you often feel embarrassed about what you write and expose in poetry and prose and the wind blows and blows and blows… but you’re indoors. it’s just a draft, sneaking between a poorly framed window and making its way onto your sheets giving you no place to hide your feet. 

you don’t remember when you last laughed.

try to forget but instead you stay up all night thinking just thinking and you’re reminded by things that you shouldn’t and everything is attached and connected and maybe a sign but probably not a sign and sometimes you look through the perfume shelf at the shop and sometimes you draw lines on maps and sometimes you write letters and throw them away and sometimes you sit by the phone and advice doesn’t help so you try to forget but of course it isn’t that easy and it doesn’t feel right

catch my breath in a gust, the metal heart, and its rust.
bouquet whispers are hushed by the leaves that are crushed.
there’s an autumn breeze that punctuates our days.
the hurt, it leaves, but the longing stays.

you worry about the length of your legs. you worry about the part in your hair. that you are going to go bald. you are sure your hairline looked different before. you apologize to your body for what you had done to it in the past. you secretly apologize to those who had to see it. you wish and wish and pick up feathers and you loved an insect and eat less and walk and try to laugh and you cook and you go to bed at a reasonable time although you have not slept through the night in months.

you stare at your phone endlessly some nights and sometimes you hear it ringing even when it isn’t. you hope it will ring when you feel sick or sad. you drive your friends where they need to be and walk with them when they want company and you let the dog out sometimes. you listen to those songs so many times that you don’t even need to hear them anymore. you go to the shop and smell the perfumes and colognes and pretend you don’t know what you’re looking for but you do.

you often wonder if anyone has ever thought of you this hard.

laid in my bed
in the dark
in my room
in my house
in my town
in my state
that is not your state
not your town
not your house
not your room
not your bed
and listened to your tape that i sent
but i remembered the songs
so i could listen to it
and feel like we were listening to it
not in the same place
but maybe at the same time
and the seconds would only be slightly off
almost an echo
that’s like the memory of your voice
ringing in my head
saying
“…”
it does not matter
it is all music
and i listened to those songs songs songs
that are like the echo of your voice voice voice
for the fifth 
sixth 
seventh 
twelfth 
eighteenth 
thirtieth 
fiftieth time like i had never heard them before 
and i hadn’t 
at least not with you 
we didn’t get to 
but i would have liked to 
i would like to
if it wouldn’t be a problem 
then i would take the bus 
i’d ride the train 
i’d fly in a plane 
i would walk your way for a day 
and another day 
and however many days it took me 
to walk through the forests 
and over some mountain range that i may be killed in 
but who cares 
death is only death 
and it’s free 
and it’s what we had always wanted to be 
do not envy me 
i will come back

“we will meet again”

be free with me.

“my point is, we’re romantics. it may hurt now, but i never stopped chasing her; and i’ll never stop chasing her.”

familiar words and a familiar phrase
time feels blurred in familiar days
slept through them to avoid the malaise
love is rare and deserved of praise
it isn’t a phase, wait and see who stays