I remember when I could still smell you on my sheets.
I remember at night feeling as though I wasn't quite alone.
I see you in every rainstorm and even now I hear your voice in the dark. There's a digging at my ribs and a clawing at my heart.
I want to know what
you see in her.
Do you smile the same when you're above her?
Do you wash her hair with the same gentleness?

it’s so hard to feel like the beautiful person you say i am
when it’s 3 am and i’m alone with myself
and this is what i need to do
crying in the dark can’t be so bad
when it means i’m coming clean so someday
i can come home to you
and the 4 am train offers up its tracks

it’s so hard to be alone

and i am brilliant and i am strong and i am
beautiful
but you don’t have to live with me

i want to crawl inside you,
kiss your ribs and cradle your heart,
make friends with your spine.
i want to see what you see in me
through your eyes.
you are the beautiful person

my reflection is tired and these eyes i see each day are only getting duller
i’ll repeat this sad song for the last time
and think of the night you tried to love me
and hope i can make a change and make a way for me to smile again

you make me want to write
you make me want to dance
you give me a place to go when i’m stuck inside my mind
and maybe it’s not for the best
but my love for you is here

this life i’m living doesn’t taste the same
it tastes like sleeping pills and a light that never goes out
and i can still see the curve of your fingers and the look in your eyes
and i’m sick but so are you and maybe we could heal together
but life is short and messy and too soon I can feel you are already gone
maybe we had our moment and that was that

when you walk away will you feel my thoughts?
i thought i saw myself the other day
but it was only an echo of the sound of your voice
it rang in my head and i glanced toward the mirror
i saw us there in light, gilded and framed and content
i’m sick

in the convoluted mess of my depression i am always reaching for you
i look for you in everyone
but i see myself in us and i would never want that for any love
so there will be no us and there will only be you, and me, alive in the same stream of existence, two small threads of the universe touching momentarily, slipping away too soon

but that does not exclude my selfishness, the insistence of my heart
the senselessness of love and lust
i want to kiss each of your knuckles
i want to taste your shoulder every morning and feel your hand about my thigh every night
i want your poetry in my ears and your mouth on my neck
i want our love, half of you and half of me, the sound of eager feet on wood floors
i want new sad songs, new happy songs, another reason to dance
you are my reason to dance
i want us writing side by side, i want to hear you singing under your breath always
i want to show you this without shame, turmoil, judgment
i want to wake up to your dimple and your voice full of sleep
instead of knowing for the rest of my life that you are the ocean i always wanted to swim in
that you are the tree i never climbed

crying alone in bed is a production of love that i never thought to act upon
and now i feel low and insignificant
in that place of rain and green i know you are so happy
and that makes me happy
that’s all love is
i am happy because you are happy
and for the rest of my life i will be happy knowing i loved you fiercely, quickly, and without thought, without voice
you are the great love of my life and you have no clue
your kindness and your fight against the clinging sadness that pulls upon you,
the proof that you are here in the world, breathing, getting out of bed in the morning
is enough to make me smile
and know that the days you struggle to find yourself to love are the days i love you most
and someday i will find the strength to get out of bed
and maybe then we can greet the mornings together

here's to the dragging feet of 8 AM classes
here's to sunny afternoons and snowy evenings

the belltower marks time,
cutting through the haze of drunken nights

here's to the quiet murmur of a somber crowd
here's to candles commemorating lives lost

here's to generations of footsteps gracing the bricks of the Oval
here's to many more

cold sores and energy drinks
streets awash in sepia tones
voices tripped along the edge of
darkness
I led the group of us,
already drunk, joyful, stumbling--
across the half-lit parking lot

then, clear and strong, breaking
through the noise of the crowd

(the sound of my name and the feel of my small victory, here I am, victorious,
belonging)

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

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.

the bleak reality of life
is giving spark to a dream
and one day waking up
inside a coffeeshop
in the city you love
but have begun to question

(once the doubt sets in, it aches small and grows and grows)

the magical backdrop,
the music and hipsters,
bikelanes and teetering mountaintops

you can barely grasp the
feeling you once knew so well

breathless expectancy
towering opportunity
a fire in your chest

what was safe was safe in the
unknown and the opportunity

two pennies and a peach soda
coffeeshop dreams and tattoo guns
brokenhearted like a nagging hangnail

the best feeling in the world is
being recognized in a crowd and
pulled into familiar arms

and drunken monologues,
nihilism and Nietzsche

fridge beer - it's in the fridge
***** looks from passerby
purple sunglasses and
a sleeve of mountaintops

mid-afternoon rush and strange men
wearing sports shoes
empty words and another good
day

there's never enough time to write as life is happening

these are just words and words,
for writing's sake
he told me to write about it
but maybe I can't.
I tried to jump past it -
the messy dreams and the
stark emotion each morning

(I hate waking up to my emotions, spending most of the morning putting them back where they belong...)

how long does it take for the loss to set in?
- 5 hours, or until the church ladies arrive, laden with casseroles and condolences
where does the time go?
- fast forward four years, Young Heart,
remember summer nights by the river
how do you live now?
- long nights and loud music, Sunday brunch and sunny afternoons.

Good friends, cheap beer, always looking up.

i looked to the moon but all I could see,
all I could see was the light in your eyes and the set of your jaw
as your hands cupped the flame and you inhaled, eagerly, your lungs working, your blood pumping, the beauty of you alive next to me, and me, alive next to you.

i am all awe and happy and humbled

a shock of dark hair fell across your forehead and i didn’t notice the bricks against my back or the chill of the dark
and when i look in the mirror i can see myself again
and on nights like these i want to pull you into the fog
and run
and when i look at you now i feel something becoming

i want your kindness,
your gentle hands
the soft of your words
the passion in your movements, carrying you to the sea, toward God, across continents, and hopefully closer to me

i can see so much in you
the things i cannot see in myself, that you swear you see in me...
there’s an echo in my heart when i hear the sound of your voice
everything accelerates when i hear you whistling down the hall

it’s a movement, a feeling, a dance between patience and expectancy
my spirit called for help and you spoke to me
he told me my spirit was dying and
you found me in the mess of my life and
now

the miracle of breath and life and love
the miracle of becoming
i am young and tired and fearful
but hopeful and humbled and healing
and there is so much left in life and so much left in me and so much left in you

and i know that the future will come and carry us away
and there may come a time when our eyes no longer meet,
a time when our voices and laughter no longer overlap
but i hope you understand that for me this is true,
i have never met someone before that i am so clearly meant to love and adore
it runs through my veins and my heart and my mind
and although you will never know,
i can only hope that you remember what you have done for me
and how suddenly one day i looked at you and realized
you are the sun between the trees
and the smell of the ocean
you are kindness and wisdom and
something i never expected to find

and i know i know i know we are all working toward something,
we are all heaving through the mess of ourselves
as though since birth we are born fighting
but sometimes we have the chance to live in the beauty of the moment
every breath is a transformation
every dawn is a possibility
and for the rest of my life i will probably be alive with the thought of you

I tell myself to block your number; I know that's
all it would take. I tell myself to avoid the night, insidious darkness making its home inside my spine. Heart pounding, hands shaking, waiting for that call that only comes past midnight when you're stumbling and looking for someone warm to hold. You and I both know that I am weak for your arms. Each weekend finds me expectant, hopeful, trying desperately to push those emotions away. I tell myself to let you go. They've been saying it for months; you're no good. But your mouth, those lips, what your hands can do to me. You're just another way to destroy myself. Slowly, achingly-- we both know how this is going to end.

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?"

i love the way you dance through life
reckless, beautiful
falling into the turns
always reaching with eager hands
head thrown back, eyes closed tight, touching empty air and hearing the music that escapes me
i see myself
falling in a clumsy waltz
letting gravity pull me down
clenching my fists and tensing my shoulders
always afraid to let myself feel

but now i’ve found my chance,
i’ve found music in the sound of your voice
and the strength of your shoulders
and i don’t even need to meet your eyes to know that everything is different

you give me rhythm
and grace
and courage to finally
let go and
dance

April 14th
it would be so simple,
to step back into that dream

April 16th,
one class,
                monster +

April 17th (halfway) squirrel + Nat's BDAY @Avery? Gin + Tonic
Max is in the corner, coughing
up blood
world town above our heads
mushrooms and pipe dreams
sad poetry with your
guns up
birthday cards,
gin + tonic
your eyes never left
my face
couple of lovers left
__ before the sad sets in
I love the straight of
your nose + the set of your mouth
smoky lights outline
the night
guys are ***** w/ red
solo cups
sorry, he's too drunk
keep going till the
goldschlagger

locked out of our house
on our way to the angel's
kitchen

here's to Nat
tall like a tree
and just as wise,
quiet kind (and quite the friend)

Kady is almost here
Max left as I took my seat

She'd look like me, but she'd have your sleepy bright eyes.
He'd have your hair, that crooked smile, your pointy chin.
She'd find joy in the simple things.

Half of you and half of me.

And now to remove this miracle, to carve it out of myself.
The integrity of potential is lost in the real world and
I can't help myself anymore.

(I heard somewhere that in seven years, all the cells of all the parts of me that you have touched will be shed from me.)

How lovely, to think one day I'll finally be cleansed of you.

(You're the last person I imagined who would change me like this.)

I still like to think we found something in each other. I still like to think that you felt what I did. I still like to think you haven't forgotten me.

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

i want you always, laughing and smiling, stretching in my living room.
i want to be sharing a cigarette on the steps, your arm around me.
i want you breathless and giggling above me. i want your smell on my skin and your fingers in my hair. i want to hear the timbre of your voice in my sleep for the rest of my dreams. every moment with you is like a vacation (paradise) outside of myself. words are for the weak. we let our bodies speak for themselves. until this is over, i want, i want, i want.

you weren't the first and you won't be the last, but for now i am happy for you always pulling me closer and waking to the warmth of you under my sheets each rainy day we spend together.

i traded unanswered questions and hushed laughter
for our bodies in the moonlight and your silence above me
the feel of you inside me was enough for me but your lips
never met mine and though your fingers had held mine so sweetly before,
when you rose and left me alone I could only feel the ghost
of your hands

I showered twice and still i can smell you on my skin
the smell of hope and *** and youth and endings
and for some reason the lack of you
bothers me more than all the boys i followed home last year
strangers and cigarettes and empty ***** were good enough
until you held me through the new year and i found my voice
too little too late
i don’t have a say in whether or not you stay

too soon i will be gone to the mountains
and i guess
your arms around me and
your voice before the sunrise
are the only memories i need to carry with me

I want to float home,
high heels in hand,
arm in arm with you,
you
and your hippy music I love,
you
and your quiet ways,
my lips on your cheek

(and my number there, above your heart,
scrawled in sharpie)

and us surrounded by bodies,
the pull of the music
deafening in that crowded basement

obscure lagers and a young ego,
temporary tattoos courtesy
of another drunken night

earlier--
in the parking lot,
voices called my name from the dark,
the sound rising over our heads and shoulders,
the feel of it in the hollow of my chest

belonging

I see and hear and feel
so much
Where does it all go?

four of hearts and he whispers
"the best is yet to come"
Well, snap out of it.
think of sunshiney days on the Oval,
think of nights spent in your bed
think of blue skies
and smoke by the bridge

kissing on the couch,
heartbreak and PBR

I know your lips i have seen them curl with mirth and crinkle with laughter. I have seen them soft with sleep, i have felt the brush of them against my ear when you speak in that low voice. I know what they can do to me. I know your lips i have felt them against my neck, i have felt them work their way down my navel and make a home in my hips and your lips, I know your lips. I know the feel of them against mine as you are saying goodbye and always i know the feel of your lips when you say hello again

i know your lips and all that comes with them so why do you deceive me why why am i still falling asleep alone when i care for you, for your laughter, and i water this garden but you only come out at night and when you are here you are present and it is you and i can feel myself in us and then you are gone and a part of me is gone you took a piece of me with you and your lips they are gone too but still i am so cold and i miss our legs entangled and us face to face fast asleep and how sometimes you’ll wake and kiss me on the forehead and i could cry with the shame of this love but it is here and it is you but you are gone and all i have is this stupid **** about your lips and my loneliness

so why then are you so far away where are your lips where is that smile and why am i longing for the corners of your mouth and the steady thrum of your hand in mine

I spent the afternoon in the breezeway
watching the clouds tease the mountaintops
and here you come
wide-eyed, eager, kind
embodiment of youth.
you tell me stories of men in uniform
and what lies behind that shining facade
of smiling military men, all in a row.

He was tall, you say, all-american--and strong.
when he took her to bed, it was the day after
her husband was lost to fire and shrapnel.

Paratroopers, you say, are told one thing.
'Don't speak to civilians.'

You left me feeling queasy,
watching and wondering with suspicion
the blue and peace of the sky.

here's to long silences followed by awkward conversation,
vague civility and hookah smoke,
wasted afternoons and drunken nights

I think a lot about that car accident you were in.
Reckless country boy, the feel of broken glass in your mouth
and the smell of fresh grass. You saved your cigarette
and something saved you.

I think a lot of your mother's love, orderly and cool.
I think of you, alone, wrapped in tangled sheets and tears.

yesterday when you told me your pup was the best thing that ever happened to you-- I believed you.

My favorite place is the passenger seat of your truck.
I hate the boys who hurt you. And I hate you when you're your own self-destruction.

I love the sound of our laughter, sweet smoke in our lungs, and the blood in our veins. I love our mingling spirits and shared cigarettes.

(I named my unborn child after you. You're the force of nature I've always dreamed of meeting.)

The mistakes we make have made us bold. They make us look onward and upward, to the stars and the moon and our future. They keep us young and free. They call to me in the early mornings, in each first snow of winter, in every evening spent at libbey's.

I think of what scares me, and I think of you, and
none of this is as bad as it seems. I promise.

Before,
I only had a flimsy, hazy memory of one autumn evening.
I was waiting to pick up in the boys' hall, lounging on the floor when he appeared from nowhere and introduced himself.
Charming and tall and self-deprecating, I warmed to him immediately. (His eyes still have the same affect on me as they did back then)
Later, he told me he remembered the first time we met, and it wasn't in that moment.
The weekend before classes started, I was smashed in the courtyard with D, getting hit on by these nasty *** upperclassmen, when he walked by with a group of friends.
I, obnoxious, drunkenly charming, singled him out and I--
I hit on him.
Inebriated, unabashedly. Later, his comments about his eyebrows and the faces he pulled confused me, until
one night, laughingly, he asked me if I remembered the night I met him. He told me, gleefully, how I complimented him on his eyebrows. I don't think I've ever been more mortified, only to find out that he was just as embarrassed by the joke he made the night he found me outside his door, the night I thought we first met...

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?

that night was a whirlwind. I shared your bed and your secrets and as dawn rose I realized you knew more about me than even my closest friends. in just one night, my world had been shaken when you took me to bed. You held me and we talked through the darkness and I felt happy and secure. you kissed me goodbye that morning over cigarettes and coffee and made me promise to text you. I never saw you again. for months I carried with me the most banal of facts, the things you enjoyed and admired and the things that took your breath away. I carried with me a hope that we would see each other soon. you'd buy me new earrings and take me out for thai, just like you promised. I'd hear you call me darlin once again. tonight I realized that I'd forgotten your name. and for all that I tried, I could not recall. and because of this I know, that just like the leaves are dropping, so will the details of those memories. some day i will be washed clean of that night. I'll forget the precise sound of your voice and even the color of your eyes. The only thing that will remain will be an imprint of the precious intersection of our lives. I hope it will be soft and kind. I hope I think of you and smile. (if anything, what I've learned is to believe the boys like you who say they'll break my heart. you didn't break mine. you gave me everything I wanted for just a night. It's a painless aching, but still it sweeps through my body in the dead of night. I'll learn to believe that even the chillest boy will harm my heart. I will count on self-preservation and knowledge that emotions are temporary and dripping with change)

twitter poems and hookah smoke,
long days and longer nights

all the boys suddenly see me
i am awake and in their minds
maybe in their hearts

i waited so long for this and now that it’s here
I can feel myself falling away

are you reaching? i search in your voice, your eyes,

the way you leaned toward me last night after your cigarette,
and the way i walked away

the feeling i get when you light up my phone
destroys me in the worst way

I want the reaching. I want to be kissing your shoulder, always.
I want to wake up to you every morning.

I remember the night on the bridge, you were gone,
he was with me, his arm around me,
the river was alive
and jumping with the lights of the city.

everything was so bright, so shiny,
when the ******* finally hit me
i felt everything

I reached for you and you were nowhere to be found
and he mistook me, pulled me tighter, and I looked up at him and saw my whole future there, on the bridge, without you, on the bridge

and later, you appeared. you were there and i was drunk and then we were drunk together. i left with you, and i know he watched us leave

later, again, in my room, we slept.

it’s the way our palms touched

and how ever since i can't
wash my hands enough

to get the taste of your
silence from the corners
of my fingernails

it’s the way the branches were
crooked and the bark was torn

but it held a rope the way the earth cradled your sister

–gently,
when the thunder shook her to the ground
and the branches

they trembled and swayed like your shoes,
only inches off the ground

the things that ***** the mind,
the injustice of memory and its patchy, depthless murk.
remind your brain of moments--remember, remember, remember this one, this time, this feeling, the colors, the laughter.

there is so much here you will never begin to touch.
but here are these words, these thoughts, these times.
don't forget.

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.

I was 16, following I-90 with my two best friends, no sleep till Missoula, MT.
The sun rose at our backs and we stopped for breakfast. Lack of sleep and fear for my future caught up to me as daylight broke, and I broke down in the bathroom of a Denny's, sobbing violently.
3 years later, on the summer solstice--
I was crying again, for different reasons, in a warm bath at a Motel 6. I was crying for all the places I had been, for how far I had come, for how far I had left to go.
With all the highs came equal lows.
That weekend with him was a turning point for me, but I didn't realize it then.

I remember how proud you were i remember how sweet we, us, could be
And how sweet the first touch was. I never once bended toward you–but i was ever ready. And always you would break and reach for me, and it was the sea against the shore it was a thrum it was the steady of our hearts, an acknowledgment of thumbs brushing knuckles or the soft press of our legs side by side and nothing not a thing can cleanse me of your small soft laugh and how each time you spoke i was surprised by your voice you are so YOU and it’s the way you reach for me even and especially in your sleep and your hair in the mornings and that smile you know the one the one you give me when you’re above me and i see so much in you and i love you sure but you will never be mine and i wish i could walk away from the mess of our realities because i feel as though when we touch we feel and speak and touch and it’s this feeble connection i crave with your beauty and our lust but the fact is our souls see each other through all the mess of ourselves and i can find you you’re there i know it i feel it but time and circumstance does its dance and im not sure when i’ll see you, really see you, again and i’m leaving but i want to stay and you and you and you

i am never careful enough kissing you i am always wrapped up in it never wholly present always nervous for the first kiss then swept away with all the kisses and then fearful again while you sleep wanting to be bold and reach for you but never brave enough to, i am always nervous until the last kiss and we always kiss again and again and once more to remember our lips and then i am starving for you until our lips recognize each other again

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?"

i am drowning and heaving through the mess of my life

I am laughing too loudly and silent at all the wrong moments

i’m sick of causing casualties

i don’t need a small white cross on the side of the road

i need hungover afternoons and darjeeling tea

i need the dust of your attic and the sound of footsteps on the warped wood floors

i need the river and the solitude of the cathedral

i need beauty on the sandbars and sunburns on the dock

i need laughter and tears and poetry

i need soft hands and warm lips and

i need to sleep

i need to eat

i need to run run run

i’m careful now
like you should have been,

when i catch my own
reflection in the mirror

and i’m sorry god i’m sorry

for the way your mother screamed
and the way your grandfather cried

but the tree at the end of the lane
isn’t the only thing warped and weathered

and the clouds are rolling in again

We cover our footsteps
with grapefruit and lye

forget me knots
anchor my wrists to rotted bedposts

there are purple streaks across your mirror

indecision couples with doubt in the dark and
you see me for the first time

(I wonder what I saw in you then)

lightening tangles through the trees
while your shadow engulfs the front porch

I can still feel your shoulder blades through the thin thread of your shirt

i am bare feet on the stairway landing, i am messy hair and high ceilings

you are a voice full of sleep and you are calling my name from the bedroom

white afternoons and sunlit leaves were lost to
gray days and the sharp cut of mountains against the horizon

the mess of my life met the worry in your heart
and all the long walks in the world cannot dull my love for you

senseless words with sacred meaning fill every space,
the margin of each and every page is a work of art

the strength of your presence is enough to keep me content with
a voiceless love that will haunt me on even the sunniest mornings

there is an entire world within me that you will never explore
and i am sad to say you are an ocean in which i will never swim

i can fill my mind with endless distraction and empty substance,
but the truth of you is never far behind

even now i can hear your voice and see the bright of your eyes,
the set of your shoulders and the grace of your fingers

you haunt me like my shadow.