I spend nearly every waking moment
Thinking how you would find that thing funny
Or that thing sweet
Or that thing interesting.

Bathing in the sun
Soaking it's nutrients

This blade so sharp
Rub to fast
and you might get cut

But it shines so green
It offers shelter

I trust my food
to keep me safe

So mighty leaf!
Hide me away!

The rails scream in the darkness
Sparking, lambent bulbs trace starlight behind tinted glass
No words, just motionless exhibition of man
Child
The shrill yapping of a terrified pup
Ears plugged from the disastrous din of metal rubbing against itself

The train flies through an evacuated tube pressed beneath the innumerable water column
And it is deafening.

Behind us the gentle shipyards, ahead the recipient city
Waiting to drink up our wallets and time with her promiscuous streets
As she bends her towering legs to the ironically Chinese
Barge
Blowing its baritone warning flutes
As it tugs itself upon her Bays.

I am reading the book, seeing the Brothers through the din, in between the two cities
The two unhappinesses
and the creatures they identify with

It is a giant artifact,
the tube
It protrudes through
The ships
She sunk and constructed
Market, Mission, Pier, a swamp of concrete
Over the dried clump of trees
A thousand bits of Theseus
And the abandoned bones of thirsting men
Running east, towards Pittsburg
Richmond
Warm Springs
The line is soft between these rusting zones
And the gold
Forgotten for silicone

I am reading a book
About brothers and the curse of stone
Sharing stares with dirogenous hobos
And girl's pupils
feasting on bodies hidden behind periodicals

The rails scream in protest
The railcars are turning up and out
Towards the end of the darkness
And the start of the largeness

The city waits to list her failures to me
To cry herself to sleep with raindrops of fog
And rasping breaths of breeze.

I talked to them yesterday,
I told them my feelings, giving my brightest smile,
They gave me one too, but one of pity,
I'm not the one they want.

I was happy yesterday,
They said yes to my feelings,
smiling at the possibilities,
It only lasted two hours before regret,
The 'almost' coming to an end.

I was messaged last evening,
A paragraph on my social media,
I thought it was to talk about the day,
But it wasn't in the way I expected.

They went back on their words,
Told me sorry they don't have the time,
I said I was relieved and that "I'll be fine!"
But all I wanted to do was scream for the 'almost'.

I almost had it,
The feeling of being enough to someone,
I wanted to feel that about myself,
But I wanted help doing so,
I cannot blame them for not feeling for me,
It's their feelings not mine,
But I wish they never thought me fragile,
As it exposes what I've hidden in time.

I will forget them inevitably,
After all I always do,
Suppressing feelings and memories,
But I can't help but think of almost,
And the 'almost' that was almost there.

And here I am in my bed,
Still waiting for that almost to be had.

I’ll erase you
“we”
weren’t carved in stone.
Life is what you make it,
but you go where the winds blown.
What you sold was *******.
I was ripped off,
your love was counterfeit.
“Us”
just lost its appeal,
so I had to split.