i took a polaroid photo to give to you but it came out blank and i feel like that’s us; a shot taken and still nothing.

Folded and unfolded,
Until the creases
Are old friends,
Lines faded,
To indecipherable smudges.
Rhymes familiar,
Sentences similar.

Line for line,
Word for word,
Name to name.

The weight of your memory
Sits in my back pocket
Like a signature hangs on
The end of a dotted line
With the scent of finality
Arranging it.

won’t you keep my photograph in the pocket of your ripped jeans, tucked in tight and close so you can always hold me?

A photograph
pries a velvet kaleidoscope
from living

like flesh parting bone
ripped and torn
by the ravenous jaws of a great lioness

it snaps a fluid stream
with no beginning
no end

it chops to a point
which cannot flutter
because it has no wings

it is only an end
less than ephemeral
meaningless

When I peer into those eyes, so full of life
I ask did you have a name, or is it long since lost.
Did your mother hold you and call you pet, or
Were you the forgotten one, left to fend?
Where you presented wooden soldiers, for
One remembered birthday long, long ago.
Do I see a soldier boy, fighting in a field?
That’s long, long forgotten in a distant land
When I look into those eyes, please remember
That I have forgotten you.

I always find myself thinking about life when I eat Thai food alone.
And I can't help but wonder why it's taking so long for one person (myself) to get their meal to-go.

The people at the table next to my seat are laughing at me.... And that's okay.
As they pretend to be engaged in a double date conversation I'm listening to the sounds of pianos and flutes play softly in the background.

I'm taken far away to the highest of clouds where life doesn't seem so bad.
Then in a flash I'm back on the ground running through the wild woods searching for my one true love.... But he's not real right now.

Black flashes over white and in an instant we are stuck in a photograph.
That's life...you said.
That's life... I whispered.

And in that moment that my food arrived and the memories of you and I fade... I realize....

That's just life.

The thing is, the town grew restless
living deep within the dustbowl,
so they placed mountains behind the hills
gave the general store a roof,
then each bar a row of stools
which will never sit empty.

We sewed eyes beside our buttons
as eager as our own
and asked eyes to reveal
the depth of our despair.

And because the present blurred our future
dusty hands met moonlit faces,
triggers received a finger;
their bodies sleek, shining handles.

Even what lay hidden from our vision
was radiated from their fires;
we made memories into bones,
photographs screaming out,
wet tongues lashing,
so we could walk into sanctuary.