a text message from a boy on a train heading away from the east coast

i saw the great lakes today
you should have come with me
seattle is beautiful
i know you've always wanted to get away

a phone call from a boy before he called his girlfriend and tried to die

i always thought it was fate to have met you
that i really did love you more than i had any right to
i'll miss you
no it's a goodnight not a goodbye

a run in with a boy at an apple orchard, there were scars on his throat

i'm sorry
how is she?
i really do miss you
good luck with everything

wake up and keep telling yourself that you’re over it
that it doesn’t matter if they hate the rain but moved to england
because that was almost a year ago and we’re okay now
they moved back home anyway

wake up and keep telling yourself that you’re over it
that it doesn’t matter if he doesn’t answer your messages
because it was your fault for ending it in the first place
you wanted him to be happy, remember that

wake up and keep telling yourself that you’re over it
that it doesn’t matter if there are scars on feet from false affection
because there’s a difference between love and ownership
you know better now

wake up and keep telling yourself that you’re over it
that it doesn’t matter if you fell too far, too fast and ran away
because you aren’t always going to be so scared
someday you will stand still without looking backward

some times the pain is exquisite -
beautiful and blinding ;
the kind of soreness that comes from hard work
and rough love
and aches good the next day.
some times the pain is harsh -
temperamental and overwhelming ;
the heat of bruised and broken skin
the kind that comes from a body trying too hard to heal.
some times the pain is indescribable -
everything and everywhere ;
numbing with seemingly no reason for appearance.
some times
the pain is just pain.

you took a strip of film out of your camera in broad daylight
and sighed so softly at the light corruption
you said it was to remind me
something ruined could still be beautiful

and i loved you so fiercely
in that moment, just for trying to apologize
that i accepted the gift instead of saying
(what i really wanted was for you to tell me)
i wasn't ruined in the first place

next time you say you can handle all of my crazy,
baby, make sure you have a vacuum

for all of the lazy, broken pieces of those same words said before,
that have been smashed and smeared into my **** carpet,
so you don’t cut your feet walking backwards out the front door.

next time you say you can handle all of my crazy,
maybe make sure you have a vacuum

because my hair sheds like it’s perpetually ridding me of thick coated winters,
and leaving behind a shrine to our time together like forget-me-nots
so you will find pieces of me everywhere -
not just in the carpet, the bed sheets, the backseats,
but on the radio:
if not because my voice is still etched into your mind during the static silence
then because i knew the words to every song like i wrote them all,
and i wrote a lot of them about you, or people like you:
the previous liars and triers and vacuums.

next time you say you can handle all of my crazy,
remember space is a vacuum

and how you also said we are two stars intertwined
because we are not celestial beings but soft bodies destined to die,
oxygen deprived, with ruptured lungs in ten seconds time.

most of the time i'm outside my body
looking for ways to climb back in
between the spaces of my ribs
where the metaphorical heart lives
and i can't see anything that isn't physical
only the tangible touch is lived

and then i come crashing back inside my body
white hot pain in a burnt fingertip that touches a hot stove lid,
an hour drive to a not-too-far away place, ocean waves
a clear night and too many stars to connect with naked eyes
two full lungs and an even, heady heart pace

the moment never fails to fade;
leave me looking to claw back out my body,
a feeling close to enraged, closer to bitter some days;
desperate to tear back my skin if it means escape
until i'm outside my body again
looking for ways to climb back in

It is not the end of the world.
You were not meant to be on that spaceship.
You were not meant to be there for the departure in the first place.
It would be too hard to watch him go, you had said.
He wouldn’t be able to go through with it if you were there, he had said.
You bid your farewells early, (yesterday) like you’d both agreed.
You already made your promises to keep an eye out for his mother, his sister, his nephew, the old high school volleyball team.
It should not matter that you didn’t see the physical vessel leave the planet.
You didn’t want to watch him go upward and onward to join the aliens just like he’d said he wanted (when you were five and bleary eyed, in the dim light of the television, a documentary about mars, when you both should have been sleeping).
You ran the whole way there, anyway.
You are late—you are always too late—but you can still see the trail of smoke, twisting up up up fading into the blue blue blue of the atmosphere as man made increments of time put distance between you.
The earth stays rightfully on it’s axis, spinning though you cannot feel it.
You tell yourself it is better this way.
You know it’s a lie.
You think you should have followed him, fear of the unknown be ******.
It is not the end of the world, oh, but (by all the stars in the universe) he was yours.