I swore I saw you 7 times this morning
Through sleep coated eyes
a fogged up car window
and the freckled nape of a neck that did not belong to me
But all they were were fragments
Sharp shards of fading memories and lingering lips and the way the 6am sunlight flooded your dull carpet
when we were both clumsily drunk in a golden morning haze of slurred "I love you"'s and the myriad of microscopic beauty neither of us could drink enough of
Your skin was all my mouth wanted
Your hands were all my body needed
And now the seasonal cold sends the same shivers down my spine and the familiar flush to my cheeks as your fingertips did when all I could think was how ******* far I had fallen
For you
I could never get closer
never close enough to you
Skin to skin
Heart to heart
And still not enough to satisfy the aching lust coating my lips or the stinging of tears in my eyes when I knew this was real
You are real
You are mine
But those chapped lips are not yours and those eyes are not the same shade of sad pale blue and you would never walk with your hands dead and lifeless and limp by your sides the way they do
Flashes of days long since passed and desperate leaks through a closed lid full to the brim with memories
Reminders that you are not here with me
you are not vacantly bumping into me on your way to somewhere significant with the illusion of importance
you are not cautiously hunched over a rigid steering wheel
knuckles white with the grip of your rapidly aging fingers focused on exactly how long you have left to live and the distance it would take for it all to just end
Each one is just an outline
of a past too surreal to have happened
To someone like me
With someone like you

It's all slipping through me again
Remind me why I exist
We trawl the seas like fingers
Remind me
God pushed his hands through the earth
And shaped us out of blood
I saw it
I saw it all
We turned the sea
And it pattered for half a century
Crackling like pig flesh
Did we burn it?
Peel it back
Come on, peel it back!
What are you, scared?
What are you?

I shed everything but
the pencil skirt and stockings.
I suffocate and sundry and
drift into my boy's case of
suede leather, where he
trusts me to miscalculate
his competence and its
Saturday, the morning,
and he says, I love you
in the morning, Sarah.
There's stroke and nip,
at every turn of the trail
an adoration for what
he calls my soul, and
he asks for the routine
obliteration. A violence
always whispered.
I'm velvet everything.
Velvet tongued.
Velvet *****'d.
Each portal and contour
a soft place for him to
land, to dispose of his
fear of death,
but what am I supposed to
do with it, the fear of death?
But this is my burden
with the light skipping
through the blinds. Simpler
times, there were, I think.
And a last name he means
to hang on me, always soon
and very soon. Dishes in the sink.
Eternal moonbeams and sun rays.
This is it, I'm afraid.

The slow fade of days into months and years
faces kind, familiar, stranger becoming friend
deep silence of eye meeting eye, love, love
love fires up out the seeming nothingness
nothingness of a life so short it seems so
so real to just love, to love, and die to love
into the slow fade of the forgetting of self
a freedom comes, a freedom stays, eternal.

hear    me now as i say
  pilgrimed is the image
  unloosen
   yourself   into the wind
  as i *****
      for some
  sense of
     placeness in this
 vaudeville

      no more are
 the birds that
     sing and way past us
 already seconds
     in waning
    is the same permeable blue
tracking    up
   our curved  spines
and when      weakened
    falling at
     last

as multiple
    cities do -
i see   a line
      for  a stream uncollected,
 as      rain
     over     genuflected
  hills      will.

Orange tabby cat,
With your white under coat,
Why did you leave me,
Along these slopes?

For six years,
You laid in my bed,
I gave you love,
And kept you fed.

I brushed your fur,
And gave you a name.
Now I feel ashame.
I take the blame.

I left the door open.
Didn’t shut it in time.
There wasn’t enough bravery in,
My voice to call you mine.

The rainfall was quick.
So were the tear drops from my eyes.
I never realized,
You're my hope in disguise.

I sit down now,
Breathing the air.
Wanting to scream words,
No lion would dare.

Your pur was my lullaby at night.
Your fur was my blanket.
Your meow was my heart aching,
And now you’ve gone and taken it.

Orange tabby cat,
Out with my concern,
Come home to me.
Be smart and learn.

Depression is an ugly Christmas sweater your mother bought you, but you never want to wear, but never want to get rid of, either.  It's not her fault, as much as you tend to blame her for it. It's not anyone's fault, really, but *******, that thing is just ******* atrocious and not very-well humored. You do your best to keep it buried and hidden, no one can know that you have it, it's an embarrassment and now, because of it, so are you. It'll be in the back of your mind, in the back of your drawers, the whole time. Any time someone mentions Christmas, you'll rub the back of your head 'cause it'll come to mind, and flood with it hundreds of other terrible memories. Almost everyone has one. Those that do, understand the importance and the significance of it, but those that don't, will always look at you funny. Wonder what the hell you're doing. Set that Christmas sweater on fire while you're still wearing it. Act casual. This is normal. Everyone stops and stares, but no one offers or tries to help you. Soon you realize that it's no one's job to. The only person in the room with a fire extinguisher is you. Are you gonna put it out? Or are you gonna let the whole house burn down? Suddenly the flames are out, and no one noticed them but you. Funny, the sweater is just fine. You can burn it, stain it, cut it, slash it, destroy it in any way you can think of, but it will still be just fine. Everything will be just fine. Tell yourself "everything will be just fine." Tell everyone around you "Everything will be just fine" This sweater will make you a liar, but even when, and especially when, you don't believe it, tell everyone that everything will be just fine, because it has to be. They can't worry about you. You want them to more than anything, but you can't let them know they should be worried. They should already know. They should already know. When they ask you "what's wrong" or "why the long face," you honest *******, you lie to them. You lie to their face. You look up and you tell them "Don't worry, everything's just fine. Can I have some more eggnog?"

The first time you hear a gunshot in person is a coming-of-age event. Where were you when you heard it? Standing behind your dad, wearing earmuffs and protective glasses while he showed you how to brace for the recoil of a 12 guage shotgun? Going into a shooting range to learn self defense and studying everyone else because you're too nervous to ask how you're supposed to stand or how you're supposed to hold it? On the street in the dark with your friends, walking through the rough part of the neighborhood to prove how big your sack was? Blam. Bright light. Blam. Total darkness. Blam. Bright light. Three shots. A total of 2.3 seconds has gone by. You are suddenly years older, because of how much those 2.3 seconds of time ages you. Your friend's injured. Blam. Get down. Blam. Go home. 1.8 seconds. Everything is silent now. The only sound is the ringing in your ears, followed by the peeling tires of the vehicle. Smoke hangs motionless in the air. In your head, in your room later that night, in the hospital to bring one of them poorly stated "Get well soon" cards and in the graveyard to bring the other one flowers, you only hear one sound. Blam. Four years later. Training on a range with soldiers. Have the drill sergeant scream in your face that you don't know what it's like to watch your best friend take a bullet in the battlefield. Compose yourself. Two years later, walking to work through the bad part of a different city. You already know it's going to happen. This time, it's not to you, or to anyone you know, but you hear it anyways and you think of the first time. Unfortunately, it's not the first time we all like to think about, which is usually a backseat, or your parents basement, or in the school bathroom, no, this one's a bang that's much less enjoyable. We're told not to talk about it. We live in fear of it. A constant fear. You start to feel unsafe where you live. Better go by a gun.