19 Years
Calendars turn and daylight saves.
Youth grows up and old.
Each a new reminder that nothing stays the same.
Yet somehow an unchanging truth remains,
a two-way street with no end:
between ones who find each other
at the moment life decides to listen.
And though it grows old too,
as they both have and will,
it never wavers and it never leaves.
For my 19 years,
for her 19, and beyond,
I knew immediately that I'd love her always.
Pigeon & the Missus
I know we'll watch the world forget;
feel every memory of what was ever good
eventually fade;
time passing as they,
and we,
slowly wither.
But however small that makes me feel,
to hold still, hands clasped,
and do it together,
with someone to exist in the quiet next to;
someone to navigate this dark white life alongside,
I can't help wanting.
Bases
Back then I had so much to say.
It'd always been her
and that was the only thing I'd ever wanted the chance
to let her understand.
So I'd rehearsed everything:
made really sure to use only the best words I knew,
and practiced them all
until the timing of each pause sat perfectly within the mix,
never rushed nor hurried to the next.
But as she stood with her back to my face,
shooting short glances towards the far-off falling sun,
my nerve went missing
and my imagination collapsed;
fugitives in the face of the moment I recognized as the one:
the chance I'd always thought I'd needed;
that for which I'd always asked.
And though separated by near-nothing as I watched,
pulled in tightly by the years
seasoned with subplots and miscellaneous minor characters
as gone as the snow,
I knew that however close I may one day get,
it'd never be the closest.
So I just stood there,
letting a film of sand and salt
snuff out the sight of the feet upon which I did so,
while the image of her crouching down close to the waters ahead
branded a scar into me more pronounced
than anything she might've said ever could have.
Alparon & Clute
I watched him mow from the stands across the road.
One side to the next, trimming closer each time.
And hours later it was beautiful again.
Mulched and clean. Even and soft.
I watched the Queen ride by
and heard her name being called as she did.
Hands waved and music played.
Kisses were blown and cameras flashed.
The sun shone brightly on a few while it fell.
And I think about it sometimes.
. . .
I tried to be okay while we walked.
I spoke when, and laughed at what,
I'm pretty sure I should've.
But all I could think about was not wasting the steps.
I've wondered if it hurt my case to have reappeared like I did;
if maybe I should've just let what was
be that,
and then disappeared into her memory.
. . .
Either way, somewhere else now,
strangers' hands sit on strangers' hips
while it shines on them too.
And as it does,
more curses are born
into the hauntable minds
they'll soon call home.
So now I think about them too sometimes.
Using Melodies
I watched a movie from the couch in my apartment.
And in it, I heard the most beautiful song I'd ever listened to.
So I used the internet to learn whose voice I'd heard.
And after I knew it, I watched her sing it again,
from the beginning,
in a video that I found on a website.
But before she could finish, I'd already fallen;
taken by the sciences interjecting into my life,
an idea,
via a box of pixels.
And it was a nice distraction in that moment.
But in the end, nothing more.
For as I sat and watched her face shift to the shapes of its spirit,
hearing the embodiment of everything
I've ever aspired to know
or have
being born of it,
the stream ended, and my eyes fixed yet again
upon the overcast image of the only one I've ever known
to come as close as she had to capturing it.
Actual Life
I'd always believed that going back and being there again
would help fill the gaps.
That if I could stand in the same place and see it for myself,
as it is,
then I'd understand where it began
and might feel each of them begin to shrink.
Be it the grass that had crept between our toes,
the temperature of the waters upon it,
the scent of the coals, or the creak of the latch:
I'd wanted them to help me forget.
But then I was there.
I stood in the spot and felt for myself
the dried and bowing boards beneath my fingers and feet;
placed my eyes upon the site of the times
and felt their weight's failure in forcing an inelastic past to budge.
And with it, felt the success
of having reinserted myself into the setting
of one of the many moving pictures in my mind
serving only to push its filming further away
while drawing its effects that much closer.
It Can’t. It Won’t. It Did.
I thought it couldn't,
so I never worried about it.
And even after I'd learned that it could,
I still never worried,
believing it just wouldn't.
But then it did.
So now I don't know what to believe,
other than
that anything can,
that anything could,
and that the only defense may be to believe wholly in that
with hope that one day
I'll have grown to be pleased by it.
SodaPopRocks
I lie awake and listen to the hail against the walls some nights.
I think she did that too.
If I listen for long enough, I can't help but think about it.
I'll bet she couldn't help it either.
But don't cry.
Don't be sad.
The end of the day is still so long from now.
And even then is just the beginning.
Between Here and Then
It's when the sun falls that the sky shines brightest now.
The world calls them stars, but I tell myself it's you,
kissing holes in the dome between us
and leaving behind windows through which I can see you waiting.
And while the rains try their best,
delivering drops of you back to me with every spell,
they also bring a new chance to remember the truth:
that one day the sky will let me in too.
And inside of it,
we'll call ourselves together again.