Photo with 7 notes
It only takes a fraction
of a second, a glimpse
of your face in pixels to make me
make your face in light and shadow and soft clay
It only takes the briefest stab of memory
to make you again and again,
whole and alive and laughing
at just how much
I will never be enough.
Photo with 10 notes
The only sound I needed to hear, for days (that bled into months), was your voice.
I cared very little which tone it would take, and so I prodded you,
stole your trinkets,
screamed from street corners,
called from strange phones.
A slave will take the lash and consider it affection, wanting only to be touched. Acknowledged.
Eventually forgiven.
To be noticed at all.
Months became years and I lost weight. I grew gaunt and pale in your absence. I wondered, more often than anyone would imagine, if you would recognize me if I came calling.
Perhaps I could wither away enough
to get close to you unrecognized.
Maybe I could grow a beard, and sleep in these clothes so many nights
that you would press a quarter in my palm on those busy corners that have become your backyard,
and walk to work in needle-thin heels, wondering why my thank you sounded so sincere.
Photo with 9 notes
I appear to be at a loss for words. Fingertip tap, a couple keys here and there, delete. I should have written a novel, or nothing, to tell you. I have never been adept at splitting differences. These fitful paragraphs, dribblings of ink between more pressing matters, these are what I have. And of course they’re for me, not you. Something to pass the time, a way of organizing the unimportant. The irretrievable. I keep forgetting to forget you.
Photo with 15 notes
I am shallow and narcissistic and terribly unmotivated and lonely. I am unoriginal and hackneyed and afraid and bleeding. I am always casting my gaze in wide, sweeping arcs, looking for meaning, missing the details. Except when I am trenchant and determined, fiercely loyal and charming. Save for when I’m unreserved and insightful and full of praise and fair. I’m always throwing my arms open in wide, sweeping arcs, grasping at love. These idle hands can be turned to any purpose.
Photo with 4 notes
She looked like you. Not in any particular way. Her carriage, the tilt of her head, style without flash, hair in need of washing. I watched her mouth as she talked stocks into some freakishly small cellular telephone. It wasn’t yours. I had to hold my chest, my fingers pressing this way and that, reaching for the part that hurt. There is physical discomfort in missing you, which I needn’t point out rhymes with kissing you. Then the rains came.
Photo with 8 notes
You stub your toe, think I deserve this. Just eat the berries. You deserve it.
You step lightly for two days, doing ledger work behind those wide, round eyes.
A leaf caught in the fence. Rain against the windowpanes.
You see the sunlight, think it’s a gift.
You deserve it, after all.
You see your mistakes, think they’re reversible. Think you can do better next time.
You gain some ground, think it’s an accomplishment and not a reprieve.
You’re a pattern maker.
Double stitching disparate elements into something pretty to wear to the funeral.
The event is just the event.
The moment only counts when you’re still living in it.
Don’t connect the dots.
Photo with 13 notes
I keep thinking I hear rain but it never comes. Come tap on the glass. Let me out.
Pulse points to the panes thinking maybe tonight. Maybe right now.
There are vegetables in the refrigerator that I’m too lazy to cook
Changing color like the bills in the mailbox.
I’m waiting for a sign, maybe. A crack in the cloud cover.
Maybe I’m just waiting for you.
Photo with 12 notes
It’s not even the fantasy, nor the anticipation. It’s the anticipation of the fantasy. Oh, but in that shining moment when you arrive, when something as mundane as drinking water from a dirty pint glass takes on the haze of a Guiding Light flashback sequence, I realize there’s no punchline forthcoming. I put your key under the mat before I even knew you were coming. I’m in deep without moving my feet. Prescient, that’s me. What do you say? Want to make an intelligent mistake?
I can see around corners. I can see you walking left and thinking south, cigarette like a chew toy stained with the faintest shade of lipstick money can buy. I can see you in the morning, sunlight snaking through the branches, pouring in the window, tattooing you in luminous patterns, sheets and hair in tangles, eyes like oceans. All of this is hours away and I’m just slouching under the bus lights, one boot spilling onto the seat like a hit and run victim, heel twitching. You’re still smooshing your hair around looking for just the right amount of nonchalant disarray, something repetitive and electronic on the stereo. I’m just falling in love with falling in love while the city streaks by. I like to think it’s illusory, a joke I tend to play on myself when everybody’s looking.
Photo with 10 notes
At some point one reaches an impasse. Too far into the forest to return safely, not enough provisions to finish the journey. Does it not make sense, then, to learn to live in the forest itself?
Photo with 7 notes
You’re that kid who shakes the hourglass trying to speed up time.
You need it empty so you feel some pressure, some urgency.
It’s okay. I’m just like you.
I do all my best work when it’s far too late.
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