i've watched you die one thousand times
in one hundred different ways

still, i can't decide which is worse
what my mind creates at night,
or, what we found that day

this reoccurring theme of mine,
all that i've catastrophized,
comes out at night to play

sometimes, my mind
makes me watch you die -

a masochistic gift for me

sometimes, it's that i know you'll die
and i can't warn of what i see

once i dreamt you faked your death
to prove our lack of care
you didn't even tell your best friend, Steve
he was just as confused and unaware
"i knew it! you guys don't love me"
you screamed, as i stood there

my mind still fights the guilt i have
but it rears its ugly head

i woke up on my 25th birthday
crying, from the torments of my bed

the dreams that make me pause the most
are where you live
but you're not you

you're angry, and hurt, and you're like a child
and you won't calm down to speak to me
and i don't know what to do

but i know why i have that dream
it's my soul's decline of guilt

because if that's what we saved you for
our lives couldn't have been rebuilt

my mind wanders to that night
staring down the stairs

it's my mind and it pleads with me:
it's better we weren't there

I knew you were there —
knuckles resting like they didn’t know what to do.
I heard your breath through the wood.

You almost knocked. I felt it —
the air pulling back,
the hush flexing its muscles.

I almost opened the door. I felt that too —
the lock daring me to turn it,
the weight of the air leaning hard against my chest.

But neither of us moved.

We just stood there —
two statues pretending not to be waiting —
except I heard you breathing.
And I know you heard me too.

if you love me
- despite - the things that make me ugly
you don't really love me...
but you're doing me a favor
and i'll never be able to thank you enough
\
if you love me
because, you say, that - i'm not ugly -
you don't really love me...
you're just pretending that i'm not ugly
and you'll never be able to see me enough.
or maybe one day you will,
and that will be too much
\
for you to really love me
you need to know the ways in which i'm ugly
and love me for those reasons too...
or at the very least, understand them

I fell for him, not in whispers or sighs,
But in crescendos, in rhythms, in skies
Painted with notes that danced in the air,
Each song a thread of the love we’d share.

He wasn’t just music—he was the sound,
The hum of the earth, the pulse underground.
A genre, a chord, a tune soft and true,
Would echo his soul, would carry his hue.

But now he is gone, and silence remains,
A hollow refrain, a ghost in the strains.
Yet when music plays, I’m drawn to the year,
I search for a sign he might have been near.

Did he hum this tune? Did he hear this beat?
Did it brush his soul? Was it his retreat?
The thought is a comfort, though bittersweet,
A harmony bridging where life and death meet.

For love like this does not fade away,
It lingers in songs, in chords that replay.
So I listen, I wonder, I dream him alive,
Through melodies where his spirit survives