We met when your best friend was in love with me.
You joked that you were falling in love with me, too.
I laughed.
Eventually, I fell back.
And we fell together, deeper and deeper into something we never did figure out.
Now, I am here wondering
when I will be able to stop wondering when you will come running,
arms open, to tell me
"It's you! It's always been you."
And I will laugh that it's always been you, too.
Except I won't be joking.

I wrote about the frozen water on the bay that last winter to convince myself
that you are not
the only thing
I write about,
and you're not really.
I just don't think the ice will melt unless you burn it with me this spring.

And sometimes I wake up empty
and wonder at what point in the night you got up and left,
the same way I used to.
And then I remember how long it's really been.
And I remain empty.

Some nights I don't sleep at all.
I wait for the sky to change.
I name the mornings after the times I missed you most
and the stars after the nights you decided to stay.
You always told me naming a part of the sky was foolish until I named one after you.

I take advantage of the catalysts.
I test how high I can stay and for how long.
There is so much happening in my mind that it's taken over my body.
And I am involuntarily running in circles.
My body must think that if it keeps moving,
it will eventually run into you.
I haven't eaten in days
because I can't find an appetite for anything but the way you tasted.
And avoiding "reality" is ironically easier when I'm awake for days,
Because I don't have to wake up to the sharp reminder that you're gone.
And that I miss you.
It's just a constant dull ache.

Missing you is driving all night to watch the sun come up but being too busy collecting sea shells you might have liked on the beach to look at the sky.

Missing you is wishing I had the guts to jump.

Every night it all comes down to missing you from the bottom of a bottle,
or the passenger seat of a strange boys car.

And every time I end up on a busy road,
I wonder how many other passengers are missing someone.
I wonder if before I learned to miss you,
people of the past could have ever imagined
that someone like you would buy an old snapshot of their child on a rocking horse from an antique shop,
in search of an imagined, falsified nostalgia.

And I wonder if the brain takes snapshots of what should be nostalgic,
thus leading to the invention of imagined memories.
When my most treasured memories are those imagined, how will I tell the difference?

The mornings we watched turn to light together (we never did),
The nights we spent without arguing (they never happened),
The time you told me you appreciated the way I saw the world (you never even opened your eyes).

And you used to tell me that searching for seashells and watching sunrises and collecting experiences that make me feel whole arent "real life".
And I'm dying to know what "real life" is because the one thing that is timeless is that the sun does rise.
And exists.
How much more real can we get?

But where's my credibility?
I believed in us.

And I was going to name this one after you, but I can't remember your name.

I've been keeping a journal of trips I wish you'd taken with me.
An album of photos you should have been in.
A list of nights I wish you'd spent in my passenger seat.

I've been collecting all of our favorite pieces of myself in a mason jar;
Fireflies to leave by your bedside so if you wake up in the middle of the night you won't feel alone.

I know too well the hourglass purgatory that is your absence;
Frighteningly similar to the sensation of waking up in empty darkness, unable to remember falling asleep.

I placed my phone beneath my pillow

Hoping that you’d call 

Just to tell me how you watched the sunrise this morning 

And how you’ve been homesick 

So I can tell you to come home 

And welcome you with open arms 

To let you know

That even if it were five years from now
It’s always been you

No one has ever made me feel like you do but you cannot ***** out who I am
My old demons bark at me from the cages that I have locked them in
The reoccurring memories serve as slabs of meat that are throw to the dogs, they rip and tear through ****** flesh
I am sorry that I am not near, not close enough when you need me most
Not close enough for you
I think you should know that every song we used to sing echos endlessly in the halls of my heart, clamoring, smashing, banging all there is to break.
Now let me rest my tired feet, let me re-lace my boots
Because I have been running for far to long from something that is still exactly where I left it.

Forget me, forget me.

Let me soar ,and shackle me not to this celestial pit

Let me be, let me be

Let me cast my long hidden shadow onto the moon, the stars and out further than andromeda

Let me ******, Let me ******

And for heavens sake not the four seasons

Because for every summer there is a winter

But freedom from this bind lies in astral interstellar hitchhiking

And let me sail but not to the community of hatred and hated

We will all be swingers when we lay down on El Dorados doormat


It 'reads "oh yes, free, freedom you've become"

So forget me, let me be free and ****** into the absences of cohesive atoms

If not held captive. The only sense is aroma and gone from nostalgic induced swooning

And there, oh there, I will vacuum la polvere di Stella that witnessed the most grandiose falterings

Had there been a time where idealizations were accepted among the walk of reality that lie before us it may all prove to be a bit more comforting.
Where the daunting banter of voices that sat atop my conscience were able to soothe the pain of grieving without true loss.
Heartache failed to be coupled with death.
A place where we could walk hand in hand with dark, empty vessels sent to sail with a destination that is but a passing fog and direction pinpointed out by wanderlust souls.
We lie with a marker of selfishness that runs so close to the bone- etching its edges into our flesh with such vigor that one could hardly ignore, yet it sits on the back burner.

Come with me, my love, dance in my graveyard of pasts.
Take in the sights of freshly filled earth that mold itself beneath our feet as we take a gander at what was.
Here lies the spring evening under the sycamore, young hearts screaming with excitement, the way the wind intertwined among-
The nearly bare branches of autumn rest peacefully with the skin coat worn as a declaration of verses that died between clenched teeth and sealed lips.
This is the laughter worms now feed on.
Here are the fingertips and silk braced locks buried alongside one another but never to touch again.
Pay mind to the faces piling up adjacent to the stone wall, laugh lines rotting by the rise and fall of moonlight.

What a spectacle of self, is it not, dear?
We can witness blue fade to black, closing the light on this scene.
Sit here and rot beneath the sycamore tree.
Clench our hearts between our teeth and swallow messenger bottles along with them.
Never to walk in unison but let one dissipate aside the other.
Let our memories of memorized bone structure fall before our very eyes- wouldn't it be grand?

Induct this into the cemetery of past and do away with the make up of oneself.
We will let this idealization fall cold,
Watch rigor mortis seep in with such mesmeric fashion.
Tuck it away before pre-thought memories taint themselves with reality.
Lower it down under into the ever so charming embrace of wood and soil, mites and fungus.
Clean our hands of touch ever so sacred.
Let it bleed out, darling. Let it decay.
Anyway- how will we remember this when its done away with today?

Let the grieving sink in, just to coddle remembrance of nothingness.
Embrace the black holes swallowing pieces of us.
Dance among the treetops and feel the wind, when our memory dies we can truly begin.
And again,
And again.

I want to be close enough to hear the ringing in your ears, but if you heard the ringing in mine would you even pick up the phone?
Because your conscience is clear and as long as your secret can keep a secret, your eyes are too empty for anyone to tell.
But I know that to tell how someone is loving you've got to look into their "I"'s.
Ask them if snowflakes think they're falling or flying? The same way I've plummeted into you while I somehow imagined I was still the pilot.
Ask if the clouds aim to protect the earth from the light or the sun from the darkness on earth?
Because love isn't blind, love is a blindfold.
It's a blanket when you weren't cold, recognizing his tire in the road.
And I've never been good at lingual warfare,
but I have a feeling soon I'll be using my grey hairs
as a form of punctuation
in a fruitless explanation-to myself
that the way you touch me isn't a 'waist' of time.
And as long as you keep calling, I will answer to the ringing in my ears.

Every morning I'll wake up shaking from the things I lack in life.
So I'll add ***** to my coffee to help forget.
I'll mix my anxiety with more stimulants to help preoccupy my mind.
A million thoughts racing but you make it a million and one.
I don't think about him the way I think about you.
I still remember the way your hands would shake whenever they were placed on my hips and the way you kissed my neck never felt short of feeling unsure.
When the tips of our fingers graze each other, I still remember how hesitant you were to touch a square inch of my flesh.
Your absence left me nervous and that's become my new identity, but even though we've been acquainted before, we became close friends.
Afraid of letting go so we grew together instead.
My hands shake just like yours do and I still add anxiety to my liquid courage and pray that I wake up the next morning hoping to drink my coffee alone and maybe then I can tell you the reason why I am intertwined within his sheets and not yours is because he made me feel like someone wanted me, and that's something you could never do.

I approach the the tile as I watch you die again. I reach out for your neck to undo the damage done. Thus, I cannot. As I peak, I stab and stab at the iron coffin. I can't help you anymore, nor could I ever. I push and pull like the tides unending dance but you won't awake. I scream and I see the stars blink as if my voice reached them. "Wake the **** up, you selfish *******." I dig my nails into my chest like the roofing of a home. But like it will one day, I collapse. I see blood, and death, and Christmas. What an unforgiving world in which I dwell. I grab a belt and think and this is what will allow me to hang between life and death. Then I exhale a breath. I'm too bashful to knock on the Messiahs door. So I wash his feet and cry, waiting for the day I face you again. As the physical plane holds my empty  corpse and the people weap as if I've ever even lived