Now outside, on the porch, I am balancing, foot on old boards beneath, leaning on air.
Intoxication, watching the light patterns like a show. Off in the distance, far across the unorganized parking lot, the silhouette of the tree line grows dark & black into the early morning’s night sky.
And yet it was just January, in my memory it seems– the world rich & drenched in winter, each breath drawn out & frozen before us & i remember thinking that instant in time must be the same– the same brief presence, which only quickly disappears, as though it were never there to begin with.

here alone, though the night isn’t cold, & where the tree line is now there used to be the lights of the city twinkling. In January, that new year, the fireworks lit up the winter scape like friendly bombs. i breathed you in, smell touch and all and it was good. the drugs had just kicked in & we drank cheap champagne to celebrate the new year.
well, lover, now i’m the only one here. mascara burns my eyes. tonight, you may as well be a million miles away. six hours at most. still i know i must turn away from you now. how hard it is to do, how hard to change like this. a huge portion of your life removed, all at once though not quite suddenly. perhaps i knew this day would come all along.

my things are packed and bookshelves bare, lining the interior of the apartment like i’m living in a crime scene of our passed relationship. you are free, now– escaped for awhile at least. but i’m a guest here in this home that was ours before, our ghosts dancing around me playing out all the downfalls, but the good memories too. all the mean words said keep bouncing off the walls, but my mean mouth is only silent now.
as expected i self medicate; treat myself to drink after drink. friends help to stop this sad thinking but eventually i am alone again, back in this place. i had to turn away from you. and we were both crazy of course but still something inside me wishes i could’ve been enough to fix you.
you say you think of me but i don’t believe this.
it never made sense to me to begin with anyway.