Only We Would Know

The warm mug at every coffee shop. How many lips have stained this ceramic? The sidewalks strung along miniature cities, and the steps they’ve strayed. How many lives went one block too far, how many missed connections lingering by the street lights. First last kisses hung up overnight in cold breath. Each of us left standing, stirring, gagged in the gutter and wasted on the words we never spoke. Each corner screams its stories, and the signposts sing to sleep. All of this a secret only we would know, looking through the windows lined along the road.

Slow Smoke

smoke curls stalk the ring of your finger while we’re seated in the slow burn of conversation. a grey screen against us for each lonely orange glow.

Wrinkled War

Old anxieties are worn, like denim aged and faded.
Crossed fingers to the bottom of our pockets in hopes
the wrinkled war subsides.

Little Life, Little Hell

Just this once, for the rest of your life. You start and stop and start again. Greet the world at 21, the girl, the job, the starry sights. Before you know, you're 25, you blinked it by. You sleep tonight, just like them, and then, again, again you're 21. Forget the end. Forget the wife. You lived it then, you will til when. It's coming back, it comes around, you're 25, it's over now. Younger days are bound to bend, this sleepless cycle just pretends. You cannot die, you cannot end, young until you're young again. Never born but never dead.

Only Ever...

only ever lived in retrospect. only ever gave a little. only ever loved in waves, and washed ashore too soon. only lived a couple lives only learned from what I've lost all along, I've only lost the things that I've let out

Dispersed

The air around me contracts to the bottom of my lungs.
One hundred thoughts, one hundred battles.
Those beaten breaths left hanging stale, dispersed.

Cutting In

I didn't speak a word all day,
and every one rehearsed.
Conversations all thought out.
I'm cut along a line that only I can see.
Strung alone from side to side to brush the things I love.

On The Line

If we could talk forever I would sit in silence hanging on the line.
Every word all yours. I'm stuck again barely breathing, fault internalized.

Steady Inward

Here, with a habit of looking only at the lives I've failed at living, and I've trapped you there. Between my walls, an easy infatuation and my tired anxious draw. Now I climb steady inward from worlds where I'm complete.

Starry Spaces

I've sat in circles, in the center of the room with faces flush for conversation in a way I've always known. The walls have ways of fading, the faces all grow faceless. Their words yet spilling where their formless mouths believe, in these rooms I've all but left, watch my starry eyes recede. I've gone to all the spaces, to find the in-between.

Little Lives, Little Rooms

All my life we've kept our lives in small concealed compartments, in hiding spots in little rooms, our little home in separate boxes. We stole our eyes and left the rest, and small talk now survives. Please forgive my faulted faith, I've lived so long alone outside.

Worst Case Parade

no matter how many times you tell yourself "everything is ok" the unsettling edges of overthinking parade and with every worst-case scenario, your breath has run away

Quiet House, Silent Home

Make the same mistakes in finite steps to breaking your own heart. Break. Reprise. Break. Repeat. And only break until you're no longer left, and all you had to give is lost to lust and wasted in fleeting fucking smiles and double taps until that lurking fear you like to think can't happen does and the only thing thats left is lonely. The only one to share it with is you, and any brief encounter in whatever hour your life brings home. Your quiet house, your silent home will fill with lyrics of only your favorite sad songs in reminiscence of all the lives you crossed and times you couldn't commit and all the second chances you had and left for loss, always believing they were better off, better faired, when all along you were always scared.

To Stay

Running from parts of myself that were easy alone. But baby whats left? And how much have you known? I can't get very far, very fast from the place, but I opened a door, straight into you. And the pulling parts, the ghosts before, keep pulling back from running more. The parts of me I've longed to leave keep coming back in fear of the left behind. My life is always leaving, staying sounds sublime.

All Too Young

i remember those days and the party cups, it was all too fun, we would never split up. we could never get hurt, we were all too young. in the days and nights with the boards out back, with the beers and girls, when we never looked back. when we toasted the moon and mourned with the sun, before we all grew up, before we'd ever get hurt, we were all too young. days and weeks where the streetlights swayed down the same old streets we were born and free, with the suburb sweethearts and American dreams.