I thought for a moment
about lying
telling them you're doing great,
about all your adventures
and dreams manifested.
Raising goats somewhere near bright water
in a quiet ordinariness
marred only by the occasional bite mark
on a perennial
grown too close to the fence line.

But I told the truth.
I have no idea
and would prefer it remain that way.

Let the day start quiet
in short morning stillness
hands grasping for one another
through the hanging scent
of unfolded laundry and varnish.

Run errands together
revel in mundanity’s sweetness.
Grocery runs,
helping choose a new end table,
taking inventory of the threads left suspending our weight
so what’s been haunting us in past lives
can’t quite reach our necks in this one.

Even in fluorescent silence,
the motel bulb tan of an elbow
gracing a shoulder while rolling
over to adjust the curtains
feels stoically safe as a death mask
cast in burnt plaster
and bone.

There’s a specific number
you’re worth to one another,
but it’s a sum
you’d rather not say.

There is no safe passage
through primitive worlds
something sacred inside you changes
the moment you realize other silhouettes
are crashing
detached and filthy
through the moonbeams
bursting indifferently
from high heavens

Suffering
the chronic kind
does not idle long
in it's codeine lurch.
It wages
sustained
low-level constant assault
with a mercilessness no other can hear
until the mind adapts
or hemorrhages entirely.

Bodies are temples we burn to the ground
wrists lashed
to time lapsed flowers
fingers still grasping
blankly for an out.
Claiming to
feel nothing except
the feeling
of nothing.
Saying that we don't, when
we do
rolling it between tongue and tooth
until it tastes almost true.

Wind flailing heavy
in the midday heat
shimmers like outstretched hands
lining immemorial hills
not seeing you through,
but cascading through tree limbs
as the mortars fall short,
greeted first with silence
and ringing
before the screaming begins.

I wonder still
if you remember me as I was.

So obsessed with fixing
amending
undoing
setting things right.
Never content repeating the moments
already achieved
because to change them
even in the slightest
would collapse like tobacco embers
in a thriftstore coffee mug.

An attic hiding
entire generations
of days never not
filled with ghosts
hanging dusty over
your sleeping head.
Specific
incidental
pain over
and over and
over

Sometimes I think of those days
and hope the sun
still pops out
wherever you are.

Dreams thrive fervently
in the middleground
between
raw gossamer shores and
sullen building
cramped days.
Hushed pleas of belonging
lingering in humid air
nourished yet disoriented
never quite calibrating
to fleeting happenstance
faltering gently across years.

Small mercies creasing
long hellos
short goodbyes
and bathwater moans.
Dice refusing to roll
twice by the time
minds can be made.

The quickening pulse
of a world ending
not just here
but everywhere.

I’ve been angry so
so long
despite the cost,
it’s familiar warm
consistency
keeps biting back
each time letting go
crosses my mind.

Maybe it’s a worse version of myself
grotesquely missed
in those mornings I wake
free from fear.
Secure knowing
somebody can still
my rattling body
when I'm too bleary eyed
to spend another moment in the carpool lane.

Miracles,
no matter how well laid
slough back
toward a haze more binding
than comfortable.

Just close the door
when there's nothing left to be.

By the time you receive this
we’ll be gone
several dozen times over.
Destroying more than just ourselves
warping the light
and air
with a single turn of the world.

My body is already breaking.
aching jaw leaking flame,
like an angel suddenly forced to live
the incredible loneliness
of being human.

An endless hallway
where nothing stares back,
save a whimpering rope
dangling from a support beam
burning boundless in the sun.

Gasp back awake
for even in your dreams
we all share a single name.