Tearing down the house is a thing I do
without putting much thought into the action.
Every quirky story about how you weren't so bad, doing better now
It feels like lying, taking the soft, damp-rotted wood in my hands
breaking it apart, not into splinters but mulch
I keep expecting someone to say it is done with,
That all the substance is gone now
But nobody stops to bring attention to what I've been holding
My disingenuous tongue
My treacherous breath
It's a strange thing to be able to physically feel loss when you hug someone.
Now you are skin and bones, missing even more of your teeth
And fifty pounds of healthy days

Do you think the dead weep for themselves?
Do they mourn the living?
Do they cry for what we will face or for what they will never face?
The living mourn themselves.
I know this because I have been doing so for years,
Mourning both you and I
as if every night when the light puts up her hair in preparation to sleep
that we lay down and will sheets into suits, beds into coffins
Nestle ourselves into the soft sides of the moon
Fully expecting the day to pass us by like so many other things which quietly do the same.
And when the off-key voice of the sun causes us to crack open our eyes again in wonder of the new day,
In resignation, I cannot reconcile its face with what it was before.
The difference between you and the days though is that one of them
you will sleep, and sleep, and sleep and dream not at all
until your body belongs again to the earth and then recycled into something else
And I will still be here

I know you cannot last. This is a thing which must happen to things
I just don’t want whatever takes you to be your own fault
I am tired of mourning someone who is alive
Of speaking as if you are already a ghost

And the sky and the ocean meet like they are one thing,
Like they’re one whole thing!
Never having known a day of seperation or lonesomeness
Being always whole even on the worst of them
On the fog choked mornings and the cloud blanked afternoons
Where even at stark contrast they cannot bear to part
Even at the dusk hours, or maybe especially then
When the sun turns both to fire and the earth to void in comparison,
Still and shining for several golden moments,
And then every self into the same

How easy the train station becomes a second home
The ramp to the platform as grand an entryway as any
The boarding dock an open and endless hearth
And once this happens this meandering city
And let’s not kid ourselves, if you’ve ever been here you know
Escondido to Oceanside is all one place, it bleeds one house to the next
The separation is for bureaucracy's sake, convenience
But it never ceases from point A to B
It turns to yours all at once then.
Streets and side shops are just more rooms of delights for the guests to enjoy
Wonders to parse, the rich man has no clue what even all he owns anymore
Just that it is his

The shape that love makes is the space my arm conforms to after,
In their sleep, my lover rolls on top of it
It is the unbearable needle pinpricks as feeling leaves and as it comes back
And it is the leaden styrofoam weight it becomes during.
Love is the gentle nudge I give as a suggestion to an unconscious mind
To roll over please, please god roll over, Don’t wake up
I’m so sorry, but also, please, move, and
It is the quiet despair of resignation.
So instead of pushing away, sometimes I’ll move closer
Realize that this is honestly very funny
Hold them until the alarm rings
Or until one of us gets up to ***

In the morning my love wakes with a frown,
not out of unhappiness, but confusion
A reaction after jarring consciousness
The last dusting of golden love still lingers on their neck from two nights ago
Faded there from purple. We come together for a while,
peaceful, before deciding the sun is enough
And push each other away
Kick through blankets in an attempt to breach through into cool air
Break through the waterline of sleep and into wakefulness
Waves of an ocean all our own

My love does not like the ocean, doesn’t trust it
The sand is fine but it’s the water that scares them
The things which live underneath the waves and in the dark.
And they scare so easily, over movies and small noises
Over sickness and bills and the passing of time.
I never think about anything long enough to be scared
So I am always surprised when things happen
As if I am using my hands to create the corners to hide behind
I turn life into a series of unknown turns
Life to them must seem much like a beach
Completely open and skirting the edge of things we hope never to see

I have figured it out and I have a plan:
I will not **** myself before I see Nebraska.
I picked there because it is the last place
I could think of wanting to go
Flat nothingspace in the middle of America,
And this is how I’m gonna avoid my death
I will better my life, I will find traveling companions,
I will save up my money and It’s gonna take years to do so;
I will add years to my life
With how many places there are to see first.

I want to climb to the parthenon
I want to sip tea in Japan
I want to pick fruits and eat them at roadside stands across the county
Think of them always and never go there again even though I mean to.
My house will be filled with nothing but
kitschy travel mugs and tourist trap souvenirs
Stacks of postcards to my mother that I will
not have sent in the mail because postage is very expensive, you know.
So im just gonna have to come back home every time I want to send one
place each one in her hands Individually.
and give kiss her on the cheek
Describe them and read them aloud to her if she needs the help.
And they’ll say things like
“The food here reminded me of you”
Or “met a singer on the street today who sang that song you loved to sing when i was young”
Or “I'm thinking of you, of course. I’m being safe, of course”
Or “did you remember to take your medicine”
Or “I'll write you more soon”
And I'll never have the time to visit there at all.

"They of whom the world was not worthy
Wandered in deserts"
Because believing meant that they were standing up.
Standing alone.
Because those around them chose to close their ears
Favoring silence for truth

"if 15 million do how can it be wrong."
And they saw the flaw in that design
So they took it and thought on the ways
Counted them like sheep
how they could hide the lies.
So they favored comfort for truth

A happy lie for a sad reality
An easily cured, temporary illness
And when those who saw through spoke out
They were shot down, or cast away
Under the pretense of safety,
Of security.
Made to wander deserts
because they favored freedom
for lies.