A couple of bubblewraps

breaking each others vessels.
Your turn. Ok, now me.
exchanging cuts,
creating scars
was all a part of the plan.
Until it got to be too much
and the pokes and prods
made me thin
the lightest breeze
carrying me away
before we even knew
that we were already gone.

Square pegs and round holes

aren't meant for each other, not forever anyway.
But maybe a round hole just needs a square peg
to fill the void for a little while. Even though the wind
will bring cold to the open edges and arcs. Better than being hollow.
Just until the square figures out that there is somewhere else
that it will fit better, and the circle finding
a more permanent fixture.

The only question is how long will the hollowness last
in between the time it was almost and
the time it will be complete.

This

isn't meant to be a modern version of the romances we romanticize.
Instead, it is our chance to be remembered as one of those them.
And I would much rather create history, than impersonate it.

I got a postcard from Oregon

a picture of the Pacific Ocean smiling
and crashing happily against the coast.
I flipped it over to find you had written
me in your most casually perfect penmanship.

Dear you,

Wish you were here to see
me happy without you.

Always,
me

When I said "you are perfect"

i didn't mean that you are perfect.
but that you are perfect for me.
and that is a much better fate
than the burden of perfection.

the residual feeling

of a pair of heavy sunglasses
that are somehow missing
from above your forehead
as though they are still resting
atop your as your modern crown.

the same is how this feels to me
the feeling of absence
and the absence of feeling,
anything at all.

where ecstasy would fall
there is a numbness
preventing
my humble jubilation.

closing the door behind me

some sensation stopped me at the top of the stairs:
the desire to hear your voice.

i had not really heard you speak in some time.
I could barely remember how you sounded.

i sat down 9 stairs up from your floor
just around the turn and out of sight.

and i channelled my focus to find your frequency
hoping for your vocabulary to guide me down the trail
of your undulations and your articulations

But the downstairs tennants were much too loud;
a welcoming party of ecstatic voices being.
reunited with the voices of their fellow countrymen.

Their foreign syllables mixed with the others from your apartment
and the softness that permeates your voice was mixed evenly into the other
boisterous sounds.

I moved down the stairs as quietly as possible
and seeing your door ajar
i listened from my new post

but only my roomates were audible,
their masculine sounds fighting the foreign ones out in our open stairwell.

As the foreigners disappeared behind their doors
The front door clicked open
swinging heavily and loudly.
Feet pounding the lowerstaircase
caused me to make my way across the hall
and down passed your rommate ascending.

I stopped once I had heard the door close behind her
one final attempt to hear if you were speaking.
But the foreigners were regaling each other in the mudroom
exchanging sentiments and bottles of wine.

The door opened easily and the snow had quieted the night
stepping outside into a silence that brings everything
but the sound of your voice.

everyone's got their hypothesis

about what's really going on.
and they treat it like a science
trying to show that their presumptions
are the right ones.

trying to make you see what they see.
and i wish they would stop.
because i am not an experiment
to be observed.
to be quantified.

so don't come here to diagnose the situation.
i am not just some problem to be solved.

i hadn't been here without you before

and so of course a dance party breaks out.
at a loss for what to do or where to go.

i couldn't believe what i was hearing

when you're favorite song came over the speakers.

i texted you to tell you you were missing the best part.

funny, so was i.

the tension peeled from my shoulders

the moment i saw you. and you saw me.
eye contact.

it was awkward, for certain.
but it was the first step i had taken in weeks
that felt positive.
better still, i realized then
everything will be alright.
because you and i are still fighting
the same fight.

It used to be that you were here

in my head
just like all the other days
and this way when i couldn't hold you
we still talked and smiled

but now its just us standing there
staring at the ground.
and i have not slept in days.

all i do is watch this scene over and over in my head.
hoping that the two main characters will share quiet words
even if they are just good bye.

you were an oragami swan

I was a paper airplane.
You floated towards the east, not seeing me
advancing from the south.

I couldn't slow down.
the softest clash
of paper wings on paper wings.
a delightful catastrophe.

we spiraled down for a while
and when the debris settled

neither of us knew where to fly to.

we're it so easy

were it so easy, nothing would be remembered

were it so easy, we would never have change in our lives

we would never be anything different

anything extraodinary

we would never be what we could be

incomplete

like a missing piece.
a part of the puzzle lost
voluntarily given up to the couch cushions
just waiting there, while i go outside
moving on to something else.

and this isn't the first deed left undone.
all those tiny little missing pieces
haunt me everywhere
my unfinished business as my only footwear
shackles and weights and heavy iron boots.

it's about time

we stopping putting our dreams on hold.

we've all been the blade

we've all been the body.

a couple of hours

that i forgot about you for.
but the moment it slowed to the end,
there you were again.
center stage like you've always been.

every time your soul and mine

go our separate ways,
we are born again into this life.

and we live these separate times
alone and desperately in search
of one another

sometimes they don't make it back together
and sometimes they do.

where will this age take me?
and where are you standing right now?

All of a Sudden

they just went crazy
it was like they were afraid of the air
and they were so desperate to get away from
the atmosphere that they dove
into the ocean, sinking deep to safety
they threw themselves against windows
a brave escape. and in the explosion
their feathers fell slowly at first
white blurs
but now more clearly soft shapes
landing at your feet.

Hey,

I guess I got your voicemail
I just wanted to call and ask you a question

Could you take a chance on me?
Because I've been thinking
and all my hear wants to do is be

I know this is sudden
but I can't wait any longer
I gotta know now
where this could go.

I hope you've thought of
how we could end up
because i think of you constantly
so if you're interested gimme a call back
748

How strange

to know that they are gone, but to still feel them
in your heart.

knowing that their soul has moved on. all but a sliver
passes on, but that remaining spec is forever bonded to yours.

the attachment resonates, sensing that it is what has been left behind
and it sends a shiver through your spirit.
a feeling that you'll never forget.
one that will bring disquiet about what the afterlife holds.
a sensation that will trigger all the great memories
that you shared together
and finally a peaceful joy will spread through you
knowing that nothing can take away that piece of themself
they gave you when they left.