Most of our time is spent dead,
or not yet born.
An endless nothing heaped
atop more nothing.
Like being the first person
in the history of the world
on the timeline God abandoned.

Until one day you
feel someone approaching
glance a smile so small
it’s almost not there,
and the whole universe bulges and cracks.

A warm needle
plunged through an aging ghost,
shuddering breathless
in a crumbling foundation
of foxglove and mid-morning traffic.

When understanding the fact
there may no longer
be future days
it's the little things
which burn with the ugliest truth.

Like not knowing what cabinet
the olive oil
and peppercorns are in
or how much laundry detergent is left.

Gasping yourself awake
at the sound of barking dogs
still haunting edges of every doorjamb.

Each night
the sun goes down,
starts a fresh set of
coercion,
to return again
and let the birds scream
sharply, from spindly branches
at the squirrels somersaulting beneath.

No moment is free from little negotiations.
When you buy a house
or vehicle
it could be the one you die in.
So we agree
to avoid bridge abutments
and unmonitored open flame.
Dig a peace deep and
wide enough to maximize
the amount of breakfasts we see.

Once we understand people
can actually be gone,
wrap our head around the idea
there must always be
a never again, nothing
tastes that permanent
anymore.
A resting locust in the back of our minds.

We can see the ridges of handwriting
left on the backside of blank pages,
peer through the seams
until the ink
muddles
and merges.

Still, the moon hangs too splendid
to never see again.
Forcing a primal expertise at plain-sight
hiding. Burrowed in the desolation
pyre. Palms outstretched
as if cradling a child,
skin blistering in the shade.

Only a certain type of person
can not feel
the obligation of a previous impulse.
Empathy unable to project,
so the knowledge just cools and settles.
Tightly filed away
with strangers
and ghosts.

Instead,
those reassuring idiosyncrasies
come together,
fill out a single consciousness.
Little pieces of oneself
left behind in others.
Like being informed of fresh snow
only by it’s passing.

The most ordinary
can be given extraordinary weight
if you're willing to go there,
dissolve into another space with a stranger.

Saying I love you goodnight
as a farewell.
Exchanging fragments of a finite existence for
objects holding just a fraction of how long
someone spends in the back of our mind.
Using a thumb to draw shapes
on the hand we’re holding.

Picking up the phone when someone
who used to love you calls.
Neither one lying
next to a reason
not to answer.

Construction of everyday moments
as monuments
to a time more boreal.
A calmness you can’t help
but immediately notice.

Starting down a path with someone,
who will never tell you where to go.
It’s your choice to move forward
amongst the brittle nettles
and grey
cloaked and mysterious in the weight of birdsong
and footsteps.

Soon the time will get away
you will no longer recognize her
or yourself
or us or
them.

Some days all I do
is stand quiet in my kitchen,
staring blankly
while I burn.

Truth be told
I could stand to burn hot bright blue
sweat out some sickness,
lose just a little more of me.

Our hatchet got buried
in too shallow of ground
and I’ve worn out the linoleum pacing,
waiting for you to realize
there’s nothing new of me left to find.

But when you remember the shape of my name
nature courses wild
through your burnished sawtooth voice
and makes me forget the flames are real.

So I’ll keep singing you stories from my wire cotton throat,
about buried bouquets
sewn tight under the hot sun’s blade
praying for rain.
Hollow jaw beating time like a tambourine.

Until all that’s left
from the days I’ve scraped along
is a stubborn bridge back to past tense truths.
Hope it falls,
hope it can’t withstand a breeze.

Time still may come creeping
like a middle aged man
who can’t remember
the day his last son died,
but knows there’s not a single word
he didn’t mean to say.

Back when conversations
now short,
were once not quite,
so short.

‘‘I was always skating on wet glass.
Always had this anxiety.
Tension to never be able to relax,
Never knew from moment to
moment what was the rule.
I have been balancing
on a tightrope in this home.
Sure I wanted to take the reins.
End it myself.
But I couldn’t face the thought
that I would be spared,
but the little ones left behind.”

In intimate partner violence
the head,
neck,
and face.
Are the most commonly injured body parts
with most occurring
on the left side of the face
as 90% of the population
is right-handed.

Strangulation is of specific note,
as it induces behavioral and emotional reactions
which in turn facilitate coercive control
via fear, inability to effectively resist,
and prostrated trust.

Consciousness can be removed in seconds,
brain death administered in minutes.
Even weeks afterwards, the risk of
carotid artery dissection,
stroke,
and seizures
persists.

Even stable appearing survivors
free from obvious marks
are not free of morbidity
due to the abundance of internal injuries.

Oftentimes without
subsequent violence
an abusive partner can forever exert
and maintain control.

An unfiltered pretension and paranoia,
reeking like empty coffee pots
on hot burners,
smoldering in humiliation
of a night
that will never dawn.

Having never done it before
body and mind do not know
how to die gracefully.

A process marked by desperation and awkwardness.
Half conscious,
hobbled by oxygen depletion
and an sinister incredulity
that the end is actually happening.

If the dueling forces of unease
and temptation
in dust left unstirred could still save you,
I’d dredge you from the creeping harsh stillness.
Lay you out on a soft wooden surface
weathered to graceful perfection by time
and divine a map
between the concrete troubles
around us
and the turmoil within.

But bark don’t make a wound
or ease the path of our farewells,
for a choice
without the presence
of another
only exercises
the power of reclusivity.

Go ahead,
resolve our plot
pick anything.
Something more intimate
than a secret.
Unafraid
to be around
a little less often.

Anything other
than stepping over newspapers
and knocking on the door,
to no answer.

So I keep knocking,
while you keep
not
answering.