my retainer broke and i held it in my hand
my nails were ***** because we were at camp
it was red plastic despite tasting like metal
and you were there, we walked into a boat
abandoned in the dry sand piled high
i kept seeing flies and i felt my heart
it was enormous and i couldn't stand
you made a face to show that you felt the same
when i told you about my fear of them,
and i made a face when you said you'd
forgotten to let me know, that in seven weeks
it would be goodbye, and you were leaving
for the empty deserts of California

i thought about the days and how to tell you
that i loved you, that i loved you, here,
that goodbye was all i had and all i could give
because my mouth was full from all the camp food
and the darkness you had chased away

you told me to sit by you later
when we watched the symphony play

when i woke up i couldn't shake the feeling that you had
died

The miracle, the way that we have found enough light in people to see them as more than a spit of darkness, is my biggest question.
Because the heart is tender, and more of a song than anything else,
and it is up to us who we allow to echo throughout our hollow bodies, proving again that our anatomy an opera house, and coming home a
form of apologizing without even speaking. You only die as many times as you live, you only come back somewhere one time until it starts to become a
piece of you.
People are the same way.

It was not how her hands
trembled pouring orange juice at breakfast, or how I saw his eyes never looking at her the right way,
but it was the silence that broke my heart. The quiet, the absence of everything beautiful floating in midair, suspended like lungs that
were made to be drowned and never had the taste of saltwater.
Silence, more than any word, carries the weight of cities, it is
the red exit sign, sitting atop the door near the back of every
restraunt that you look for without even meaning to. I want to
write about life, and how much it simply is, and how there is so much
to it, but I can't tell the difference between it, and the moments that
define it. All of these personal infinities that shape us like skin was made from wood and hands made to carve, and I find myself grateful for the small
eternities that come to me.
All of these ways to take the tender from the heart.

Somewhere there is a nurse putting clean sheets on what was once someone's death bed. Somewhere there is a police officer laying awake at two in the morning contemplating breaking his thumbs so he won't have to pull another trigger. Somewhere there is a body bag taking the shape of a person. Somewhere a warden has accidentally called a prisoner by their first name. Somewhere there is a man getting ready to pay for his glass of whiskey, his '1 year' AA token falls out of his wallet onto the bar counter. Somewhere the glass is completely empty, somewhere it's overflowing. Somewhere a therapist sitting in an empty session reading the local newspaper's obituary section wondering what she could've done. Somewhere a bullet has fallen in love with a heart, giving a whole new meaning to the 'kiss of death'. Somewhere the girl that never speaks is raising her hand but immediately putting it back down after the sound of her classmates' laughter bounces back and forth from the back of her mind to the front. Somewhere the silence at the dinner table is making a dent in a child's suit of armor. Somewhere a 70 year old man starts skipping instead of walking, he stops taking his medication. Somewhere there is a mother too drunk to sign her daughter's permission slip. Somewhere a man has stolen all of the flowers from a grave, so he can somehow feel as though he's  being missed. Somewhere a child is asked what she wants to be when she grows up, she realizes ''myself'' isn't a good enough answer. Somewhere a mirror has been mistaken for a stranger. Somewhere someone is being loved by another person the only way they know how to love; whether it's through kisses, bruises, sleeping too closely to the other, or fifteen missed calls. Somewhere a man is falling in love with the automated voice inside of a voice mail because at least she will listen to him. Somewhere a 911 operator is walking into her house, hearing screams that aren't actually there. Somewhere these short stories are being broadcasted on the news,  printed in the paper, whispered to a friend, or rotting in the back of someone's head. Somewhere I am whispering all of these things to a silent room full of people, none of them look up.