i never told you this, but:
i didn’t want to say “yes” when you asked me on our first date.
i was thinking of someone in buffalo
who was (at the same time) making playlists with my name in the title
and sending me poems in the mail.
you were just on my periphery,
something of a backup –
until you weren’t,
until you were
everything.

all summer, we were just kids kissing on the beach
just sweaty palms, just chasing trains --
until suddenly it became
running down the hallway of the hospital
and sneaking into the radiology ward,
losing my mind in the waiting room
and holding your hand, twisted up in tubes.
i’ll never forget the way you looked at me that week
and i’ll always remember
making out in the x-ray room,
the nurses on the other side of the door
and wondering if the man behind the divider could hear you
when you told me you loved me for the first time

the truth is:
it’s not fair that you stopped wanting me
and started wanting her,
just because she was convenient
and i was far away

maybe one day i’ll stop being angry,
maybe it’ll stop feeling like someone pulled all my bones from the sockets,
maybe one day i’ll stop missing you so much
and maybe, someday, my body will stop feeling
like a burial ground

but in this moment,
like a stupid animal,
my heart is still waiting
for you to come home.

i don’t know how to tell it you aren’t coming.

Stuck in the silence in between
my present self and a memory.
Desperately trying to create a hero
for a story that may never be told.

I can pinpoint the instant of uncertainty;
driving towards a fabricated persistency
just days after your final chapter.
Of course I was absorbed in my thereafter.

Despite all your failure, success, and fear;
in that moment you disappeared.
Leaving me to inherit your dismay;
a melancholy filter over the standard display.

A selfish thought towards a selfless love;
had two brothers, now I barely have one.
Constantly reminded of life’s impermanence
while searching for a perpetual state of purpose.

Fall in love with a writer
they say and you will never die (quoted)

Fall in love with a writer
they say and you will find yourself
embodied in words

Fall in love with a writer
they say and you will find yourself
stretched over lines and pages

Now,

What if a writer falls in love with you?
What happens is that their untamed mind
becomes an asylum where
words smash themselves
on the walls of their brains
summoning
their hands just
to let them out

What if a writer falls in love with you?
What happens is that their addiction
to falling in love is amplified
and when they love
OH THEY LOVE,
they get a certain high
that numbs their inhibitions to reality
and shuns logic to a very far away land

they  reach a mental state
that lifts you to high enough
just to see a glimpse of their world
just to taste a drop of their
potion
but not all of it

What if a writer falls in love with you?
What happens is that their eye *****
birth and harness flames that burn the coldest
of hearts and warm the strongest
of selves

What if a writer falls in love with you?
What happens is that their mind soaks up
every bit, every breath
every call, every cell
every touch, every talk
just to embroider it
in the quilt of thought
that's weaving endless stories about you
in their mind

What if a writer falls in love with you?
God have mercy on their soul
for their craving becomes dangerously
intensified, wrapping itself
to their muses,
giving them the sole purpose
of existing

For the more they love
the more stories they write
and more they feel
the longer
they
live

i am drained
so drained
so very drained
i cannot seem to find
solace
within a single thing
i am so drained
just let me lay
don't speak
your words have done
enough already

Echo, cricket,
Thump, stump.
The very loud things
Galloping through the silence.
The creaking of stairs like the breaking of bones
That snapped tin cap,
Clinging onto the prophesied labor of your last breath,
Oscillating through your liquefied ontology.
Ethanol overflown and embodied.

Cricket cricket,
The underlying intrinsic.
The empty tone of a distant voice.
The spaces of letters and words so magnified
So wide,
Expanding like an unstoppable void.
Oh my,
Here it comes,
Shadowed by your hissing tongue.
You are glittered,
Pinnacle bitter.
Cloaked in pure white.
Not a thread of disguise.
Twinkle, twinkle,
Buggy, rugged eye.
Those razor touched lines,
Translucent and caressed,
Reminiscent and enmeshed,
Like faded pale stripes,
Hugging the armor of canvas flesh.
Walking among these thin lines,
Head down, musky powdered stench,
Awaiting the inevitable rise and fall.
Of the intangible crux of a hollow memory,
Woven inside the synthetic fabric of the undelivered.
Oceanic cold shiver,
Piercing through our empty, untethered souls.

and again
that cool delectable taste
of a moment

assembly line
of conversation
rolling out

all manner
of topics
with a candle on top

each one
tumbling as a domino
under the table

subtle twinge
of single life
pushed aside

to volcanic laughter
and the put to sleep
of another year

but we sip the syntax
let every vowel
soothe our blood