.
Let me be the sore, the ache that reaches your core.

I'm putting the letters away.
I  remember everything, love.
I do.
And you and me?
We have so much in common,
and that hurts worse than I can express.
I pack them away in the wreck and walk away.
I vow on the fire and on the sea.
And I vow on you, love.
I try to forget about me.

I will dream in technicolor failures!
I will pass time waiting on the lawn.
Bored and vapid and given pause to yawn.
I'll send my hopes in colored mailers.
Drowned in nostalgia and memory,
another 30-30 something casualty.
And together we chase the white picket,
acid washed American dream.
And with loaded backroom schemes
we seek to find and punch the given ticket.

Where there was two we invite three.
He'll have ten fingers and ten toes.
Wide masculine shouldered and elbows.
He'll be, I hope, a lot you and a very little me.
He'll have a chance, ******* it, he will.
He'll be alive and screaming and needing.
His mind and body young and always feeding
He will draw from this earth until his fill.

I hope for so much more than I have got.
We take on water so fast without balers.
I dream of tomorrow in technicolor failures.
Help me, love. I'm twisted into a knot.
I need so badly to understand these things we do.
Our rings and our tiny king's teething rings.
I need to be kind and true and bold.
I need so badly to have and to hold
him and you.

We left him so little and wished him so much.
Isn't it a sad twist of fate?
Isn't it just something you love to hate?
Ruins where buildings should be. Nice touch.

I don't know how it got to safety last,
and cable television lifeblood.
I don't know when the dreams
got eaten out of you
and you turned into this.
Nonsense.
We were born screaming and unprepared,
we weren't meant for anything.
We weren't meant for this.
Was anything meant for this?

If we have nothing manifest
before us and no expectations
for better, and we don't, friend.
Let us be great, instead.
Let us lift those in need.
Let us sing the songs that bring peace.
I do not mean pacify, I mean peace.
Let us love the way we wish the world loved.
Let us become warmth and light.
And why not?
We aren't supposed to do anything else.

We are form seeking purpose.
We are lyrics without meaning.
We search for it, when we should create it.
We dig when we should build.
My God we can build.
What exactly do we think we are,
if not masters of our destiny?

Nonsense.

******* it!
I'm my father's son,
all wasted potential
and missing someone.
Dog tired and thirty-one.
Ripped and torn
awed and reverential.
nail bit and forsworn.

I want Rockwellian sepia.
Perfection and meaning
published in old print media.
The American visionaries resplendent
with firework dreams and consumed
in whitewashed, denim faded pleasant.

But it's you, my love and my meaning.
The person to convince me I'm not broken.
I hope to be the one, who can get you to open.
You keep me alive and breathing.

You spin me around and make me crazy.
Let me know when you want to, baby.
I'm tired of being built on maybe.

I'm an hour away from the American Dream,
but I'm terrified by the winning team.
I want you and me, Lori.
I want the old theater stage story.

******* it!

I am my father's son
all wasted potential
and missing someone.

I've got pockets full of *******
and hard and swollen eyes.
I want more than I have found,
I need something real and new and warm.
I got plans for leaving,
but I can't go without you.
I want a world of fire.
I need you to have me with you.
I need this journey, for once-
once in this hollow life-
I need this to not be alone.
I want you forever with me,
like we promised to.
I love you like identity,
I can't be me without you anymore.
I don't know when it happened, love.
I can't do it anymore.
Climb these mountains of doubt with me,
because I don't know if I like me anymore.
I know I'm better with you,
but you're not around, dear.
I think I want to be gone and away.
I think It should be me that isn't here.
I want you to reassure me.
I just want you near.

I remember sneaking out as teenagers,
hoping you'd hold my hand.
I remember not asking you to dance with me.
I remember wishing you had.
I remember wanting you.
I recall being scared to death.

I'm a real piece of garbage without you.
I'm worse than I'll ever be.
I'm broken down and beaten,
haunted by the demons you keep at bay.
I ******* hate it, baby.
Please look at me like I'm not damaged,
like you always do.
Convince me I'm repaired.
I need to be here with you.

I'm here to get broken,
to be torn into pieces.
Discarded on the floor.
I found you so I could be remade,
Built up from nothing,
so you could make me more.

Break my heart,
burn my soul,
scar my history
with yours.

Glass fragile and brittle.
Prone to watch you pout.
I want moth eaten dreamscapes,
but I just keep bleeding out.
I'm tied to this iron ball and chain,
drowning like you need me to.
Writhing here in pain.

Feed me your bitter poison, love.
Bleed me with your leeches.
Push me, dear. Push and shove.
I wash away like chalk,
Temporary and incomplete.
I need you, sweet Hemlock.

Don't ever leave.

There is an absence.
It's killing me to say this:
I miss you.
I can't believe I haven't evaporated,
exploded,
now that you've gone.
State lines and power lines,
remember?
One less alarm
and it is so ******* hard to get up
in the morning.
One.
It's numbers, every day.
You know?
Arbitrary numbers that somehow
we've allowed to have an effect on our lives.
How did we do this?
How did we become this?
You worry about it too, right?
Two.
God, it's an illustration in futility.
I can't think.
I don't want to think.
To recall.
I don't.
I just don't.
You know how I am.
I can only barely live with myself, you know.
Don't know why I expected...
**** it.
Let's burn down tomorrow.
Let's set fire to it.
We can count the broken days
from birth to graves
and revel in it.
But, you know how I break apart.
How I go to pieces.
Wait.
No.
You left before that.
It was just me.