"she's a bad friend, just a heads up.
I know she seems really great
and fun and understanding.
she's like that, at first.
she'll be positive and friendly, and you'll feel like you can trust her with your most-prized possession.
you'll want to tell her things, even if you're not a very open person.
she has that effect on people.
after a while, though, she starts to seem rough around the edges.
she'll go through very dramatic
mood swings-
she's a bit like the weather in NYC.
sometimes she'll be cheerful
and she'll laugh at the most
random of things.
those times, she'll be like a fresh spring day, around 72 degrees.
other times, she'll be the most pessimistic person you know. it'll feel like she's draining the positivity right out of you. those times, she'll be like a bitter winter's day, below zero and freezing.
on occasion, she'll change
back and forth between those
two seasons in a day.
it'll get to be very tiring for you,
trying to keep up with her many moods and feelings and attitudes.
you won't really know how
to handle her.
and eventually, it'll feel like she's
not really handling you.
she won't talk to you as often as she used to. she wont know what's happening in your life anymore, and you won't be able to remember the last time she told you about anything happening in hers.
eventually, you'll be the only one putting effort into the relationship.
but you'll continue to see her with other friends, laughing and sharing inside jokes and telling stories.
and it'll be so painful for you, because you're technically
still friends with her- it's not like
you had a fall-out or anything.
things will just be different between you two. she'll be distant, and so will you.
eventually, you'll just stop trying
to talk to her. all you'll do is smile briefly at each other in the hallways, sometimes talk for a few minutes about classes.
and it'll almost seem like you're strangers again.
so if I were you, don't bother with her. find someone worthy of your time and love and affection."

i want to ask about
the letters i wrote to you
do you still keep them?
read them from time to time?

i asked you last July
you said you still had them
kept them through your
last girlfriend
because you promised me
that you would not just throw
them away

but im stuck wondering
how long did that promise last?
how long was it until nothing
we said mattered anymore?

Lecture me once more about my inability to see outside of myself.
How I'm selfish for trying to be selfless.
Write a poem about your inability to see outside of yourself.
Convince yourself you aren't as self-centered as the rest of us.

silence and sunflower seeds
a salt-encrusted SUV
mid-afternoon-winter-sun.
she ties her fists in slender knots,
and i fiddle with the **** on the radio.

we talk about burns and
the sick scent of nostalgia mixed
with wine in a cardboard box mixed
with empty pockets,
the way crumbs and lint on fingertips can induce such ache.

as she speaks a part of me wonders at the complexity of human relationships, at how meaning between people muddles and
how moments like these right here right now separate whole centuries of time.
i think about walking through forests made of paper trees and having a knack for noticing what could have been.
i imagine her lying in bed late at night,
her mind a metronome measuring out notes of deprecation,
sandpapering all her holed up bits of pride.
i bet sometimes during those barely-awake moments
she feels like an orphan.

but now, right now
right now.
beneath a ***** windshield and
surrounded by bundled up, brick facades
she hides behind glossy brown hair
and faded skinny jeans.
she has pink keys in her lap
but nowhere to go,
and she tells me about emptiness in words she knows i barely understand.

her tired eyes throw salty fists into space.