I’ve never been close
To anyone I’ve ever loved;
Always they are miles away
Geographically
Or miles from my heart.
They may have loved me
One point long since passed,
But cradling in my hands,
Their face before kissing
Is no longer allowed.

I miss the stonehenge bridges
We built that I crossed;
I miss the way
Niagara phased me
Not so as your eyes did
Lying beneath a sunsetting sky.
But just because I might have
Felt your lips brush against mine
Doesn’t mean we were truly close.

And just because I've seen pictures
Doesn't mean I’ve really seen anything.
Because a picture
Is nothing compared to seeing
Not through the eye of a camera,
But with your own.
Closeness is defined
By the hearts willingness
To be let seen, and not confined
To the depths.

And no heart
Has been so willing to be held
As I have made mine,
And I wonder
If there ever will
Be such one to find.
And I can't help but feel
As though the vessel
Beneath my chest
That beats only for so much longer,
Was misdesigned.

Maybe we won’t last forever,
But we wouldn’t know unless we tried.
Forever’s out of reach anyways,
‘Cause eventually somebody dies.

We know that our road is finite,
Everybody else’s is too,
But just because it’s not forever,
Doesn’t take away the value of every step with you.

In fact,

Doesn’t it make it all the more valuable?
I think it’s beautiful to have the gift of time,
And to give it to somebody special.
It’s the rarest treasure, and I want to give you mine.

And for the record,

I would never be upset,
Even if you decided to walk away;
I know the worth of memories,
It’s how dead people live, as long as they stay.

Just because one of us got burned
Or burned out, doesn’t change;
Every good time still happened,
And I will look back on them the same.

So in the end,

Maybe it won’t be everything,

But it will be something,

That if you mean it,

Will mean everything to me.

Your hair gleams a different shade
In the sunlight than I've ever seen;
It stuns me at my core
To where I am lost for words,
Until I’m able to find my resolve again,
And pretend that the stars strike me more.

Your brown eyes seem to pierce my soul,
Even from five thousand miles away.
I couldn’t possibly lie to you.
It takes my breath from my lungs,
And the color changes in my face.

Not enough for anyone to see,
Except your windows
That see right through me,
And I realize only now
That your blinds are closed.

I wonder what you are afraid of,
Me or society?
But still you peek through,
Eyes on me,
And mine on you.

But now I know why
You never let me in:
You fear yourself,
Not those who wave at you
From the streetlights smiling with sin.

Built up to be broken
Is what they taught,
And the thought
That nobody will stay
Is hidden behind the blinds.

If you let me in,
Maybe I could show you
How just a hug
Can change your mind,
But you promised me.

“I am nothing,”
Is what you said
And for you to be nothing
Would make nothing, to me,
Worth everything.

And I can't help
These twitches in my chin
And my hands holding either side
As my tears penetrate through
These once-strong hands.

I couldn’t save you
From the sorrow you’ve
Weathered behind your blinds
Closing off your soul
And I am left shaking…

I am defeated, as life defeated you.
I am breaking, as life broke you.
I am gasping for air, as you breathe no more.
I am alone with your ghost,
That will haunt me until I finally
Decide to knock on your door.

And I wonder how long it’ll take me.

Futility
Trying to take back a single grain of sand
From the bottom of the hourglass
Is an exercise in futility.

But now that the falling sands
Have been in my face,
I cannot forget the sound of it collecting
And the other sounds that accompany
My slow progression towards erasure.

What am I to do then?
If fighting is a losing battle
And giving up is a waste of precious time?
How can I live? What does living mean?

I know that living is not:
wake up, work, sleep, repeat;
That’s the purpose of robots,
Of cold metal, without life,
Never working for themselves.

So I’ll live for myself,
Decide my own purpose,
And inspire others with the lust for life
That I strive to cultivate.

I will do more than exist
Because living is not simply
Not dying.

Be good to each other
And live each day of your life
So that when your last grain of sand falls,
You’ll have lived a life worth missing.

A day has already passed.
The once slow, soft
Rhythmic beating
Unnoticed,
Morphs into the only audible entity
Existing in this empty room.

And it only seems
To become more profound
The more I let it in--
The more I let it take over.

Its consuming my mind,
This thought of nonexistence
And now its 6 in the afternoon
Of the second day
And the sun sets soon.

I fear
The oncoming onslaught.
An answer to a question I had before
Has answered that my time is limited.

The sky burns purple
From the atmosphere
Affecting the sunlight
Before fading into black and white.

Will i fade to monochrome
Along with the colors
Of the sky?
Or will I be abraised
Beyond recognition,
Cast from the last memory?

I exist now
With questions
Emerging from the septic
Tank I buried long ago
Knowing no one
Can save me.

My volition
Was revoked
When I accepted numbness.
And all the fear
Is let loose at the thought
Of my life
Ending meaningless.

Fireworks explode in the distance
Cheers and toasts
Shared with friends, families, and strangers.
We laugh and sing
To celebrate the coming of a new year.
But how many of us are celebrating
For our last time?
How many will fall
Before the ball drops
In Times Square again?
What would change
If you knew you wouldn’t see it?

We live our lives
With a pretense
That death is far
From sewing us into the fabric of time,
But what if that final moment
Comes sooner than expected?
And what changes to your life
Would you make
To not allow yourself to fall
Into the mundaneness
Of everyday life
That you take for granted?

I guess there’s never a right time;
Maybe it’s always too soon.
Can we ever love life enough?--
All I know is that we can try.
After catching a glimpse of the sand falling
Of our hourglass’s bottom half growing fuller
We can only run from death so long,
So I’d rather spend my time
Making the world know,
Letting you know,
I existed,
And I cherished the time I had.

So will you remember that we existed,
And walk this path alongside,
Or will we be lost to the shoreline
For the waves to gather
Grains of sand
From our broken hourglass
To be lost in the crowd
Of sands of ancestors,
Pulled into oblivion
Without a wave of goodbye?

I wake up and you are still here.
You, of course, being something I can't touch,
a feeling, maybe. A high school crush on forever.
You, of course, are not really a you, but an us,
something I can't touch; a promise
to someone, of something. What it is about
I can't remember. What it is all about I can never
remember.

You are filled with every good day I've ever had
and every good day I never will. Your body bursts
with all the things I didn't get to do
because I was lying in bed, or crying in the shower,
or scared of what strangers would think of me.
When you smile, your teeth bare courage, click-clacking
with the memories of speeding down the highway and turning down
an invitation to a very, very quiet concert.

I can't tear myself into two neat pieces to hate and love you all the same,
I want to pick the meat off the bones and take all the parts I'm grateful for,
leaving you a skeleton carcass that gloats about everything that passed me by.
You, though, are not a meal and I am not a vulture.
I cannot separate the memento from the mori
which, still, leaves me with two choices.
Pretend none of it ever happened,
or accept the whole impossibly beautiful, unimaginably ugly thing.