I'll try and keep myself warm,
Because sometimes we need to be alone,
No matter how much we don't want to be.

I'd like for you to be different.
It's easy to imagine,
but you're the farthest thing from simple.

I stare at my hands like an overweight, under estimated teen would look at their legs,
waiting from them to shrink.

You're filling in the empty spots, so that I don't have to.

I glare at the stars as if I could time travel one thousand years into the future, and enjoy the darkness that comes after explosions.

You're the color, bursting rays of light from your lips to my neck, where my skin absorbs all the words you never knew how to say.

I bite my lips like they won't bleed, even though I know they will, remembering teeth are beautiful, but they're sharp.

You're waisting your time trying to forget about me.

I talk too much about myself, but I don't care, because who doesn't?

I get into those deep places
we're entering digestion
the inside skin station
where everything comes together
to admire each other in the most unconditional of ways.

people talk about people as if they aren't some kind of thing
animals can be things, passions can be things, kisses can be things,
even moments can be things,
If I had to measure the distance between you and me
there would be not one thing in the way,
but me.

You see, I've been trying really hard lately to forget you.
It's like you've got me walked with window skin so everyone can see inside, and my eyes are rockets,
exploding,
screaming,
telling everyone who can't read,
anyone who doesn't have the time,
someone writing in a diary with blue ink,
that even though we go by different names,
you and I are more similar,
than the same anything.

So if you thought I was going to talk about that
deep dark mask I hide behind, then leave
because the too soon has come and gone too far,
you came here expecting something,
and I tell you to go out of mercy from the overflow,
because this is me standing here naked
in a mask of who I really am, which really is no mask at all.

This is no show for sad folks who want to feel anothers broken heart,
this is a spilling of one to another, through the small crowd intimacy
we sometimes long for and are suddenly surrounded, because it's so much easier to say it's about someone else and to never use their name.

If in my eyes were your eyes
and yours mine,
then nothing would change but for the directions in which we look.

I guess this is about someone else,
but I want it to be about you for nostalgic purposes.

there's something different about wanting to touch your face and actually doing it.
that's how it always is.
you're the black-ink-on-paper-to-get-you-out-of-my-head kind of guy,
you're the never awake past noon because you don't want to deal with reality kind of mind,
you're one of those half-drunk, half-broken, half-idon'tcarebecauseyoudon'tcare kind of lovers.

one day I'm going to quit everything.


the cat laps milk
instead of water
from the palm of a mothers hand,
it's rough tongue leaving
purple lines
broken and deep
like the stretch marks that map her body.

She'll talk to me about her children
and the little things in her life that don't seem to matter much anymore,
and we'll watch people and assume things like people do,
and we'll kiss each other out of boredom
and she'll tell me to braid her hair,
because she wants to feel young again,
and I'll tell her to read me her story,
because I want to feel closer,
and she'll tell me about the cat
and she'll let me pet it
but she wont let me sleep in her bed
or put away the dishes
or kiss her on the days that she wears lipstick.

She reminds me of you,
except she's something I can feel.

I need daylight to be over
so that the octupus leaves in my back yard can breathe
all the dogs left them swelling and burning for daily bread,
daily milk, and last calls to board the plane.
It's really **** hard to understand what the person on the intercom is saying when you've got stalks of corn growing out of your ears
imitating how rough and useless everything that comes in is
how it's just sprouting out and some people are going to get hit in the face if they don't realize that personal bubbles are more important than an inhaler, at least at this point.

The ball in my mouse has fallen out and now I can't seem to get anywhere, drinking bottles of cough syrup to try and feel the sickening sweetness of your kiss, when all you really wanted was to be someone else. The lion painted on my shirt tells me I'm wrong for paying attention to the little things, like the color of your sweater and if you made it or not.

I feel like I'm following a snow storm in a bathing suit,
which makes it awkward during interviews but my mom tells me I need to get a job and start thinking for myself and thinking about others because I only have one brother and he might **** himself soon.

Teachers don't seem to realize that my answers sound like my mouths full of peanut butter and they don't know that when I turned 9 I used to smear it on my skin and let my dog lick it off. I hope that doesn't ******* off as boring or twisted, but I've got enough cough syrup to know that my lungs will stay inside my body, even if they're all chewed up digesting in my stomach with the rest of the things I said that I wish I could take back, with the rest of the tongues that fumbled and mumbled phrases that made me look like a tobacco spitting uncle from Tennesse.

it's not that I don't want to see you anymore,
or that I want you to grow up and be something more,
but I'm not the same person I was before,
I'm starting to lose myself and I feel it seeping from the very core.

Life.
It's like a black hole or a star that burnt out,
it's scary and not as beautiful as it was when I was a kid.
People are getting better looking, growing into themselves like marijuana plants.
These women have vertigo and not enough time to walk where they need to be, so they asked me to go to the store and they paid me with dinner, I sat at the table in a rocking chair and wondered why they had so much hair on the floor.
it wasn't like we were having a bad time
but we sure didn't know how we got to talking about ******* and cranberry juice.
All the while I felt like saying something meaningful,
but I knew they wouldn't get my jokes and I knew that my sarcastic tendancies would get the best of me and we'd be in a grinder full of bugs and rocks and all of those things we avoid when we're afraid.

I could feel my teeth wanting to break as I chewed my food
and clenched my jaw at the conversation.
The woman to my left said I looked like someone she knew,
I said,
"You do know me."

the words came out like a siren of warning,
I had gone too far.

I looked at my hand that held their fancy spoon
my reflection stared back like it didn't know me
and I could see my eyes turn away and I could see my hand on the door ****
but what I couldn't see was the woman,
who followed me home.
the woman,
the one that knows me best.

Cat.

Milk.

Where were you at 4 o'clock?

It's easier to stare at the people you want to be
than to actually work towards being the person
that they're so carefully showing off.

Just like pretending to listen to the dribble
slowly pouring out of the attention seeking addict,
and daydream about kissing
or having them say what you want to hear
rather than whatever it is you're avoiding.

Calling people names, all the while forgetting yours.
There's always that hesitant moment before you respond,
like a woman who learned the wrong names of colors
and she still can't get them right, even after six shots,
shots to her head, too many blows,
there's something about her, she's too sweet.

I've been spending the past year awkwardly avoiding eye contact
and very (almost too) comfortably  staring at a (wo)man's crotch.
My vocabulary seems to be shrinking as I dump out all the silly words
and try to avoid the ones you can't say infront of kids.
It's not like I can use the ones that are supposed to mean something,
those are all used up, and I'm not one to follow the mainstream,
I'm not even a fish.