All that's between us right now is a flight of stairs and
Some words we've been meaning to say, but have been
Putting off and saving for a day that might never come

I could run away or
Run into your arms or
I could just stay under the covers where I'm safe and warm and alone

You've stuck with me a couple years now,
but I've been stuck with myself much longer
I've tried my luck and I've tried to leave, but I've never tried hard enough

I haven't found a place for myself yet because they're all taken
And you haven't asked, but if you're wondering
I'm doing well out here, but I'd be better off somewhere else

The night sky is scarred with tattered strands of clouds
Eternal darkness interrupted only by muted moonlight
The wind whispers of winter, an inevitable return
To the beginning, the end

You were 2,937 miles away
white water rafting in a native equatorial 33 degree heat in a foreign land I've never even been close to or know much about,
(except of course the stereotypical facts that this country is overflowing with moose and is abundant in trees dripping with the most golden maple syrup leaves)
when it was 6pm here and 2pm there and ahead of your time I was trying to make sense of the mess of missing you in my head by embodying it in the mountain of clothes on my bedroom floor
accompanied by the local mainstream music radio station blasting from my neglected 3 year old speakers
(I couldn't find my aux cord at the time and desperate times call for desperate measures)
after all, background noise helps to block out the overhanging realisation that what I am physically doing is actually work, no matter how musically unappealing it may be.
Among the 4 chord formulaic chart tunes on repeat suddenly came an acoustic guitar and husky lyrics too personal to be relatable with an obliviousness to who the artist or what the song was and the fact that I didn't really care
but how all at once I froze in my 4 hours ahead future and my focus was replaced by the overwhelming wave of the feeling
of missing you.
Missing the one piece of my patchwork heart that stitched all the seams in the first place, and all that filled me in that moment was what writers and word enthusiasts would call Saudade; a deep emotional state of nostalgic or profound melancholic longing for an absent someone that one loves, often carrying a repressed knowledge that the person of longing might never return. "The Love That Remains" permeated my heart and soul and you were 2,937 miles too far away to put my mind at ease,
white water rafting beneath halcyon skies the same colour turquoise as the oceans separating us, and
I know how much you love flying and I never told you at the time,
you know I had to hide that inside I was dying
when that message came through about the engine subsiding,
my life and breath were in my mouth while your flight was taken off the runway at 1am Eastern Time,
2,937 miles away you were cornered in an airport terminal
(there were complications involving an escalator and your luggage)
and all I could do was read your ongoing commentary from my room through a 6 by 10 centimetre phone screen and be the reassuring soulmate I am but
Sweetheart I was scared shitless of the possibility that you might not come home because of a thunderstorm at 1am on the other side of the world that I wouldn't even get to be afraid of while you would have loved every second of it.
I'm still trying to stop being scared of thunderstorms. So that maybe someday I can sit with you and watch all the different bursts of beautiful and terrifying shapes the lightning makes
-without stopping all the blood rushing to your hand from how hard I am squeezing it.
But contrary to my subconscious paranoia
You came back safe,
with more freckles for me to fall in love with and the abrupt addition of "eh"'s trailing off the ends of your sentences
along with the ability to allow my worn-out heart to finally resume it's steady beat the moment your feet touched down and at least we were looking at the same expanse of sky again.

Although it might take a while in our time zone with our clocks caught up before we make our ends meet again,
I will allow myself to take refuge in that knowledge that we are walking on the same stretch of soil under the same moon and
the constellations of stars you find comfort in talking to when you can't sleep.
Only 93 miles away this time.

a bug flew into my windshield yesterday
and i wanted to scream
because it resembled you

but i see you everywhere
in the flowers in the trees in the breeze
in my dreams

all the tiny insects look like you

I miss the discoloured white walls
And the smell of cigarette smoke
And that wooden, black door
That can't be answered no more

I said I wouldn't write about you just yet
And I won't.

Another. A face, celebrate
Its the last night of your show
Like mint candies hung around my neck
I found a new appreciation for the greenery
Tripping acid will do that to you.

I see things in a way
That was there before
But even more imaginative, free
I'll never forget
The closing in of the darkness
And the way my body looked outside
My skull 3 times its size.

I'm tired
For once, I feel tired
I have grown restless
In this place that oppresses with its perfection
I'm so use to hitting the pavement
And so scared of what I must do
Just don't let me return
With a pink garter on
The final night I saw myself
And knew I'd gone too far
But it got your attention.

It got your attention
As you parade and hide from your innermost truth
I admitted today
I can no longer hide and settle
Wear my sleeveless green dress
As you oohed and oozed
Where do you go when all is lost?

A sense of lightness, release
I no longer bury myself in the ground
For what I cannot control
But I do wonder
Do I flicker through your mind, at times?

He said my name twice
The ex who left me for dead
Because he was too much of a mess
And I don't know what anything will look like
But I found an old ripped up note
Where I was reassuring myself of the love with another
Who is now married
And not to me.

And I thought the other day
Thank god,
He was always, really
Pretty mean
And abundantly controlling.

A key and mirror facing my chest
A picture I drew long ago
It looks like me now.

I should have written more
I should have outlined more
This this this this this this this this
I miss every bit of everything I don't have

You must be asleep.
Perhaps you will greet me in the morning

But for now
I just really need opportunities
So why wait.

There will be a digital trace

Of this in the morning,
And I will know
That I was alive

We don't drive nowhere without the radio on,
We are too naive to know better,
We are too crass to care,
We have been graves waiting for bodies to fill them, we have been half inscribed tombstones itching for an expiration date, but those days are in the rear view mirror, still just barely visible over the sticker that reads "What Fresh Hell", but we are lucky enough to have forgotten the way back, we have bled out every drop of retreat and we are going to drive all **** night regardless of whether or not we actually get anywhere, we are urgent, we are emergencies that cannot stop at red lights, we are a 911 call away, we are the angry heart of the river illuminated in burning flags and cigarettes and grand halos stretching the distance between bridges, we are Born to Run turned up loud enough to drown out alarm clocks, we are the ****** cataclysm that explodes into a new dawn, we are taking this one hour at a time, we are living like this until it's all ashes floating downstream, hit it again, one more time, in the dead of night, call me an ambulance, I'm not slowing down for anything

we never write about new beginnings
every piece is just getting more still
happiness is reached as a state of rest
it's all jean jackets and midnight rabbits
we're a generation of pictures of shoes
let's keep getting drunk
as an excuse to walk home hand in hand
let's just admit teenage love
might only exist in cars
let's think so long
we gather dust

i keep inviting you into my altered past
i keep inventing new religions
i keep forgetting that we're probably all living for a reason