How could you have ever called what we had love?
When we communicated through text
And over phone lines
Phone lines that stretched across
Boundless expanses of desert
A string
Three states long
With a tin can on either end.

So I made you feel something.
Okay.
Well let's be honest,
Love
Is not an emotion.
Love is not a mood you can be in
(Although you certainly made it seem that way).
Love is lying naked
Trapped in one another's embrace
And shutting out all the noise.

Don't tell me you loved me.
Don't tell me that's what you call whatever that was.

What it was was sickness
Manifested in two teenagers
Saying "**** the world,
I just want you."

It was just teenagers being teenagers
Loners being sick
Together.

Do not confuse,
You made me feel worlds better
But don't call it love
'Cause love is not an emotion.
Love is souls dancing
And the space between two bodies
Touching
Don't even for a second tell me that's what you think that was.
Because it couldn't have been.

I didn't fall out of love.
I figured out what love wasn't.

Happy birthday,
by the way.
I just thought I’d write to you,
since I never really did

It’s been two years now
two complete rotations around the sun
since you died.
I probably think about you every week-
believe it or not,
you changed my whole outlook on life
But I’m sorry to say it didn’t happen until you left.
I think about you every time I leave the house in the morning
I think about how sudden it was
and how that happens every day to all kinds of people
even you.

I think about you every time I say goodbye to anyone
especially if the person I’m saluting is getting into a car
and when I say goodbye
I say it as heartfully as I can
and I hope that maybe they’ll realize that I’m saying
“I love you”
and “please, for the love of god, drive safely.

please.”

all in one word.
Because if I said it openly like that they’d all think I was totally mental.
I’m not mental.
I’m just a lover and a fighter
who lost something he didn’t even think he had the option of losing.

I think about you when I hug
anyone.
because you never know.
  and hugs are not ever worth half-assing.
                       ever.

  So maybe I lied.
and maybe I actually think about you multiple times a day every day of my life.
   not consciously i guess.
      but I can tell you for certain
that your absence is felt
          in one way or another
                      every
                             ­      day
                             of my life.

I wish I could have learned these lessons without losing you.
                        but you went all the same
                                         and here we all are.

             anyways happy birthday.
                          
                             Miss you.

Last night was one of those nights that makes your coffee a little blacker the next morning
And takes a few more cigarettes from your pack
And makes your ulcers worse
If you got ‘em.
Snuggled up alone
With a barrier three blankets wide
Between me and the rest of the world
Trying to heat my still-beating heart.

It was raining hard outside.

Inhale-
Exhale.

A smoke signal plumes from my defiant lips
Shivering in the cold
And rises into the atmospheric light of the city
It was never meant to be an SOS
It was intended to say
"Save yourselves"
But as far as I can see it has fallen entirely upon deaf ears
As just one voice in a confluence of voices-
A river of smoke signals climbing steadily into the smoggy air
Like prayers
To a god we know we don't believe in.

Inhale---------------------

Exhale.

Save yourselves
And it twists and bends and floats away
To meet the others
All screaming some collective emotion that will be left otherwise unexpressed;
And it is probably better that way.

I have been aboard this vessel for
Fifty months
Nine days
Ten hours
And some value of minutes
Which is unknown to me.
I am
Lost
At
sea.
For a while it was bearable.
I have enough water,
Books,
And *** to sustain me.
But now all I wish is to see a pair of sails
On the horizon.

I have nothing left
But to wander the seas
And find whatever is there
For me.

Days pass.
I have sympathized with the stars;
For it seems to me that they are also
Sailors
Lost at sea;
Traveling towards their own fate
In directions
Unbeknownst to me.

At night I look up
When the sky is clear
And greet them,
I wish them strong winds.
I wonder if they have looked down on me.
I have confessed all my sins to them
For they are all I have.

The stars and I.

And we sail the same sea
But we will never meet
For we are infinitely far.
This is our curse.

At times I have fallen asleep on deck
Beneath them
In my hammock
As the sea
Rocks me
And sings songs,
Songs of ports and
Sails
On horizons.

It was on the morning following such a night
That I arose
And at long last
Saw
With my own eyes
A sail in the distance
And I maneuvered so fast as my small craft would allow
To be near to him
And as I came closer
I looked with my dusty spyglass
And my heart dropped from my chest
For he flew a black flag
Which bore upon it a skull.
I am writing this now as they approach
For I know I cannot evade them
Nor outgun them.
I am writing this because I now know my fate:
To die by their hands.

I am horrified,
But there is
One thing that will give me peace:
That I may
Finally
Sail
Among the stars.

This is home.
A home full of life.
A home full of music.
The song of voices and laughter fills the walls and floors.
A home full of light.
And this light pours through the windows and drenches the rooms in warm yellows
And passes through the leaves of the trees without and the plants within
And soaks deep into my skin and warms my face
And wakes us in the morning.
Yes, this is home.
Not a house, not a domicile.
Not so simple as a structure to provide shelter from the rain.
It is made of wood and nails,
the floorboards are uneven,
And the silverware in the drawers are all different and span decades of use.
In the summer it is hot,
In the winter it is cold,
And it is old,
But
It is not dead.
For we live here
And we give it life by living in it.
And it gives back by being light.
It is our fortress.
And these walls can keep out exactly as much of the world outside as we want.
Or we can open the doors and windows and let the wind and the leaves and the world rush in.
This is our home.
And it lives;
because we live too.