someone's in the next room over
having *** while we
are weeping
what a way to mark the occasion
the day my fingers found a wound
you let someone else doctor
it's upsetting see
the bible in drawer next to us
the way our hands still
fit together
like the torn halves
of a love letter
the way you got
all dressed up like the rain
and how we couldn't tell
the difference in the shower
it was the longest hour and a half
spent crying
the hot water wouldn't give up
so why should we
right?
even though it was scalding
neither of us touched the ****
we knew this was supposed to hurt
your hair
a black mess against my shoulder
my fingers
oil in the vinegar of your hands
our bodies
the great divide
all the sobbing
a river runs through it
without the courage
to carry or **** us
so we step out
and drip dry
down to a mute breakfast
composed of quiet
and last nights liquor
as we came back in
there were people in our room
at first i thought them detectives
dissecting things
to see who had died here
i had forgotten this
was a hotel
and they were only
cleaning up after us
i wanted to stop them
plead
that the sheets were still perfect
that if they clean the bathroom
no one will know
what happened here
someone has to remember
"please
i know
these cigarette burns
by name
i will bury the faucet
let me take the tub
i don't care how
if i have to
i will drag it home by hand"

"Unfortunately, in reality, it doesn't really matter how you feel on the inside; it's what you project outwardly that has meaning. No one can look inside you. They cannot see or hear what you do not divulge. You are entirely in control of the way people perceive you.

Speaking and giving off of yourself is the most powerful mechanism you have in your hands. You can get the things you want and control your life simply by adjusting what's on the edifice.

You can be a ****** up wreck on the inside, but as long as you do not let this out, as long as it is not perceivable in your character, no one can know.  

In fact, to the contrary, you can, despite these feelings, build an image of confidence and power. This is what others come to know, and this becomes the shared reality."

It wasn’t the time
To start dropping lines
About love and forever
So I hung “I love you”
In my closet
Next to the skeleton
Who’s been begging
To see the sunlight
Sometimes we let our hearts
Act as a vault instead of
A home
We lock things away
Trying to protect them and
Keep them safe
But ultimately
Everything dies
Emotions fade because
Even though we say “forever”
Forever has a way
Of changing people
Cursed be the man who isn’t
Changed by time and experience
So locked away in my heart
“I love you” began to decay
soon it’ll be another skeleton
I’m afraid will come tumbling out
So instead of saying anything
I’ll give you the combination to my vault
And hopefully you like what you find
Like maybe it reminds you of treasure
Something you will want to keep
Instead of selling it so you have enough change
To wash your ***** sheets

the soul wells with poetic thoughts
but the mind no longer knows poetic word
and the fingers no longer have poetic purpose
just a small figure in a towering chamber
where every footstep echoes for hours
so there is not a cough, not a whisper
and those who pass through would say
that no one lives there,
at least not any more

We're in a car going twenty too fast on the highway, and I don't know where we're headed.

Maybe the headlights will take us to a home where we've never lived or maybe somewhere where the flames aren't as shallow.

Rain has been beating the windows for at least four hours, and I can almost see lightning through all the cigarette smoke.

He says that he can see clearer than ever.

I swear ever since the radio lost signal, I've basically been able to hear the stardust in every shallow breath he takes. 

I can't believe all it took was a broken radio to see him for the kind of words he was meant to be.

The kind that rip apart a person's heart when they finally read them the way they were always meant to be read.

His name is just a noise, and his face is only skin;but the fault lines etched into his bones make me want to believe there are more earthquakes inside him than he thinks.

He makes me want to believe there's something more to life than his fingers wrapping themselves around mine as the car wraps itself around a tree.