Every person
even if only once,
should take a moment
to lay out every
memory they’ve ever accrued,
each thing they’ve ever known
on the bare floor of a storage room
and bask a few moments
in their snap jazz hum.

Hot tea summer walks,
waterfalls to swim below,
singing to pets
in a window pane flat voice,
and home cooked meals
beneath dusted desert moons.

Mark each and every one
with a fresh scrawl
on a blank surface.
Capture their energy
just before it evaporates
from our plane.
In this way you can build anew with masonry
no longer hewn from pain,
exchanging old omens
for uneasy knock-kneed hope.

From this moment onward,
your world will no longer have space
for anything
less than a miracle,
no matter how small.
Moments so bereft of logic
that no other explanation is left
beyond them being
inherently
magic.

Focus so ferociously on the color of the leaves
each spring
and the wet uneven bumps in the corner of
your dog’s crescent nostrils
that you lose track
of all the reasons you never liked to spend time
at home in the first place.

Lose sleep if you must.
Stare at a person
in raw barren awe
at the fact any universe,
nonetheless our
universe,
could ever
create them.

Craft
hone
divine
a shred of hope
on which to cling
until there are no stars left above.
Backfilling gaps left by grey days
with good intentions
and proving to your corner of existence
that forever
can
and will never
fall silent.

Assure people they aren’t alone
and are deserving
of being loved
harder than they know how to accept,
until gravity
seems to shift,
grant them freedom in flight
to soar backwards through
all their dark winters
and bring back something sacred,
flickering in folded beauty
like glass taffy
drawn from moving water.

I cradled you in my arms
as you wept
Not just for your loss
but for the all encompassing miasma of it all.
There was nothing to listen to
between clipped
wet
gasps.
So I felt it all,
absorbed as best I could
to temper the weight on your tiny
bowed shoulders
while the dogs paced confused circles
unsure how to best offer support.
Tried to provide condolences
for which past, present,
future you
had so desperately yearned.

Maybe you were doing the same.
Processing all the tears I was never allowed,
never knew how to purge.
Pulling the screams stuck inside me
out with hands so small
I was always amazed at how
they could ever hold
so much.

Perhaps we've always been right there
since time's beginning
and will remain so
at the end
wrapped tight in thick hair
and saline
unsure of the next epoch's dawning.

It's summertime down here,
wind rippling through livestock
and laundry hung air.
Though the evenings have been
particularly heavy
with flash flooding
this past week or so.

Each morning I rise earlier and
earlier. Mending fallen fenceline
and digging drainage for the chicken coops
until the horizon light inevitably fades
to a dusted nothingness.
Without street lamps
anything past dusk is too rigidly dark
for much else beyond the campfire's edge.

This is likely the most at home
I’ll feel anywhere
since I gave up
pretending you're ok.

So I spend the evenings listening
to the frogs dancing
in the creosote scented rain,
hoping you'll find a way
to get ahold of me
if you change your mind
about me
letting go
of you.

Statistically speaking,
most of us don’t get to say goodbye.
In either direction.
So as a mitigating factor we sacrifice
experience, push away
maintain
an odd pathology
of loneliness.

Or we humanize things
as a coping mechanism for The End.
You’ll tell yourself with full certainty
how much your cat must miss you,
in order to avoid
the primal,
animalistic understanding
that we will all one day
go suddenly
and without warning.

Along the way
a few things
will slip into your consciousness.
Much like how your uncle brought back
shivers from the war,
but left the rest
at the Front.

You'll visit the same smoke shop
every other day.
greet the same counter girl,
joke how the energy drinks you buy
will do more damage to your body
than anything else in the store.
Notice her new piercings
and tattooed freckles,
walk out promising you’ll see them tomorrow with smirk.
Then one day you'll move away
and never think to say farewell.

Or find the shop closed up
after spending a week out of town.
Nothing left save for a few garbage cans
and empty boxes
on the other side of the open sign.

The more you look at them,
the more they start taking on
a human form, an identity
like they’d been
kicked shoved punched
in the gut
cast aside until a city worker calls to have them disposed of
by the department
who handles such things.

People,
they’re made up of all the things they’ve done.
Like an early love letter resurfaced
during an ugly custody battle.
The only true takeaway
is how much has been lost.

What we refer to as present
exists only in the context of futures
which never arrived.
Often containing just enough time
for a single dream.
Not the kind where we learn a single thing
approaching profundity, but the kind spent
sweating, waiting
for the sun to tell us it’s finally over.

Lives are only ever lived parallel.
Adjacent neighbors in the same drafty apartment. Walls thin
enough to hear someone hitting their children, but without
the clarity to sort out
which door they’re cowering behind.
So we wait it out, and apologize
to a tiny corpse
until nothing is left but bone.

In my spine I can feel the season
about to change.
We should step outside and look at the sidewalk flowers
while we still can.

I wish you wouldn’t picture me so cruelly.
Or at least do so quietly,
if you must.
Pull close the curtains
when using my image to self-flagellate,
feign disposability,
fester contempt,
and recoil at every name
I never once thought to call you.

Words miles
from loving, words
not truly about me.
Never tragic
poignant,
or even any of my business.
Rotating quietly amongst the broken dishes
slammed doors
and cracked disposable razors
growing in every doorframe.

Every action leading to those moments;
specific
incidental
and unique
could never quite be traced back to conception
for the weathervane has turned
and cannot be undone.

In so many words
I’m still thinking
softly of you
and know better
than to ask why.
But right now,
my hands don’t feel
any less empty
in the morning quiet and
I wish I could be there with you
right now
to give you one more solid kiss
before I can’t anymore.

After the storm
I found a mummified bird
stuck deep in a fallen nest,
a flare of color punching through layers of grey.
His fight had been long done.
Lost a thousand years ago,
laid to rest right here
since time’s beginning.

His future, as with all others
teaches you to be alone
The present to be afraid and cold.
At no point will there be an option for after-the-war.
No serotonin jackpot
lying in secret like an amputated limb in the sand.

Only hour upon hour
of conversations
that feel like silence
stumbling over one another
to cover the chasm remaining
from the beautiful realization
you’ll never escape such a boundlessly
ugly place.

But you,
you looked like you came out of the sun.
All I could see was your silhouette
staring right into me
without squinting.
Scratched skin warm to the touch.
A reflexive half-remembered sentence
providing respite
amidst a world
softening to vapor.

Spinning
slowly
tussled and wild
like black yarn
in absolute silence.
Four simple words
proving I wasn't insane.
I can see it.