To My Childhood Best Friend

I can feel your ghost knocking against my ribs again.
Like the door to my childhood home, you push yourself in
through the threshold, and all that is good about you comes
rushing back into me,
like a resurgence of memory - and blood -
and unabandoned thought.

Those nights we spent lying on blankets under the Christmas tree,
wrapped in knit bows and cotton ribbon, our eyes crusted
with the beginnings of innocent sleep... those are the nights
I miss the most.
Now, you remain as nothing but the weight on my eyelids, pulling me
under boughs much too squat.

Your essence coils around my lungs, fighting back against
the void... the void... the ever flowing emptiness that has
been my keeper since you've gone. There hasn't been a day
that I haven't wept
over the milk you spilled on the carpet in my bedroom.
I can still smell like sweet, sweet rot.

From Nothingness

I'll pretend not to care until everything goes numb.
When the world drains itself of color
Like a slow faucet, spiraling and sputtering,
Turning black and white,
That's when I'll finally find peace in the fact that
I couldn't remember the color of your eyes.

When the beating of my heart
Becomes muffled in the stillness of the gray,
And my lungs fill themselves with void -
I will rejoice in that euphoric emptiness.
Your heartbeat was always a mystery to me, and
Apathy is a welcomed friend to drying cheeks.

I have spent so many nights wandering streets
Crowded with the yawning ghosts of your memory,
Attempting to pluck your scent from the
Glittering wisps of forgotten thought.
If I angle your face just right in the street lights,
I swear I can almost see your breath.

From nothingness,
And utter abyss.

Anna

She is a shadowy wisp in my lungs,
Moving throughout my breathing being,
Cautious, quick, and simple.
There is no use in trying to force her down-
Away.
She sticks to tissues and begs to be born again.
And in my weakness I will oblige.

I am no stronger than that ephemeral wisp.
She pushes against my insides,
While I push against her with lungs at full capacity.
And we do no more than children
Breathing upon opposite sides of the same pane of glass,
Writing secret messages with our fingers that only appear
Backwards and wrong.

In my braver moments, she retreats to my stomach
Where my mouthfuls of words stopper up and bubble,
In my moments of weakness, I feel her circling
In the back of my throat like an eel, a gag.
And once again, I am a shy child reluctant to speak.
I draw pictures with the hands in my lap,
Though no one sees.

No one ever sees.

A Thought, a Thought.

The only reason I bother you so much is because I love you.

When you're out late, having the time of your life,
Believe me when I say that I'm happy for you.
I'm so incredibly grateful for those nights

Because I remember the times when those nights wouldn't come.
When you laid in bed wishing for change,

Hoping one day you'd meet someone you could call a friend.

Now that those nights have come,
And those friends have walked into your world with
Open arms, 

Open minds,
Open bottles,
All I ask for in return is a thought.
One or two words, just letting me know that you're safe.
That all those moments I spent next to you in bed,

-When you were feeling lonely and downtrodden-
That those nights weren't in vain.
So I don't have to look at these blessings with contempt,

And curse the names of those I call blessings.

Please, just a thought.
Because you're always in every thought of mine.

Seattle

There's a stone in my mouth.
It sits against my teeth and
pushes them out.
One by one, they hit the floor,
Plinking across the tile like skipping stones.

It salts my wounds where
They left me,
And I hate the taste of the flitting river fish.
But my jawbone is sore and creaking,
And it, too, falls to the floor.

I never expected much from empty promises.
They're nothing more than hollow sighs,
A waste of air,
Like rain plodding against a child's rubber ball.
Echoing, vacant, and flat.

We will never go to Seattle.
You're only saying we will now
Because you're caught in a riptide of guilt,
And basking in the glory of a
Magical moment away from me.

I realize now that you've grown
Too accustomed to my presence
And have decided it's no longer necessary
To love me the way you used to
When we were still new to this.

And this stone you've placed in my mouth,
It hurts so badly, but I can't speak
Around it.
I'm gagging on unspoken words
And the taste of fish.

It's so unforgiving.
I can't seem to swallow my pain,
Nor can I cry out for help.
And you're daydreaming about Seattle
While I crumble to rubble on the floor.

Is this the feeling of falling out of love?
I'm scaring myself with my own poetry.
But it's all gushing around the stone,
And it won't leave me be.
I think I'll be carried away completely.

You'll never read this poem anyway.

Tooth Marks

While you remember her freckles, her hazel eyes, her form
I remember her glow, her gaze, her soft pull

And you underestimated her
You tasted her sweet and you knew her body
But her mind was clouded with a certain mystery
Only she could see

While you danced along her edges and sang to her sands

I was awash in her tides, and she lapped against my hands

And I knew her
I knew her state, her ever-flowing compassion

And you entered her like an eager child
So she was cold

While I breathed her in and let her salt cleanse my miseries

You devoured her, hungry, like an aching animal, licking injuries

And you chewed her

She felt each tooth like the start of decay

And she confided to you her rot

And to me, her name

However much I loved her, she is too much like the sea

Always present but ever-leaving, receding.

And she left again

And much like the water, the salt she is made from
She slipped through my open fingers

And you grasped at open air to contain her