I almost forgot how much I hated that you would add random people on Facebook,
Thinking the answer, "she looked punk rock" was an appropriate justification.
I almost forgot how I hated all your tattoos,
Living according to a phrase permanently on your forearm.
And I almost forgot the way my car smelled awful when I would pick you up from work,
With the fear the grease on your pants would seep into my leather seats,
So I would roll the top down and just tell you it was a nice day.
I almost forgot about how you always smelled like cigarette smoke,
And how it would fill my lungs in the morning, and I wondered how anyone could inhale those awful chemicals at 7 AM.
And I almost forgot how you walked to my house in the middle of the night
To give me a picture that you drew for me, with a note attached,
Just telling me how happy you were to have met me.
I almost forgot about how crazy I thought that was,
And wondered if you were that crazy about me, or just plain crazy.
I almost forgot about my friends' opinions of you;
I have never seen such disapproval.
I didn't forget that smile, when I told you how they felt, and how I disagreed with what they thought.
Proud.
Mischievous.
Beautiful.
Crazy.
Beautiful.

I almost forgot what it was like to fall in love with you..
I don't even know when it happened,
I don't know if I noticed,
But I knew there was a point that I couldn't look into your eyes the same way,
Because now your gaze was new, and I was really seeing you, and you were seeing me,
And I knew my love was reflected back at me, and the brown of your eyes warmed me from the inside out.
And the smell of smoke comforted me now, because I knew you were near me,
And when I woke up coughing, you'd put the cigarette out to kiss me,
As if you were only smoking because you knew I'd wake up,
And you'd get to kiss me.

And I almost forgot what it was like to fall out of love with you,
When I saw your eyes, they made me feel cold,
And I would shiver whenever I thought of them.
I almost forgot the yelling,
And the fighting,
And the words that hurt so bad that I would beg for sticks and stones.
My eyes almost forgot how many tears fell from them,
And the feeling that my heart couldn't bare to live in my chest anymore.

I remember the pull that led me from you for the last time.
I remember how deafening the silence was.
I remember how suspended time was,
As if the words that left our mouths hung in the air above us like a black storm cloud,
And we were sure of rain.
But it never came.

I almost forgot what it was like to see you again,
After months of wondering how you were,
But everyone assured me I shouldn't talk to you because it would just end badly.
Because they never approved.
And I almost forgot that smile.
I wish I forgot your smile.
Proud.
Mischievous.
Beautiful.
Crazy.
Beautiful.

I know that my thoughts can be hard to follow at times,
With my loose associations being too hard to bear,
But I hope that you find meaning in every word that I say.
Because I swear I mean everything that I say.
I want to take you back to New York
Just so we can sit and stare at the cityscape
While all we can smell is the sewage of the river.
I want to take another picture kissing your cheek,
And then I want to kiss your cheek again
And again until you recognize how crazy I am for you.
Then I want to tell you about this article I read
That said sometimes when an underwater bubble bursts due to sound
That it emits light and no one can explain why this happens,
But it's a fact. And facts are like songs to me;
When I hear one, I want everyone to know it
So I sing it with all that is in me because
If the whole world understands something,
If the whole world knows the facts,
Then there could be no reason to disagree.
So when I sing to you in my off key way,
Know that everything is fact, and I hope
You harmonize when I get to the I love you's
And we could sail out to sea
Or to outer space, because in its vastness,
We will find comfort in knowing we're there together,
And we'll fall more in love in the haze of Venus
And I'll spin you around the rings of Saturn
And Jupiter with its giant mass could not hold my love inside it
While you make puns about Uranus.
And can we please make a place for ourselves on Pluto?
It's still a planet to me, and no one will guess we're there.
The sun is just the smallest star, but you will be all the sun I need.
Did I ever mention how much I hate pork?
I know you love it, and I will learn how to make it for you.
I just can't imagine eating Piglet when I know it's bad for me.
I hope that I haven't lost you yet,
But in case I have, the point I'm trying to make is
There is a lot that I don't know
And I have a lot that I don't understand
But the few things that I know are true
I will sing softly to you, and I hope you know
You are my truth,
The Bible I swear on,
The stars of my galaxy, and I hope
I could be the chance you take,
Like making bacon when you hate the taste,
Or think of me like Pluto, knowing I'll still be there
When everyone has seemed to lose faith.

I remember one of my favorite moments
Was laying in your bed listening to poetry.
You would wait until Andrea Gibson was done speaking
To announce all your favorite parts.
And I wanted to let you know,
That I would love to kiss you in the ocean
And I would love to be your lightning
As long as you promise to shake me like thunder
Because the sound of your voice makes my heart race
And you are such an naturally beautiful phenomenon
That I'm afraid of you, but you don't scare me, no,
You just make me nervous with excitement and awe
And while I pick my jaw up off of the floor,
I see you standing in the kitchen,
Pacing and wondering what I'm thinking,
And me, sitting silently, watching you,
Loving every aspect of you, and you
Never cleaning up the mess at your sink,
But just rearranging it into new chaos.
We were new chaos,
And I'm sorry if that scared you,
But isn't there something exciting in being so scared?
No one has ever been here before, they can't tell you how it will be
So let's accept the mess and brave it together.
And it's times like this where I wonder
If every time you were scared, you'd look for a safe bet,
And if I could ever live my life like that.
If I could ever treat my heart like that.
I wish you wouldn't, and I just couldn't,
Because all of my stumbles and falls and scrapes and scars
That I wear unapologetically and brave
Led me to that bed with you listening to poetry
And I was lost at sea, thunder and lightning,
And I was so scared,
And I was so excited,
Hoping we could be lost at sea forever.

I have a strange fixation
On a real life rabbit hole,
That I want to jump into
Like a child does a pool
On the first chance in summer.

And there's a voice I hear
That jerks my gaze toward it,
But it is never who I thought,
Like an eager child who lost a tooth,
And woke to find it still under the pillow.

Back when understanding each other
Was having the same favorite color,
And the farthest you were away
Was a bike ride, or there was always
The option to walk through the snow.

But now, everything is an inconvenience,
And no one even has a color they'd prefer,
And if they do, it's the color of their car,
Which you can't take out in bad weather;
The tires are bad, and it will ruin the paint.

Until there is a time that worlds can collide.
I will just sit and wait and wish,
Like a child does on Christmas Eve night,
Sleeping through sugar plum dreams,
And waking with hopeful eyes open wide.

This air has gotten far too thick to breathe.
My lungs can’t bear another deep sigh,
So I’ll hold on tight til this smokey oxygen clears
From my once loved, decaying town.
Selfishness, self interest, self deprecation.
It’s all you or it’s no one.
My atmosphere is everyone else’s lives,
Tangled up in it so much
I start to believe it’s mine.
But it’s not, and I won’t accept contentment.
It has not served me well.
It does not work out fine.
What they bring? It’s not what I need.
A fresh start on a sandy beach,
How cliché, you always were,
But this heavy air is bringing me down.
I’ve memorized every dying face in this ghost town.
Put me on the next plane with you
To that contrived peace of mind.
Your wanderlust inspires; I’ll follow you to unknown.
I’d rather not know where I was going
Or where I’d end up
Then face the faceless narcissists without you.

It felt a lot like love
When we drove together,
And all the songs bled into one,
And I thought it would never end,

And the sun might never rise,
Like the night it crept up
Because we forgot to save our daylight.
And it was a race between us and the sunrise,

But we knew we would win;
All we could do was win

Because we were the first snow of the season,
And others would marvel at our purity,
And more would come after us,
But they could not touch our beauty.

But the car has stopped,
And the album is over.
Before you left, I remember you said,
"That felt a lot like love."

He asked me why we couldn’t do it in the basement.
The answer isn’t a simple one;
I couldn’t tell him about that poem you wrote me.
I blamed it on my irrational fear of spiders
To sidetrack his incessant inquisitions.

It was the only place I used to be able to be myself.
With trying to improve the area,
It turned into more of a hell.
The carpet feels like knives on my feet.
The ground is much colder than I remember it being.

A place that was once so dear and warm
Is now filled with empty wine bottles and full ashtrays
And a sewing machine that just represents
All that I’ve tried and never succeeded in.
I could hide this from him, but not from you.

Next time he asks if we could do it in the basement,
I should say sure, why not, because
It’s not like I have a past that will keep up the empty bottles and full ashtrays.
It’s time to face my irrational fear that has
Absolutely nothing to do with spiders.