do you ever wonder
about the difference between
looking at something
and the hallucination created
when looking past it?
if you look at your hand
it's all you can see
but if you look past your hand
there are now two of them
sometimes it's hard for me
to remember which is real
it gets me thinking
about how my father
used to wake me up
in the morning by rubbing
his stubble across my face
i spent my 11th birthday
under the assumption
that he might come back
if i drank his aftershave
like maybe if i could turn blue
if i could be his favorite color
on our bathroom floor
he would forget why he left
the paramedics were all sobing
as they pumped memories
out of my stomach
i coughed up the day the post-it note with your new address on it
burned a hole in our refrigerator
coughed up the day
the divorce papers came
and my mother
took a baseball bat to the mailbox
i've been choking on the splinters
for 17 years
it's been 17 years
since the last dinner plate
exploded on our dining room wall
17 years since my mother
started accidentally setting your place at the dinner table
17 years since italian night
at the restaurant on the corner
where the juke box
spat tired music
and like so many other things
it stopped working when you left
i guess it's no coincidence
since the juke box went quiet
that the cds in my car
only skip on "i miss you"
i've been hemorrhaging memories
for so long
and now that i'm looking back
i can no longer tell
the mirage from the truth
sometimes i swear
you showed up to my graduation
and last time
i was at your apartment
i can't remember
if the imprints of my hands
are in clay hanging on your wall
or if they were left in the mud
the day god had the audacity
to let it rain
or maybe it's like the time
i saw someone crying on a bridge
now that i think about it
i can't remember if it was me

It's comforting staying awake in the dead silence of your house at midnight and it's comforting to look at the moon and realize you are not alone but are made of the galaxy and each of the stars above and the great big world of outer space makes up who you are in a romanticised eye

I like knowing that I may be the only one awake in the neighbourhood sometimes and I like daydreaming in complete darkness sometimes and thinking about my future and how life will spill out of the bag whilst all the marbles of possibilities roll everywhere on the tilting table

I like pretending sometimes when the early hours of the day begin that things are different and so are circumstances and the past never happened and it's only the present because it's comforting

Sometimes all we need is comfort.

I think I'm crazy when I count how many words I've written,
but I can't tell if I can't count, or if I'm just too exhausted to see.
When finally, all of the sleepless nights and tiring days catch up to me.
When I fall asleep in class because I can't fall asleep at home.
What if someone is in my house?
What if someone breaks into my house?
What if I don't wake up again?
When I actually contemplate going to sleep, because I don't want to wake up the next morning.
I want to take a chance and see what will happen, because I'm sick of waiting and I'm sick of being scared.
When my fear of what happens in the night while I'm not awake stops me from closing my eyes for more than five seconds,
Not allowing me to enter my peaceful world of dreams where all I dream about is that first kiss with you,
Even though
I know that it will never happen.
But then it catches up to me.
It hits me when I least expect it.
The warm wave of exhaustion covers me like my blanket does to my sleepless body at night.