Aug 2017
I use to worry, sitting at home lying on the couch wondering just how long I could go before drifting off into some psychedelic slumber. Wondering how long it would take for you to find your way home from a bed two towns away. I use to think of all the ways I could maybe, for a while, get you to stay. That I could try and make you remember the cold January nights when sleet covered Philadelphia's streets and icicles hung from windows, yet we stayed outside, because for the oddest of reasons we were happy out there.
I use to stay up late, sitting on the kitchen floor against the fridge, staring up at the yellow fluorescent light above the sink watching fruit flies dance to some unknown rhythm. Shoulders drooping, arms laid haphazardly at my side like fresh snow shoveled from a driveway. I guess I found some comfort gathering from the tired warmth that blew from the fridge vent, some stale form of heat, that if I closed my eyes and dreamed seemed almost like passion. Almost like acceptance, almost peace, almost satisfaction, almost like you weren't gone.
I use to be so cautious. Cover my shoulders, keep to yourself, don't let them stare as you cross the street. Just come home, just come home where you belong, you were there. At least you use to be. Then sometime under the dehydrated September sky I settled at the front step. I let myself stay free for a few more moments, and it grew. Everyday I would stay outside the front door a little longer - as I began to not flinch at every creak coming down the street because I knew it couldn't have been you. You were in some other city, down on some other street, in another house, with some other fool that let you be their everything.
The simplest things are the first to change.
You eased out of my life like the slack of a power line, coasting away a little every day till I could only see you as a horizon, and then beyond. No sooner had every piece of you eased out of my house, life drifted back in. I sat on that couch and little by little every day, yellow dripped from the ceiling. The smell of lilac flowering from the walls, and for the first time in a while, an empty apartment felt filled. Occupied. Present.
I use to stay up late, sitting on the kitchen floor against the fridge, staring up at the yellow fluorescent light above the sink watching fruit flies dance to some unknown rhythm. Shoulders drooping, arms laid haphazardly at my side like fresh snow shoveled from a driveway. I guess I found some comfort gathering from the tired warmth that blew from the fridge vent, some stale form of heat, that if I closed my eyes and dreamed seemed almost like passion. Almost like acceptance, almost peace, almost satisfaction, almost like you weren't gone.
I use to be so cautious. Cover my shoulders, keep to yourself, don't let them stare as you cross the street. Just come home, just come home where you belong, you were there. At least you use to be. Then sometime under the dehydrated September sky I settled at the front step. I let myself stay free for a few more moments, and it grew. Everyday I would stay outside the front door a little longer - as I began to not flinch at every creak coming down the street because I knew it couldn't have been you. You were in some other city, down on some other street, in another house, with some other fool that let you be their everything.
The simplest things are the first to change.
You eased out of my life like the slack of a power line, coasting away a little every day till I could only see you as a horizon, and then beyond. No sooner had every piece of you eased out of my house, life drifted back in. I sat on that couch and little by little every day, yellow dripped from the ceiling. The smell of lilac flowering from the walls, and for the first time in a while, an empty apartment felt filled. Occupied. Present.
