Girls like us can't be saved
Just numbed for long enough to realize what isn't love
Time changes change time
Again and again
Your ghost invades foreign lands
David stands before me
And I can only smell your collared neck from a faraway spring
I'm starting to think I imagined the whole thing
The artist screams
And your face replaces David's
Men in marble urge me to stop
To drink wine without wanting to touch your hands
To kiss continental strangers while I still have the chance

On nights like these I have to write my own poetry to fall asleep to
I dreamt of us walking through a street laced in ***** snow
Just me and Joanna

Years pass
And I am as lost
As I was then

January was dark. All **** day. A cold tequila car. A book with writing down the spine. Thick salt tears, a heaving chest and a shaking rib cage.

February was nothing like the movies. Sliding to the cheap seat theater on ice roads with friends you don't care to know. Numbness and red cartoon hearts.

March was my birthday. ***** and three sad ghosts in the basement. A banquet hall concert and a pack of gum. A boy turned stranger and a tragic lo-fi guitar.

April was bad. A hotel room filled with cousins and no blood to show for my innocence. Two-headed boys in painted sweaters. Tiny bottles of rage in the back of her parents' car.

May was my best friends, but not him. A return to the ribbon tree with plastic bottle poison. A handful of dirt to escape the way *** makes you think of me. Two girls with not much else to lose.

June was the night in overalls. Screams and tears and mouth fulls of craft beer and whisky. More ghosts - so many ghosts. First time ***** and my personal demise.

July was the night we went swimming on her birthday. Beer on the back porch. Forgetting why we ever hated one another. We slept together on my living room floor.

August was candle wax. A picnic on her mother's surgical scars. Tragedy and almost nothing else.

September was the great departure. Another year apart. The music festival in that field. Boxed wine and Pope Francis in the living room. the trifecta raged and kissed and called it a night.

October was leaves in pavement rivers. Sneaking into that concert just to  watch them fall out of love. A pack of Marlboro Reds and unrequited fireworks. Animal masks and German beer. Four girls on ghostly slopes and celtic knot rings.

November was fevers and mirrors. The night we traveled back in time. PBR on your sister's porch and a long drive to the high school. A girl faced with the ghost residing in her hometown. Bob Dylan and a second bucket of gin.

December was mostly a blur. Christmas parties and holiday breaks. Basement promises and winter lagers. Old home movies and my best friends. Secrets in the college town and history's tragic repetition.

This side of Saturday night
Used to make all the waves
I don't recognize any of our old friends
The boys grew their hair long and the girls chopped theirs off

This side of Saturday night
Used to be lighting strikes in your car
We'd drink *** in the bedroom loft
But we've been excommunicated from the mountain
(Perhaps its for the best)

You should know
She's not sad because she misses us
She's sad because her whole doll collection ran away

Now she's alone in the toy room
With nothing but a tiny plastic soldier wearing mascara

It's true, it was the age of kissing wrists and secret smoke
It's true, that was a long time ago
I'm holding on to memories that barely exist

This side of Saturday night
Used to make so much more
But not even close anymore
Now we're all brokenhearted and sore

Christmas holds too many ghosts
String lights have seen too much tragedy
Pine trees were once adorned in our empty bottles
Now the old pine has fallen dead

Forget You is just ******* spelled backwards
Or looking deep into a mirror

I stood by and watched
As your birthday bled out in the kitchen sink

I've only ever cauterized my own wounds -
Pavement burns and those of the like

I think that maybe I know almost everything
I know that trees are apology letters from the Holy Ghost, mangled in the travel from afterlife to certain death
And I know that January is two boys sleeping in the dark
But I don't know what the sidewalks are and my mind keeps getting stuck in their cracked cement

Cleveland was a corpse
After the river had burned

If I can find a way
To claw deep enough into my mind
I swear I can reverse time
Go back to a picture
Of a curly haired boy in forest green
Before we knew what growing up would be
We could hate our parents' choices under string light ribbon trees
Share secrets in smokey backyard plywood sheds
Drive home and feel the sky pierce through our chests and
Maybe I could even draw your neck on my arm
With all the shadows that used to hit it in the concert hall
Maybe if we time things perfectly -
Go back to the high school parking lot, football field, basement
Things would be exactly as they were
I don't want to forget what you looked like when maybe you loved me
Everything is your memory -
Plaid shirts and yarn wrapped wrists
Christmas lights and ****** knuckles
***** and frosted windshields
Everything goes from yesterday to a year ago then two

I could say I'm still
Drinking ink on the kitchen floor
But that would be a lie
I've moved now
To the rafters of the theater (you know the one)

Perhaps the smell of hot pavement will always call to mind that one night after the concert
(you know, the one with the tambourine)
Perhaps the mildew scent of a basement boiler room will always be their first kiss
And perhaps the stale smell of fire lingering in long hair will always be the night they went on a bear hunt

We all have sacred ground -
The tree where they strung lights and spent one Fourth of July
(And three nights in May)
(And maybe even one in early October)
The theater lobby where the lights turn his hair a slightly blonder shade of brown
Maybe even the coral basement where four girls choked down their first bitter buckets of her father's old beer