It is an odd feeling to wake up everyday and know
That the person you once knew everything about,
Is walking around now…

Breathing, eating, sleeping, having ***, going to work, coming home,
They do these things without you now, they know you too, they know the lines in your hands and the freckle patterns on your arms.
They know what wakes you at night and puts you too sleep.


You haven’t spoken to them.
You know them as they were then, the sun in their hair, the constant look of anger, but the warmth and security of their arms. The reassurance of their words. Their quiet footsteps even in a loud crowded room.

You knew them by smell and by the feeling that would come over a room when they were around

Now you only know of them, of their existence.
You no longer know them, or the way they take their coffee. Or how much they like to drink.

If you saw them in public place, your eyes could only flicker to them for a moment, and then away again.
they are just a something passing by, someone you say ‘excuse me’ too as you move out of their way,
a mild inconvenience on the highway,
the reason for you reading the same page over and over again,


they walk out and you feel it again
the feeling that rises in your throat,
the instinct to call out, to fix, to love.

They are just something imprinted in you but no longer yours.

You are…
A changing of a season, a newly formed butterfly breaking out of the cocoon.
Your wings are wet and you are afraid,
The world is so full of walking voids.

I can hear your thoughts while you throw another
Beer can on the ground. Your room, is filled with used coffee filters.
Covered with papers and ***** clothes,

I am  sitting on your unmade bed, you spit on the floor and tell me you don’t know any better, because you love me.

My coffee *** is moldy and smells like your room used to smell. When I opened it there was green everywhere, a marker of time,
And while standing in line at the gas station,
it wasn’t a song on the radio,
it wasn’t someone who looked like you,

it was the warmth of a styrophom cup,
the way my mouth tastes like yours did after the first sip,
the smell of you in the morning when you didn’t sleep the night before

the stale smell of morning when your sleep was restless and no cigarette will calm you.
They just collect outside your door, you don’t even smoke them right.

I stand across from your old apartment; I walk by in hopes that you have somehow come back.
The cold win blows right through me, through a hole in my body.





I Hold my cup close to my chest, this is just a symbol now, something you do to keep the memories straight.

Something to stay awake, alert, not as dead as you look

(feel)


you throw the lipstick stained cup away with the rest of the garbage and keep walking, you return home to find your coffee machine is broken.

You put it in the box it came in, outside in the garbage with a note that says,

“Don’t bother, it’s broken”

The sun will beat down on your down casted eyes,
Your shadow will stretch in front of you, begging for separation from what you are becoming.

You will fall in love and he will walk with you on cigarette-covered streets. Tripping on uneven sidewalks and petting stray cats.

He will grow apart from you, like your shadow does when the sun sets, stretching longer towards a future you cannot see.

Later, he will leave and you will be A walking hole with arms and legs, like a hollow tree,
In the park the children play around you but never questions how the hole got there, the hole that is now filled with old, used bird’s nests and people’s forgotten garbage, where the others have etched their lover’s name with a promise that is too hard too keep.
You will collect it all and you will not wonder why people love and walk away, you will not wonder how people sleep next to a body without a name, and you no longer question the separation of shadows and their owners.

All roads lead to the hospital…
To the room of your own conception,


Where you were pulled into the world by
unknown hands.

You claim it is your artistic style that makes us.
That positions the words on this page,
You say mine is too broken



Up.


All roads meet in your bedroom,
With abandoned bottles and shoes, the smell of old coffee filters,


You claim you are at odds with your creator,
With your creation.

And I am the muse who later came to **** you.

I am the voice you sought for reason

But silenced like a sedative.


All roads split at the old school building with memories
And hung up black and white photos with no pattern or placement with the false claim of being an instillation.


You are forever in those photos, in my mind, finger printed by your existence.

I  was sleeping on the floor, where you consummated your first relationship, and I wondered how these moments all get intertwined.

Me, your first real love, laying on top of your first time, with someone you used for a warm body to fill the void
That you created
For yourself.
All roads end with an unclean floor.

i listen to your quick in takes of breath,
compared to my slow exhale,
my fingers smell like the cigarette I had,
a few hours ago.

i am frozen here,
while you shake and rattle.
crying the leaves are pasted to the ground,
the limbs of trees are still,
your tears are drenching my shoulder,
i am inside you now,
but feeling nothing.

I stare at
the water shining back at me from the road.


and your eyes are still closed on me,
‘i love you’ is all you tell me.


all I can think to say







Is “it’s been raining,
all day

the roads are wet”.

Blueberry lemonade Smirnoff
bottles
cover the floor.
He is passed out
a beer in his hand.
   I play with the littered blue caps

the drink stings my throat,
   my cigarette burns a hole
in my stockings
at the knee.


I wander alone and always end up at a park,


Where we used to walk
where you’re not allowed in after ten
where he spun me on a merry-go-round until I was sick.


I am drunk and
He knows it, while he hugs me tight,
“it would really hurt to lose you” he says.
I’m not going anywhere, I tell him
and he kisses my cheek.


He holds my hand while we walk home.
I know he does not love me.
But I keep loving him anyway,
and going on walks late at night,
when it’s too dark to see the piled up train parts,
or the cracks in the sidewalk, and he grabs my hand every time I trip.



“I love you” he tells me,
while he hugs me tight on the playground.
and I tell him I love him, too. The difference is, the meaning.

Love is

Is

Is
Is
Is

Us

Is
Is



Is    is
Is
       Is
Is
       Is
Is
Is

Is is

            
Is
                                      You.


Is
   Is








Is

Fleeting.