Something amazing happened last week
For a moment I felt what it was like to be young again
With my memories I can never quite get there

But I try

I’ll close my eyes when I eat a chipwich
it tastes like running back to our beach umbrella with sticky fingers
the summer we rented a cottage in Montauk
I long for the itchy feeling of sand in my bathing suit
and for the salt to sting my eyes again

That would be heaven
But I still throw the wrapper away in the stainless steel trash can
beneath the sink in my apartment
that is exactly two hundred miles and twenty three years from Ditch Plains

It hurts sometimes
to remember how much I have forgotten
When we had dance parties to the Austin Powers soundtrack
When watching mom get dressed
and waiting for the babysitter
and kissing you goodbye
and chicken nuggets for dinner
was the best feeling in the world
Because I knew I could always expect
the smell of your coffee in the morning
those days when we lived in the red house on Craft Avenue.

But last week
in the backseat of a friend’s car
driving back to Boston after a long hike
I watched the gray forest pass by outside my window
and I fought to keep my eyes open
I was no longer thirty-five
I knew the moment would come when I would be lifted out of my car seat
and brought inside
where you would light a fire
and mom would make hot chocolate for us
And later we would eat homemade popcorn and watch Titanic
as our winter boots lay on their sides in the front hall
the snow between the treads slowly melting and darkening the wood floor

I felt very safe inside that car
the kind that only a child on the brim of sleep can feel
I don’t know if I will feel that way again
But I will still close my eyes when I eat a chipwich
and wait for the smell of your coffee in the morning

Dear Love,

I found you in the back alley way
near the barn on a bike
and swimming in the glen.

Saw you jump right in,
*** out, into a freezing pool -
middle fingers in the air
like some weird baptismal funeral.

I felt the weight of your losses on my shoulders
like a backpacking trip from hell,
and the way your lips pressed against one another
in an empty room.

Heard you laugh in an empty room
and fill cars with God-awful karaoke,
windows down and smiling the whole time.

I tasted your tears when you laughed
so hard that you cried, or cried so hard that you laughed,
bittersweet like a chipwich in a 711 parking lot.

Smelt your pain like a two-day-old dish
just waiting to be scrubbed, and
your happiness in clean clothes and roadside flowers.

They say soul mates aren't real,
its just who you put the work into.
Each day I wake up to you,
raw and real and still trying,
still learning and loving and giving it your all,
and honey that's just why I love,

Myself