We live gas station to gas station. Motel to motel. Roleplaying different stories.  Living out the bohemian fantasies of a teenage reverie. So when we check out the next morning all these little lives are left behind to exist in the folds where reality meets lazy Sunny D daydreams. And when we are old and grey and return one day to these places in holy reminiscence, our nerves will be pricked with a kaleidoscope of memory jolting sensations. I’ll turn to you and say, “Don’t you remember, my dear?” The honeydew perfume on my wrist as you kissed me up and down like a cartoon in the kitchen of the Sandman Motel? Or the feel of the unpolished, terrazzo floor in the Sunny Moon dining room with my right hand in yours and the other clutching a stolen bottle of my Father’s Aberlour? I’ll remember the times when I didn’t mind the 7/11 taquitos and you didn’t mind getting up early to watch the “Hot Donut’s” sign light in the the Krispy Kreme’s front window. Fresh baked pastries and gasoline and turquoise curtains from the seventies blowing in the hot summer seabreeze. Getting lost in milky sheets. We were a sitcom. We were romance. We were tragedy a la mode with guitar strings built out of rawhide and teeth made of ***** pearls tangled in conspiracy. These are the things I’ll smell, I’ll see, and I will remember when it was just you and me, pretty baby. Just you and me and the ******* Dream, traveling from sea to shining sea, living cheap and easy and utterly free.

the sky slides like a napkin falling from the dinner table
slanting like a wayward line that you drew with a shaky hand
the pills kiss you deeply and suddenly the double doors the color of luminescent moss turn into the double dutch jump ropes that whip your heels if you aren't careful but you're always too careful and you jump with the intention of never feeling the sole of your foot smacking the pavement but then the sound hits and your eyes open
your friend next door has greasy bangs and a mole that covers the top of her cheek and you're always catching yourself staring at it too long and you have to stare at the stains on the hallway carpet instead
but if you let yourself they all become old blood stains
there's a little baby in her home
a baby that has lungs like tattered tissue paper
a heart like a deflated balloon that hiccups too much
but the mother cradles it like perfection, like it can all be helped with enough arms and bottles of medicine each individually labeled with his name
her eyes are tired around the corners but you don't understand why and your brow sweats every time you think to look at him and you feel clammy around the edges
there's a night when you're woken up to screaming and ambulance siren lights
the dizzying red and white make their way into your veins and stay tucked in for years in a different city you can still taste the smell of antiseptic
when you come out to greet her days later there's no baby anymore and there's a suffocating silence
weeks later there's a small tattoo on your friends mothers' chest with his name on it
sloppily inked and looking permanently temperamental and you understand it as a kind of reminder or shrine or apology
you wonder if there's a funeral
you ask your father if babies go to hell
the television is talking about the beneficial antioxidants of wine
as he drink his coffee looking at the morning newspaper and never replies
the sirens can be heard in the distance and the morning feels like closure

The sounds of the city
Intertwine
Like the strands of a rope
I’m hanging myself with it
A new drum
Fresh out of its packaging
And I’m loud
Banging on it
The train howls
The cars roar
What an unusual jungle
Where’s my rope
I’m swinging on it

Isn’t it easier to glue your skin to the pavement-
Than to meet my eyes?
Oh, to live on this warm pavement!
To burn your skin
This desire feels like creeping heat
Don’t move a muscle!
You’re carved from stone

Isn’t it easier to keep the fireworks inside you-
Than dare open that cage?
That wretched cage!
Lest they ignite
The loudest sound you’ve ever heard
The brightest moment!
Beautiful and gone