You would stand in front of the window, naked and raw,
Black tears still stained down your face.
The moon's light doesn't quite frame you the same as it used to.

You think of the days of being illuminated and bright.
Of sunlight dripping off of you as your hands touched
Someone new, someone deserving, someone else.

Nothing since has ever felt as real, as true.
This light has traveled from a quarter-million miles away
To accuse you, cold and pale, cloying to your skin.

You stand in front of the window,
A shaft of sunlight illuminating every stray, unkempt strand of hair.
Golden threads made more by one of God's rays.

From 92 million miles away, this light traveled
Just to shine through the window and frame you
Deific in the early morning.

I miss these mornings often. Reluctant in bed to move,
But my eyes wide open to see you there.
Louder and brighter than any church bell or stained glass.

It's solidified now.
At times, I'm rather certain I feel nothing at all.
But some days, maybe a few times a month, it's there.
That touch on my shoulder.

The phantom pain
of a severed hand
of a guiding God
that was never there to begin with.

I've found myself nostalgic for days where I was unraveling.
I want to fall apart again.
I miss the feeling of my back against the wall in the dark as I sobbed,
with no goal other than surviving through the night.

That's how every week started.
Just one more night.
     Just one more night.
          Just one more night.
               Just one more night.
                    Just one more night.
                         Just one more night.
                              Just one more night.
That's how every week started.

The fires are back, and I can smell the smoke
lingering over the 408 in the earliest AM hours.
Not quite late enough to be morning yet,
that mess of fog beneath the streetlamps blurring past.

Things have gone well enough that I'm terrified
of the fall of the next shoe,
of the rug being pulled out from under me again.
Things have gone well enough that I don't even miss you anymore.

There was a level of comfort in the despair of it all.
There was a simplicity in misery.
In all my days chasing the light at the end of the tunnel,
I never expected to find it so blinding.

The fires are back.

I think I'm finally doing better.

I had to step away from it all
so that I could fill my lungs once more.

I found myself spinning, plummeting,
desperate to catch my breath.

heaving,
     gasping,
          choking,

It's been more than a year...

Has it? Will I wake up in March?
Some days I feel like I might wake up in March.
Or October, even.
Sitting on my bed as the floor fell out from beneath me,
Confident that I was at the lowest I could be.

But this world chose to prove me wrong.
A year spent heaving, gasping, choking,
and my lungs are full again.

I can stand again.
I can sleep without fearing I'll wake up in March.
Or October, even.

I'm still breathless, but I've made it.

It's no wonder I fell for you.
I watch you light up another cigarette,
A pack drained by the late afternoon.
Your delicate lips wrapped around the filter;
Your rough kiss, your tongue in my mouth,

The taste of that twentieth cigarette
Hung close in your mouth.
Like tongue-******* the dirtiest ashtray
At the seediest dive bar
In the worst part of town.