This is a list of places I can find you, in case i ever forget my way back home:

Engraved on my headboard

A pill bottle

In my favorite underwear

In your car, with the radio so loud you can't hear me calling for you

Nesting in a whiskey bottle

My shampoo

In anyone else's eyes

My memory box

Overdosed in a hospital bed

Inside a dead pen

Running the stop sign around the corner from your house

College parties in another town

Backstage my favorite place

In your dad's face

On someone else's body
And always on my mind

your mouth on my neck
crooning your resignation
like a flooding dam

I am the tape recorder in your back pocket;

Press my buttons and i will repeat your promises back to you, in the hope that they aren't fully forgotten.

Do you remember the day I told you that your hair smells like home? I don't know what home is. I like to think it's you, but home isn't supposed to be so numb.

I want you to have a special place that you keep the happy memories of me, but i know they're far and few between. Happy memories and you are two things that don't subside together, but I'll always have the day i met your mother, or when you told me you would always be my secret place. You're not so much of a secret now that i write about you, or now that i use you as an excuse, even a weapon.

Sometimes i wonder where my sweet boy is, but i know he's long gone. You used to cry and tell me you wanted to get better, but now you drink all your better parts to sleep, just so they won't acknowledge that this is special to me.

My life is a series of impermanence and
delusions, and you are just another reminder of that. Things are different now, and they'll never get better— but i promise you i will always be there to coax your better parts back to me.