Hints of maple kiss each of
your highlander grog fingertips.
The smell of her shampoo
pierces & permeates throughout
your living room, lingering still
to this day, on your pillow.

You told her you'd make a perfume
that smells like the car heater on
long drives home for Christmas.

Aromas of her laundry detergent
still live in your spine
like LSD.
When you turn your neck a
certain way you fall back
into trances of her & 1997.

Vick's Vaper Rub, NyQuil
Cough Syrup breath, with
a 104 degree fever. She
sobbed when her last
sea monkey died

You called her cartographer.
Intricate trails of herself connecting
each board of your apartment floor.
Charted long ago when her
candle still burned scents of warmth.
The art of burning,
a front the fire place of
maple logs where you told her
to "Let go."

I call you
          Cartographer.

Farm lines graph and chart
     Geometry class.
          11th grade.

Walls are made from
   Far more than
          Brick and mortar.

You planted rows.
      Of oak and willow.
          Growing.

                   Growing.
  
                                Growing.

Up and apart, your land
     And mine.

In time.
          Foreign boarders.

i take a step back into myself  as the last golden brown

leaf crumbles into dust upon the delicate caress

of your callused, cracked fingertips.


you will find me once again, breathing down

your neck and into your ear, creating ripples

of chills that freeze down each vertebrae of your spine.


adaption is a process that you can never seem to catch

when the cool spring breezes that once warmed your smile

have given way to the morning dew frozen now into

frost.

We all sat and pondered over the strange
phenomena of the world we live in,
like the fact that the moon sleeps upon
the surface of the earth each night,
but never returns to the same dwelling twice.

We asked the stars why they continue
to shine, even years after they've died,
and we wait in silence for their coveted
response, only to be let down once again.

What is a conversation without listening,
but waiting in line for your time to talk,
only to an audience involved in their next
comment. Leaving messages.

You only call me when it's raining out.
And I only answer when it's 2am.
And it's all good and fine in day dreams,
because we know the right things to say
and the right ways to respond, when
it's all in our heads.

But that's not how the world works,
so we stub on tongues on thoughtless
comments, as we fill the voids around us
with butchered "I love yous" and cold nights
back to back.

a heart that doesn't hurt over the loneliness
or the absence of others.
there was never anyone to begin with,
now was there?
so you use the brain, not yours,
that you've brutally stitched
across the once shining face of the heart,
so that it can remind itself that loneliness
isn't rational anymore.

there is nobody here but me.
there is nobody here but me.

I will, someday, be the first in line to the opening of your estate sale.
I will buy all of your furniture to keep this part of you alive.
We keep remnants and pieces, as we scatter  memories like your charred remains across a place you once knew.

I want to love the carousel figurine
you forgot you once owned and sing the sweet melodies of the music box you once fell asleep too each night.
For the depth of something once loved and now lost, is impenetrable to pain.

As all things are made, and all things are to be loved and lost or forgotten.
I want to love all the things once loved by others.