it took a few months to recognize my first car.
i’d wander through parking lots reading license plates
as if they were names i should know, but forgot.
i just looked for the college parking pass to show it was my own.
i graduated two years ago.
i still looked for the parking pass last month.

it took a few months to recognize my keys.
they didn’t feel like mine for months;
i was used to touching doors with the reticence of a guest.
i couldn’t tell which unlocked what,
i just looked for the college logo lanyard.
the red fabric may have unlocked as much as the keys did.

it’s taking more than a few months to move on.
i’m still in therapy for the therapy i didn’t ask for
when people couldn’t tell the difference
between the will to live and the will to die.
the keys on my lanyard led to doors that weren’t mine anymore.
none of the other cars there had to leave.
the parking pass laughed as i drove away.

it took a few weeks for the airbags to stop ringing in my ears.
i didn’t hear the sirens until i saw the lights,
kind of like the way i didn’t feel myself being pushed
until the door was shut. i didn’t know what to reach for—
i would have held the steering wheel tighter.
i would have looked a little longer.
i would have watched what they did and not what they said.

it takes longer when i’m in the driver’s seat now.
words need more salt. i take roads more slowly.
the car that was my home through shut and locked doors
was my safety one last time.
i have new keys. i have new doors.
a home where i’m not a guest.
i walked from both crashes, but only one still haunts.
the parking pass was towed away, and i wish i had laughed.

Not even here is Knowledge a thing of intuition
But the procedure followed key by key
Into the river and out of the drain
Like a lamprey seething on a deer

Should we wake her,
Or do the defiler's whispers eat at your ear
Do the wallops within you complete something
You didn't know needed to be found

A golfer eats a melon and yearns for forgiveness
As she knows, it’s not the smaller
Unforgiving swallowtail pictured
Am I what you imagined

When you wished upon a star
Never to be seen again but on the pages of
Typing writers blocking my every thought
As mysteries unravel me

I'm enveloped into my mind
This world was never meant for my kind,
So I fade way into pure imagination
Were I'm met by fascination
And I am greeted by my own Validation
My realm is realities Evacuation
Here everything is strange
But I wouldn't exchange
This dream-like place
For the face
Of desperate society
That causes my anxiety
In conclusion
Stay in delusion.

We huddled at the edge and watched the wind
Blowing north the water flowing south
The willows swaying weeping for the dead
The sun forever going going down

This hideaway we haunted harbored hordes
Of ghosts of outcast lovers hanging on
To all the times they huddled there before
Their time was up and they were gone

The ghosts of outcast lovers would attend
Whenever outcast lovers came to burn
The fire of the force at their command
For they are cold cold and they yearn

It’s ages since we huddled in our lair
While other outcast lovers came and went
We’ll join the ghosts of outcast lovers there
When our time is up and we are spent

I walk the streets
Looking for friends
I walk the streets in
The middle of the night
As I am in search of
Of friend life forms
But only to
Be met with hate
Only to be ridiculed
Only to be
Forced to fit in