Driving. With rain sliding down the windows, too dark to see much beyond the headlights and taillights rolling ahead and towards me.
I have the music turned too loud to really think clear thoughts, it almost stings my ears a little.  
Pin picks of memories are pushing through the lower subconscious of my mind
I can feel the cavity below my ribcage expanding slightly as I'm trying to let everything in.
Stuck between shallow breathing and taking too deep of raged breathes.
I never liked the sound of my own breathing.
It always seemed cruel that I was allowed the one natural courtesy that my father was eventually denied.
Sometimes I hear the ringing of hospital bells in my ears when it's too quiet.
It's been 7 years.

This can't be it, this can't be it I think as I slide my hands over the wheel turning too hard onto my street with itching palms and dry lips
This can't be everything that we are lined up for marching in and out of office buildings and hospital waiting rooms, born to live, live to die hands turned up and out pushing past the next person in line because
when I was younger
I used to stand in the middle of my backyard
and hold really still
staring at the sun motes that twirled in the leaves of the trees
holding really still until I heard a hawk scream loud enough to send my heart sky rocketing and knees driving through the grass and to the front door
They call that "Checking In"
a way 6 year olds way of making sure I was still alive
It's been 7 years
I don't know how to be still anymore.

You curled your hand around my chin and told me to "never change"
and I don't know if I can do that because
I think I've got hurricanes in my hair
and the graveyards of shipwrecks in my ribcage
with the force of ten thousand years of tides crashing against
the hulls of my chest

and you are the lighthouse glaring through the storm

you always chide me for opening my mouth and shutting it before emitting any words

I'm just trying to keep my head above water

when i'm choking on the right words to say I use my fingernails to trace them into your back when you sleep
words like "I" and "you"
I hope when you dream you hear all the words I never got to say to you
I wonder if you tasted black ink when you kissed me
sometimes I think my heart is just an inkwell

I can't waste any ink to spill about you because I can't find one poetic thing in our beginning, middle,  or end.

I keep wishing to be in Nevada
that we would chase the sunset all the way to Florida  
and then you'd talk about your clinical depression and
I'll tell you about the time my father kissed my mother's knuckles
on my birthday
You'd tell me you're in love with the way I always have a story to tell
and I tell you I wish you had something better than a storyteller
I don't speak about browsing through my parent's wedding pictures for days after their divorce, or the way I couldn't push my bully off their bike
But I wanted to, how I wanted to
Instead I tell you, god has been playing hide and seek with me since I was a child and I keep winning because he hasn't found me yet
and I'm beginning to lose faith
You tell me about the poplar tree in your back yard and writing an angry poem on it's bark and that's how you knew it was fondness
I say all I'm looking for is a slowfuck under the sun
and you tell me it's okay  
because at least for once, you'll want the same

Swear to God, they would toss every firecracker aside if they saw just how fast you spark up.
Faster than the blink of your tear thats slithers down your weathered cheek you can go 0-80 miles an hour, all screeching tires and pumping veins.
Let them see  how quick you shatter glass and then  how you'd cut your own hands just to put it back together before anyone saw the blood.
Tell them about the screaming lions in your chest.
I wish you never caged them.
Shatter mirrors and arrange them back in jagged order so they actually reflect the same thing you see.
I saw you crow counting, heart pounding, sirens sounding lying in the grass.
Did the earth ever speak to you? Or were the wolves howling too loud.
I wish you never caged them.

It's been two weeks
four days and
seven hours since you left
It's cold in the bed. I can see the fog unfurling on the floor around the bed posts. The morning sun burns through the blinds and unspools like liquid metal in patches on the quilt.
"You're acting crazy" You told me
"I am crazy" I said
I threw a glass at the door after you shut it. I heard you laugh as you walked down the sidewalk. I heard you laugh as it shattered across the tile.
I fed the cat. Sat down on the floor next to her while she ate. Watched the steam from the teapot tumble through the air. She doesn't purr like she used to.
It's been two weeks
four days and
nine hours since you left.
I'm still picking up pieces of glass.