car engines. headlights. traffic. the way home.
not home, just somewhere i live.
we sit in the back of your mother's old mercedes,
"the ugliest tan color that ever existed" according to you.
it's a stick shift, and it skids and skips and sputters quite often.
i won't tell you, but i like when you tell me you want me to put on the seatbelt.
your head rests against the window,
and every knick in the road
makes you bump your forehead against the glass.
you're too tired to give a **** about it.
"i wish it was a better night, it's too cloudy,"
your breath visible on the window.
i can still see Vega, i don't think you can.
i nod my head and move my hand into yours.
i silently beg you to look at me.
maybe it's not a bad thing there aren't many stars out.
maybe it's the sky's way of telling us we should pay attention to each other.
maybe we hit every red light because the universe just wants to give us more time.
maybe the reason the light from the passing cars moves so fast is because it can't wait to touch your skin and
maybe the sound of car horns moves so slow because it loves the way your heart beats in the silence.
i mean ****, maybe i just want you to touch me again.
maybe it's just that i still need you and you're too tired to give a **** about it.

i am laying on a bed once familiar to me
i feel empty
in a strange, acquainted kind of way
i am clutching fistfuls of sheets and broken dreams
and the storm rolls in
i am under a roof but
i swear i can feel the rain
it has been like this for a while now
but i have not grown accustomed to
the hollowness in my chest
and every breath feels like
blood is pumping through my body
and it is not my own
i am laying on a bed once familiar to me
and i wonder if I will ever feel whole
again
i am whispering secrets to my walls
and my floorboards start to sweat
because every story ends with "i still
feel like this"
and i do not know
if i will ever stop

I’m measuring heartbeats and gauging miles across torn atlases and
each space between the intakes of breath while saying I miss you
feels like my lungs are freezing over or decaying or burning

I’ve been pacing around my room for so long that I think
my floorboards are starting to form fault lines
and some nights I miss you with the magnitude of an earthquake

I’m digging trenches in my chest because
my heart holds more use as a graveyard
and I’m burying your memories there

It’s midnight on the first day of autumn and I don’t know
if the thunder cracked again or it’s just my voice
begging and screaming at God to bring you back to me

except no one can hear prayers over the silence
that’s fallen over me since you left so I keep missing you
until heartbeats can keep up with distance

My hands are pressed gently into his palms. His fingers are running over the gaps between my knuckles and are folding down and along each crease like a little boy bent over a desk in the back of the classroom concentrating on making a paper airplane out of yesterday’s homework. I half-expect someone to tap my shoulder and say, “Are you paying attention?” No, not really. I am focused on the way his lips are moving a fraction of a second out of time with the faint country song we hear playing from outside. I begin to sing too. Half way into the second verse, his eyes meet mine again. He takes my aircraft hands and leads me to the middle of the living room. The overhead fan gazes at us. I feel the paper airplanes inside of my chest swirl. We are swaying. My arms are draped over his tired shoulders and his are encircling my lower back. I see that his shoelace is untied. I am leaning my weight against his chest, balancing on my tiptoes. I do not tell him I can feel his heart beating. I look up at him again. He is already staring. I notice a subtle pink in his cheeks. I do not realize until now that my lips are only inches from his, the gap between them begging to be closed. So we close it. I fold into him like creased paper waiting to be flown. Someone opens the door. She says, “The song stopped playing. Are you even paying attention?” I speak up and say, “No, not really.”

There’s a strong sense of intoxication in every conversation I waste on lost translations,
and every word you speak floats in to the air without consolation for all the love it lacks,
and the lackluster thieves that stole your love from me began to latch onto dreams and all I tried to do was to believe that nothing was so broken.
No one was cut open and bleeding out the wounds we’d caused,
and I was just a piece of mindless emotion and you were devotion.
A simple notion to keep holding a loose grip on reality
and to keep trying to keep something with all finality
that it was lost in the normality and brutality of it all.
And I wrestled with my god to help me forgive those, for they know not what they do.
But I’m sorry I did when I kept lying to and hurting you.
It’s not about what we saw but what we knew, and we knew the end was coming soon
and tried to run from it but tripped on our tongues
and resisted the temptation to pray for compensation.
An empty sense of motivation to find a definite destination
of which windows weren’t shattered and the faucet didn’t leak.
But with every word you speak I hear a distant gunshot and my God did I bleed.
But after procrastinating the act of purification and without a clear manifestation we referred to suffer the damage of the storm.
And the roof caved in during a torrential downpour.
So this is how a forever withers, and how a love slips through shaky fingers.
And I still don’t know any sense of realness or a piece of sanity,
but I found amity within the stitches of our tragedy.
I hope that’s enough for now, or I guess until another window breaks.
Whichever comes first.