cigarettes and limp wrists.
where did all the time go?
the mountains are closing in on me.
i'm still in love with thoughts of you.
where did all the time go?
it's late, and there's a river between us.

tonight you were wearing the sweater I love.
the last time i saw you in it, you were all soft
and sleepy.
we woke up with the city, stretching in the new
morning light.
it was one of our good days.

we went to breakfast together and you kissed me as we parted for our morning classes.

i am hollow and i ache.
the only thing to fill me up is the thought that this can't last forever.
someday i will get past it. someday it won't feel so raw.
someday i will write poetry about the strength of myself and the depth of the sky.
someday i will feel comfortable sleeping in a bed without your warmth beside me.

It's late, or early, depending on
how you look at it.

I am drunk, again, and I
have this feeling I thought I'd
forgotten.

At this point he would
make an excuse
clamor to his feet
scatter goodbyes around the room
and take my hand.

sometimes we even kissed
in the middle of the street.

Where are we now?

I'm somewhere on your shoulder,
the place I used to kiss before we went
to sleep, the place my lips would touch
first thing each morning.

You avoid the mirror after you shower
and you threw your cut-off t-shirts away-- in fact,
you burned them.

You are in my eyes, when I'm high and flying
fast and hard to anywhere but here. Yesterday,
I bit my lip the way you do. I heard your laughter in
my own.

Last month, a dream.
A sunset, your arms around me,
my tears soaking your shirt, and a realization--
"You didn't realize you'd love me this much, huh?"

life is good to me, or maybe this soft place is finally letting me heal.
and yet-

I scroll through the photos on my phone,
visions of a life I’m now unsure of-- looking back,
am I the person in those photos? Is that me? Is that us?
the drunken nights and rare, elusive, quiet mornings.

I spent yesterday remembering that night two months ago.
gauging the distance between us now and all the changes in myself since.
I look in the mirror and I’m not sure if what I see is what I am. This aching is like treading water, waiting for the emotions coming in waves to drag me back out to the deep, dark sea.

I’m removed from everything apart from the aching.
all that remains is the aching.
I feel quite small, far away from everything.
I feel low and blurry.

The days melt together and I mark time in the evenings, at dusk, when I’m feeling you in my chest, when my breath is heavy with longing and nostalgia. You are in every thunderstorm, in every flash of electric magic. You are the shadows on my wall. You are my first cigarette and the last swallow of beer. I feel you in the pit of my stomach on good days.
For hours, I’ll forget you. I’ll question the ache, the dazedness. I’ll smoke or laugh or gaze at the sky. Then suddenly, there’s a pull near my heart, a sort of twinge. It’s an emotion bubbling up through my pores, crawling across my scalp. It makes me shiver, hot and cold all at once. All in the same moment. I’ll think your name to myself, my lips soundlessly moving in a pattern memorized in so many moments. The night I met you, you left with another girl. You looked at me before you left, and somehow I knew what you were saying. I’ve known what you’ve been saying the entire time. I chose to engulf that love, to throw myself with all I had into the thorns and caves and ropes of that short month. I still remember the shock of kissing in the daylight. You told me once, with your arms around me and your voice serious in my ear “You deserve someone who ---” and I still think of that so often. I wonder, where would we be now if I hadn’t given up when you first began to push away?

There is a half-moon, just a sliver,
embedded in the flesh of my palm..
It follows me throughout the day, silently.
Even when it heals, the mark
will remain, insidious..
The pain of it-- the shock,
the hurt of seeing you, seeing you
seeing me, and watching as
you left.
That stays behind.
Bonfires and beers can't save the world,
but how I wish they could.

**** Seth
2. "dead leaves"
3. "Robert Plant"
4. Stop
5.

it's what we don't have
that's important
It's all the things we could be,
but are not
We dance in the premise of
a new love,
another nightly routine to fall
into
A pair of lips to get to know
How many others do you
know as much as you
would like to?
It's not enough, never enough,
to greet reality
The heart of misplaced intelligence
and sloppy kisses,
the banal confrontation of self
settling down

I fall quickly, and so hard
for ideas and dreamy anticipation

There is a crescent moon embedded in the flesh of my palm.
Its a reminder, insidious, slipping to the back of my mind throughout the day, but always waiting.
Here's a moment, a flash of feeling--it sets my heart racing, and my throat closes around your name.
I dreamt of you, last night.
A brilliant sunset, your arms around me, and a question.
"You didn't realize you'd love me this much, huh?"