I wonder whose arms I would run and fall into if I were drunk in a room with everyone I have ever loved

I hear people ice skating on the roof
I met you at the water fountain two years ago today

Two Falls ago
We went on a bear hunt
And I held your hand
Over a broken girl
We spoke of God in the woods
And the trees stole our dead letter secrets

Two Falls ago
We were all sixteen
Maybe less, maybe a little more
Leaves floated in pavement rivers
On homecoming and Halloween
Smoke filled a laundry room, we burned the rug with homemade cigarettes

Two Falls ago
I wore wool socks in your driveway
And stayed up with you all night
We slow danced under blankets in your plywood shed
I saw my best friends everyday
And drank stolen liquor with them most nights

Everything was Golden rod & the 4H Stone
Everything was red and pulsing
Everything was mattresses and staircases
Everything was Sarah Jones and Radio Wars
Everything was bonfires and lasting

Everything was all of us,
screaming and
laughing and
singing and
crying and
Together - under dizzy skies and dying leaves in Fall

That night my head revisited the act of combustion
Fueled by cinnamon syrup and ten dollar wine
I caught fire under a false summer sky
We stole the Holy Father from the threshold of the devil's den
Lo-fi guitars sent us spinning back in time
The three of us became the opposite of a memory
We bent the solar system with glass bottle visits to our old favorite songs
There's a place I'd like to be
Half drunk in the fluorescent lights of a college town bus
There's a place I'd be happy
Carpet dancing with a trinity of alcoholic poets
That night was beautiful and Fall and fleeting
That night is my next favorite memory

This is a poem for the landlocked memories we buried in the sand of my best friends' fake lake beach, and all the drinking & sinking that took place there

One day it happens
We wake up with more than one required regret
The ink washes off of our arms
The dye fades out of our hair
We stop wearing torn up blue shoes that match the bags under our eyes because sleep is for the adults
Who gave up on becoming writers
And gave in to corporate minded mills

I'm afraid of the day
When there is beer in the fridge, but no one drinks it
When lighting fireworks and cigarettes off of the kitchen stove is **just too reckless
When we'd rather sit around the fire than run through the field
When the sound of our drunken song means far more than nothing

One day it happens
We forget the way she looked at that older boy
All sophomore minded madness and navy blue t shirts
Secret dates with her brother's best friend
One green bottle beer and the phones start ringing
Green corduroy housed my legs that night I tried to kiss your mouth and missed, leaving boyhood bite marks on your neck

I'm afraid of the day
When we stop believing we're invincible
When we sleep in separate house beds rather than carpet floors - entwined
When everything has to rhyme
When we stop running away from time
When ***** makes us paranoid and strictly resides on bar shelves in glass

Time does not exist
Age is a name the old men gave us
Time does not exist
Clocks break and hands shake
Time does not exist
I remember the start of every blacked out night in the mountains
I miss us beneath the string light tree
Drinking secrets, holding hands, strumming wire
How do I move past the most beautiful memories this whole **** world has seen

Today the museum held clay books
Pages flying from bindings
To represent
That feeling when you reunite with your siblings after a parent dies
I stole a beer from a boy named after the West
and of course, I think of my friends
As i always do
The pages that flew from our chests
When she died
The siren screamed
And we sat in silence
Photo books mostly just break my heart
I will be angry for the rest of my life
Because she doesn't deserve her pain
Because our year together ended
Because high school is over
And no one in this campus cove
Will ever believe our stories
I need your faces back in my line of vision
Glowing orange over flames

But his eyes, his mouth - they look like a stranger's

Copper shines, reflecting images of refugees floating through mud waters on glass shards
Fire feels dull blood aches of healing ivory gun shot wounds
Professor locked himself inside his head after the fourth born had been buried

Headlines make my knees shake
There was a UFO sighting at the Dome of the Rock, but you were slap drunk in a tin foil book case
There was a UFO sighting at the Dome of the Rock, but you were crying salt for departed birds and card stock fingernails

Seduction is philosophical
Blonde boys play games
Like backwoods checkers
Blonde boys love brunette haired girls
Because pigment stains their wrists like tattoo ink
Distance is a screaming match
Between past lives and past loves
Blonde boys wear bracelets
To cover tattooed wrists
Across boarders, coasts, and continents
Voices cruise through noses and throat boxes
To bear the bad news

I think coffee smells like cigarettes
And I think cigarettes smell like far off Summers