Six hours and three bottles later
you and I are still knee deep in problems
we don’t know how to solve
with only two heads and two hearts.
Still lost and unsure, we have followed each other
into darker places than we had intended to travel to.
Silent, slow minutes have crawled into hours
and now we crawl too - Its all we know here
alone in this cold room.
I lay naked between worn sheets
while you drop off into slumber.
I wish I could follow you into
the depths of your mind
instead of being
in this untraveled place.
Some things are avoided
for a reason.

He walks in and I can already tell what type of man he is. He stops, looks at the chandelier that hangs above him. He looks like he just knocked back the whiskey sour I could bet a pretty dime he’s about to order. He taps the bar and says something.

    I take a good, hard look at this man. Honestly, he’s what most people would consider “good looking”: High cheekbones, taut eyebrows, eyes that saw right through every in here, refusing to look back.

    He scans the room and fixes his collar. His eyes stop and at first, I thought the he was seeing the woman behind me. He smiles slightly and begin to walk t me, his eyes never straying. He stops.

    “Can I buy you a drink?”

Sometimes my hand fails to translate
thoughts quickly enough
as my ideas of you slip through the cracks,
quietly, unnoticed.
Your smile bleeds
into the ink of my pen
and leaves traces of you
with each word I write,
but I just cant seem to write fast enough.
I feel you in more words than I am able to speak;
my mind flows to your beat;
and my heart beats your name,
as though we are one in the same.

They sip their drinks, laugh at eloquent
phrases. Every surrounding object gleams
with the novel approach of a recent
addition. These people take comfort in their “solidified”
position, but in these streets, something stirs.
The night awakens in interest and
the stars watch overhead. It started with
a promise of change. Bourgeois origins
fall and crumble at the feet of the old
proletariat. Those who have risen
succumb to their deepest fears an slip in  
to the dark abyss once separating
and mindful gaps are destroyed and expelled
as the people rise together as one.
Their hands raise into the air and extend
their grasps to uncharted places, unknown.

The house dwarfed everything on the street. It was evidently quite old, but in good condition. The once white bricks were stained with years beating from the rain and wind, the windows unclear. Ebony frames supported the doors and glass windows, complete with matching shutters. A wrap-around porch hugged the left side of the house’s structure tightly. The house had a classical type of beauty. In its stupor from the long years, it still stood strong; still, it had intimidated nearly everybody in the small town that encompassed it.
        The first car parked on the driveway said enough; it was an Oldsmobile, a strong, classic car – the type of car you really only see in movies anymore. The others that followed were all newer, luxury cars. Each looked to be worth more than Kieran might ever have to his name. This was more than a guess.
He had walked past this house many times, almost always curiously peering in through the windows. He wondered sometimes what the people inside were like, what they did with their spare time, whether or not they had secret lives that they kept from one another. The term ‘enigma’ came to mind when he tried to fill the blank silhouettes he had seen in the window with pictures. He had never quite been able to get that image right. He had only found out how wrong he had been about the owners of the place once he had met her.
He waded through the deep snow surrounding the path he had known to be apparent on warmer days. Approaching the light steps vacating the doorway, he noticed that a flickering light had been emitting itself from the uppermost window adjacent to the balcony.
In the letter that he had found under the slip of his door frame earlier that day, Kieran had been instructed to enter the house without bothering to knock at precisely quarter past the hour of eight. He had found the request to be odd, but he had been victim to curiosity, as he always was when it came to Briardale.
He turned the **** of the dark oak door before him. The step below him gave an alarming creak as he shifted his weight forward, making him stop. Again, he began to pass the cusp between her world and his own. He padded forward and headed towards the stairs. His heavy boots thudded on the floor beneath and left a rather hollow noise that echoed through the large expanse.
As he crept up the stairs, his curiosity and excitement heightened. The top of the staircase seemed both close and far away as the space between him and the flickering light dwindled. He heard the sound of contemporary music flowing in the dark. It curled into his ears and under his flesh; he felt a chill in the air as his senses began to tingle.
Finally he had reached the top of the staircase. He paused for a minute, allowing the moment to sink in. He stared at the door, ajar and alluring, as she and all she did always were.
“Why the hesitation?” she asked, almost inaudibly between the music and her soft spoken voice.
He parted his lips ever so slightly and licked the dry edges. He swallowed and hoped that she had not heard. He continued forward and pushed open the door tentatively.
She lifted her eyes to his in the mirror before her. “I’ve been waiting”
He looked at Briardale’s sketched figure, outlined by what looked to be decades of lit candles. Her dark hair shone brilliantly in their wake. A deep red robe encircled her, wrapping her like a present. Her bare legs were tucked under the vanity daintily.
“Come closer” she whispered. She turned down the music.
Kieran traveled the short distance between them and allowed for a small smile to take his lips. “You look beautiful” he said.
“Thank you”
He placed his weathered hands on her soft shoulders and felt the difference between the two. He looked deeply in her eyes in the vanity mirror. She put the brush she had been holding down. She turned to meet his gaze.
She glanced up at him subtly, almost bashfully. She stood and walked towards the bed. Her robe fell, and decidedly she had neglected to wear anything but.  He followed.
Together they sunk into the bed, the scent of clean linen surrounding the two of them. She took his hand, and innocently guided it towards her face. She brought her own fingers to touch his slight beard that had developed fully and fruitfully. She kissed him lightly on the lips.
He knew then that no other person could make him feel the way that he did. She comprised of a thousand shades and colours, and he wanted to learn each one by title. He wanted to know each part of her. She had gained the ability to grasp his life in the palm of her hand; to make him feel as though he was the one who was vulnerable and needed protecting. Loving her was like standing at the top of a cliff and leaping, the free-falling feeling encompassing and grand. Loving her was like waiting for a the subway train to take away your sorrows as you walk purposefully towards its oncoming traffic, and it stopping before you have a chance to jump. Briardale was his split-second happiness after the fall, his second chance in an unforgiving world.

The wind blew through hollowed out buildings like lungs taking in air in shallow breaths, rattling through the skeletons of forgotten structures. A gust kicked up loosened dirt from the path beneath his feet.  Alone and desolate, the streets of this lost town looked as though they had not been traveled upon for many years now, but still they managed to look almost full – like the space could not contain the contents of what it used to be.
Here stood the ruins, a place Kieran had come to know quite well since his discovery of it in his first year of high school. Though it meant something different to him now than it had then, he still kept quiet of its whereabouts to many.
He used to come to stop feeling, to stop thinking of the things he was surrounded by each day. Now, some days, he had trouble remembering how to feel at all. To him, this place was the only way he could feel what it was like to be himself, or to remember the things that had comprised who he had been in the past years.
Things had changed now, of course. The years had crawled past, many without making very much of an impact on anybody or anything. He felt that the only thing that had gotten him through the tougher times was his first love, Briardale. Briar had been the only person he had shown this place.
He could still remember it now, the first time he had brought her here. He remembered seeing her while she took it in for the first time, wondering what she was seeing; how the ruins had looked through her eyes. Unlike most people who he had known to have seen such a dead place, Briar had surprised him.
“I like it,” she had said, with a small smile playing at the corners of her lips. “It’s as though nothing outside of this is real. It’s like a dream”. Her dark hair bled into the still darker scenery, her composite disappearing into the outlines of the tall building. He knew then that she had understood.
“I like it, too” Kieran replied, watching her without shame as she admired the look of the skyline in the late day. He knew she was completely alone in her eyes, and that she probably didn’t hear his response, that she was hardly listening.
Finally, she turned to him. She opened her mouth to speak, and time slowed. “Why did you bring me here?” she asked, still smiling with wonder.
He knew that he had to tell her, that she probably already knew of his feelings towards her. She was toying with this thought – perhaps even considering it.
He moved closer to her, pacing slowly, intentions clear. He licked his lips. He swallowed audibly, the nerves defacing the moment and nearly spoiling it. He drank her beauty in, allowing his eyes to wander greedily over what he wanted but did not yet have. He wanted her, but it was more than that. He needed her. He realized then –
“I love you”, he whispered almost inaudibly, sharing another secret with her, the woman he had watched grow since they were but youthful and naïve children. “I brought you here because I love you”.
She replied by taking his hand and leading him closer, pushing her into the frame of the broken building behind them. He inched closer, looking at her, beginning with her eyes and slowly moving towards her lips. Their noses brushed and he smelt what he knew to be her scent: burnt cigarettes and pine, a winters evening.
She stared just as intensely at his lips. She had inclined her head so as to become closer still. Kieran could feel her soft breath on his chin. She raised her eyes to meet his and whispered “I love you, too”, and finally, their lips met and crossed the line between friends and lovers.
Kieran steadied himself, reminiscing on the moment, but reminding himself that things had changed. He began walking towards what used to be the old school, the flag still billowing in the autumn wind. He traveled up the stairs, creaking under his every step.
Finally he had reached the top. Standing on what passed as a roof, he looked down onto the desolate town. He watched the dust overturn and fall, the unstable buildings sway. He edged closer to the verge of the building, all the while still watching. Kieran looked directly below, wondering what it would be like if he jumped, wondering if he would survive the fall. Wondering how anybody had survived, and weather anybody lived in this life at all.

Sunkissed skin lays over you like a veil/
Freckles like silver lining details gone/
Unnoticed by the author. Two green eyes/
Stare back at mine and say everything/
Without recognized language. Blue jeans/
White shirt; a simple pleasure in simple/
Wrapping. Pale lips whispering subtle things/
Secrets of “I love you” and “I need you”/
Thick hair tangled at the nape of your neck/
Strong hands learning the crevice of new land/
We brave the world alone, a heart without/
A home to call our own, on these cold nights/

Is it unity or replication?
This I can’t be sure.
How is it that
We can
See
Touch
Feel
All the same things
As one another and still
Consider ourselves as
“Individuals”?
Recycled thoughts and actions
Keep us all from becoming
Too different
Keep us from crossing
the line intersecting
Curiosity and action

Loyalty truly is such a burden.
You fail to abandon things that hurt you,
stay with people who break you, fall for those
who care the least. Constantly, we are lost,
waiting on these train tracks for tragedy
we see coming, because we cannot bear
to leave such familiarity. We
do not fail to see the effects of our
actions; we instead fail to acknowledge
them. It’s not that we are blind to danger -
we choose to be deaf to these clear warnings.

Everybody, Everybody
Please come quickly. Assemble now to watch
as two become one, as two brace this world
with brave hearts and wild minds; here rests young love,
Both nomadic and questionable in
nature. They know not what lies ahead, but
together they will be the ones to say:
"It is I who has prospered, I who has
Loved unconditionally, undeterred
by solemn miseries”, or so they think.
You know so little, my dear children,
you don’t know any better. How could you?
But here we stand, hand in hand, all the same,
waiting so patiently to take thy name.
Why so hasty my dear, why love in vain?