The way you guide
The frenzied wanderings
Of my heart

Will surely make me
The next great
American poet

Walk to the Spotted Dog for salmon
Mexican wedding reception at the taco truck
                       Que Bonita!

From the eleventh floor
the world looks small
and possible

The cars
     black and white
     parked perpendicular
          to the curb
     parallel
          to each other
are keys
     ebony and ivory
    
I reach out
through the window
and play the street like a piano

In the eyes of another, I find the light I once lost
While searching for any trace of the same brightness in yours.

You are my world, but I am not matched to be yours.
I will embrace you in my memory until the end of time,
But I now must explore a new world, a new landscape.

A world that revolves around the sun,
Not a world that has been plunged into unmapped shade.

You will be saved by another explorer,
One that understands your beauty,
For I am nothing in comparison to your depths of intimacy.

I feel your presence shift past me.

To you, I am simply a memory.
A memory that has been tarnished throughout time.
An enemy perhaps.

To me, you are a ghost.
Stuck in time, without the knowledge of this collective reality.
Stuck in a cycle of decline and reassign.

You stand in limbo, observing your own mistakes.
But in your created reality, there are no such mistakes...

A ghost broken down by their choice of travel,
But blames the damage on the road itself.

You can only twist a story so far before the pages tear and split.

A shower does not melt away my stress,
it is my mask of fake joy
that I wear throughout the day
travelling down the drainpipes instead.

With the streaming water falling upon me,
my tears are not lonely—
but without the warm embrace of this water,
I do not feel real.