This thing
It sounds like an illness
But I don't feel sick
I held my head between my knees
Till I remembered how to breathe
I don't feel wrong
I just don't want
to burden anyone else.
I needed someone to hold me
Until I forgot what I was crying about
I didn't realize that I was now
"that kid"
And it didn't upset me the way I thought it would
I can't tell anyone
Nobody needs to know.

I'm okay.
*I will be

Before you can tell anybody
You have to tell yourself
What people say you should already know
Even though I didn't.

How could I tell anyone else
When just trying to tell myself
Ended with me unable to breathe
At 3 in the morning?

I didn't feel relief
I didn't have a revelation
In the end,
I mostly felt resignation.

Nothing is more lonely
Than realizing
That you don't know
Who you are.

I miss you so much
Even though you're not that far away
You're just on holiday
And you'll be back
So I don't know what I'm fussing about
We'll be back on track
In a bit
I feel so much safer with you in my arms
Safe from the world
Your head on my shoulder
reassures the head on my shoulders
I'm waiting for you to come back.
I'm listening to songs
about feeling sorry for yourself.
(it doesn't help)

I want to tell you about all the times
I stayed up thinking
Wondering if in ten years from now
I’d meet you in a bar somewhere
And we’d both be drinking
Some expensive cocktail with
An innuendo for a name.
I wonder if you would still look the same
I wonder if I would still feel the same,
I’m sure the conversation would be awkward
But for that I take the blame,
Would I get and take a second chance
For the last uncomfortable slow dance
Of an event I didn’t go to
Because I couldn’t work up the courage
To finally go up and ask you.
Ask about the time when
You told me that you missed me
Though deep down
My thirteen year old self
Kind of wished you kissed me
Though I’m glad you didn’t
I realize that our friendship
Was better than whatever
The hell we would’ve been
Puzzle pieces from different sets
When I wake up, I do my best
I brush my teeth and wash my face until I finally forget.

There's no point in thinking

about how much I like

the rain in September

When it's 77 degrees outside

even though it's almost 6:30

and the plants need to be watered

September is three months away

And if I wait that long

All your plants will die.

The only reason I ever went downtown
was for music class
or orchestra gigs
or for LA Phil concerts,
but I found this cool bookstore once.

I walked around with you once
during a break between rehearsals
and you asked me if I thought anyone
actually lived here
"LA's just a movie set," you said.

I was downtown for an audition once
and they were filming Batman.
There was fake snow everywhere
and you told me that you and a friend
pretended to have
a snowball fight.

Imagine.
A snowball fight in Los Angeles.
Impossible.
Except when Los Angeles is Gotham
or New York
or Chicago
for the day.

No one is ever on the streets in LA.
Unless LA is Gotham
or New York
or Chicago
for the day.

He turns to me and says,
"One day, you are going to
wake up and find that the world has
passed you by.
You will wake up on your couch
surrounded
by empty cans of Brisk and ghosts
but no one will have died–
Everyone will just be someone else  
but you will be the same.
Like a rock in the middle of a
garden you will stay unmoving while everything else
blooms and grows and reaches towards the sun.
People you forgot to keep in touch with will no longer exist.
I will be gone, I'll be someone else.
To you, I'll be the boy you
loved in high school,
who didn't love you back,
and the girl you sat next to in Biology who wasn't quite as
clever as you are is now a doctor and you are
alone."
I know that he is right, but all I say is
"I didn't love you."
(I am lying)
He shakes his head and gets up
to leave, but he turns one last time and
smiles and I pretend that he is saying that he
loved me back.