I still have a lot to say on the matter
but I’m avoiding talking to you for
both of us
There’s nothing left to surrender
so I took small steps today like
the first few steps out the door in the fall
right when the season starts
You don’t know if it’s warm
but it looks warm through a window
so you go outside without a jacket
then run back to the house
I wasn’t ready
But I made it further than I thought
I have memories of growing up, but more like stacks of polaroids in my head with storied affiliations.
It’s quite easy to fall through the floor. Just put your feet down. There’s nothing to hold you upright but a confident assumption.
I remember who I was when, and how I used to be.
I think a lot about death, and a lot about dying.
I think I’ve died a few times.
I hardly exist anymore, pleading with the dirty grass
and torn down dandelions.
Everything I am in full,
is nothing.
And will return the same.
Late nights,
Later mornings.
State to state shift.
I left my brain to dry
on a stretched out circadian.
Wondering where time went,
as I’m watching it float by.
After hours in hotels at night
A poignant still in the middle of monoliths
Fake bedrooms, specks of life
TVs flicker, little lights
To the tune of the growling highway
Like a nighttime souvenir
Soft ideas left hanging on the air.
no longer inspired by,
no longer remembered.
The walls of my skull painted,
with soft ideas and stains
burnt in like cigarettes.
Small holes, terrible edges.
Soft ideas abandoned
formless on my breath.
No longer inspired by.
6am: dawn fog folds me over and i slide into my skin again.
Sleep hangs on the apartment, 70 degrees. on my eyes in confusion.
Graceless stumble in full effect, I’ve been here before.
Quick history sets in and my senses register one by one, a smooth relation.
607am: Breathe.
Swaying in the silent morning
to this high-tone scramble.
Tuned out in the background
with the window’s early glow.
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.
The winter sun through a window
paints the room warm
I've cut the cold in parts,
and it means more
felt between the panes and the past
something happens in a week across the country 75 miles an hour and the windows up. city after city with the illusion of sleep, in the same hotel bed coast to coast. rest stop routines, dark circle eyes on horizon we're only chasing. that old dream of On The Road a little distant daily, maybe it only was a dream. maybe its the midwest. maybe all these years have burned the fortune. maybe I'm just tired.
The shelf with the hourglass where the sands ran out. A small self portrait where life stood still. In the room where I sleep with suspense overhead. A cloud below the roof, and a story of lives in bed.
Old anxieties are worn, like denim aged and faded.
Crossed fingers to the bottom of our pockets in hopes
the wrinkled war subsides.