i remember once something like two years ago we were barely more than friendly acquaintances and i was a different person and you were just starting to become one

and i remember it was summer and everything should have been okay but i was ditching school having decided to be nothing that day

and i remember you asked how i was and in a moment of weakness or maybe strength i told you the truth that all i needed was physical comfort and a cigarette and i was tired of being alone, but i kept that last part to myself

and i remember you showed up not even an hour later with exactly what i needed despite never having asked that of you and we sat beside each other and though it was quiet i finally felt like something again and you smoked out my window for the first time and i took a picture of you without you knowing for the first time

i remember realizing i didn’t need to be alone

he was summer fire and hot flashes
and wondering wondering wondering
he was hesitation and ego inflation and
playing with matches

she is oxycontin and sleeping till three
a side thought lodged in the frontal lobe
less than real, more than a dream
she is just half of a need

he was internalized self-hatred
that was realized too late
he was affectation and frustration and
too much dead weight

she is not enough time
not close enough to feel yet
close enough to touch
she is some, but not quite enough

we've all been hit one too many times with information we couldn't process

and then three to eight days later you're sitting in class
or another insignificant coffee shop trying to calculate how many ways
you could die by fourpm when your clockwork mess of neuron pathways
finally catches up and then-

your hands are shaking and you can't tell if it's the day old coffee
or the information that has finally stuck long enough
for you to realize it for what it is
and the words that brought everything down around you
are rattling in your rotten skull making it pound
and you can't ignore it anymore (it's not the coffee)

bad news has a way of tearing down
every cleverly placed brick and marble wall
until your core is exposed and everything
you thought you knew so well means **** all
and there is never someone standing by, red alert, when it finally hits
so you're on your own kid

because not even mom realizes that your movements are stiff and your eyes are red
and not even mom realizes that you haven't slept in four days
and you've started wearing long sleeves again


the coffee is cold and you're placing bets
("my brother is missing")
on how many days it will take for your hands to shake

sometimes I wish I could read your thoughts,
but maybe that would be worse. because if I could reach into
your mind, I'd only search for the things I want to hear and end
up more hurt at what I didn't find.

it's been too many long months and longer nights and I
am tired of writing about you while making love to bottles
trying to forget the taste of your tears
the last time we kissed.

but I wouldn't dare compare your salt-stained cheeks to an
ocean because you are worth so much more
than overused metaphors.

I am tired, of trying to find rhymes to replace the words
you left in my mind.

and apparently writer's block only takes its breaks
while I've locked myself in the shower
because while these words finally come spilling from my brain
I am trying to scrub off what parts of you remain.

but. do I even want to? because every single time I see your smile
I am reminded that we lived, at least
for a while.

I am not sad anymore (maybe some nights I am)
maybe I'm okay with this, okay with having pieces of you
burned into my skin
because even though the fire we shared died,
the one you lit inside of me never did.

she's barely an inch taller - but still taller -
squinting at the horizon line and heaving tobacco smoke
through resin coated lungs that should belong to a
fourty three year old smoker, not an eighteen year old
graduate

she laughs the loudest when others cast glances
and hushed whispers
and never misses the chance to tell you
she couldn't possibly give less
of a ****

she likes convenience store mints;
the round white ones you'd find
at the bottom of grandma's purse that tasted like
dust and chemically sweetened perfume,
and home

she went to a school where "****"
was spat like poison at her feet
but knew exactly what to say when three girls
cornered her, knew exactly how to throw her
words like fists

she gets hives from cats and grass and
practically anything outside her door
so she spends most of her time inside,
only leaving to have another
cigarette

she listens to tool and radiohead
and smokes half a joint before bed to help her sleep
but she still doesn't; not for long
and she twitches as her brain drifts in and out of
consciousness

she will tell you if you will listen
accept her head space and back off
just enough for her to breathe
because god--she needs to breathe as much as she
possibly can

I do not claim to know her,
after no more than 42 days do I have any idea
why she will drink a bottle of gin like it's water
or why it takes intoxication to show any kind of
affection

but I know what it's like to wake up at 5am
and find her sitting on the floor beside your bed
and in silence watch the sun rise
before going back to sleep
together

and I know what it takes to make her laugh
to stimulate and stir whatever is left
of the emotion she spent years destroying
and how her mouth tastes like fire and loss
and hope

I do not claim to know a lot
but I think I know how to make this beautiful ghost
of a person happy

and that
is enough

they never tell you how it stays inside you

they tell you how it'll creep up and over you--
an enticing corruption--
and how it'll change how you see how you smell how you
feel
and how when you fall it'll catch you and hold you tender
for a while

they tell you how the sun will shine brighter
and the words will taste
sweeter
and how every morning songbird and ocean tide and sigh
will whisper their name
until your cursing sparrows and drowning in your own saltwater because
they told you how it would hurt

they tell you how it'll end because god it will end and
it'll end with you
counting down the infinite ways you believe you could have fixed it
but you couldn't have
and you will learn that

but god forbid they tell you how it will stay with you

because if they don't promise you I will--
that every new heart won't wipe the slate clean
and you will find yourself listening to that godforsaken song again
or driving down that
road
just for the sake of feeling like ****
and if you happen across another soul with the same cursed name you
will shudder--and for a moment
you're fourteen,seventeen,twenty,again

and you will hurt
and you will be okay

but it will stay with you, it will
each love carried in you like a dormant illness waiting for the trigger

January 17, 2016
10:28 AM

Sometimes it feels like I'm ready to say goodbye to you. Sometimes I feel strong and steady and my backbone is rigid and my eyes finally stay dry. But then I'll see your face again or feel your lips against my forehead and I'm reminded of all the things I shared with you, how much of me rested with you. I'll find myself replaying old memories of us sharing cigarette smoke and how you laughed and I'll feel my knees buckle. I told myself from the get go that this was not permanent, and I believed I was okay with that. I never once thought we would be eternal but I wont lie and say that the thought of a life without you in it doesn't make me tremble. These next few weeks, hardly even months, will feel like nothing but a time bomb ticking away the few moments I have left with you. I can feel my chest constricting with every numbered breath and I wonder how you feel. I wonder if this will hurt you at all. A part of me hopes you will be perfectly fine and that you never felt that strongly for me to begin with, a part of me that wants you to be happy and satisfied and would never want to see you hurt. But another piece of me wants you to feel enough of what I feel so that you will not so easily forget me. I want to have meant something to you. There must have been something in the two years of companionship that touched somewhere in you. I don't want to be a face without a name, I want to be the whisper you hear in your dreams. I don't want you to think about me months and months from now and feel bitterness, I just want you to remember me. Because god, I will remember you. You found some tenderness inside me that I didn't know existed. You helped me become. And I think I've realized that no matter how this ends, I will miss you, and I will always be grateful for you. Love is a silly, stupid thing, but I'm happy to have shared some small piece of it with you.

there’s not enough hours in the days,
in the weeks, in the months
and years

to properly explain how much love I have
for this **** **** world I’ve been dropped in

and through the seemingly endless cloud cover I have found
the shortest sliver of sunlight
to nurture in my cracked chest

I am warm