Oh, these tangled lyrics that float off you skin,

holding my mouth open to the summer light, honey drip breeze

down my chin.

We were almost strangers lying there

so warm. So much is different

in the close corner of your room,

my impossibilities flourish.

There's so much in this speck of dust

you have to wonder if there is

a little more to me and a little more to you

that is shared by the stars and the dirt in my shoes

that makes these little hurts

more of an acceptable incidence

rather than a stain I can't ever get out.

Find a theme and stick to it.

Otherwise You will always wander, carrying a reaching black pitted thing sticking to your ribs and scratching up your organs trying to get out. It will whisper and scribble out your eyes from the inside, hold its hand over your mouth while you scream and kick, but you can't shake it off.

It is this. Visceral and real, hunching your shoulders and sharpening your spine, you will find it hasn't left you even when everyone else has. It will hold your hand at night, stroking your hair and dripping ink so you don't forget this feeling.

Forgive it if there's a slight stinging, that's inevitable when one's treading on the brain. You didn't think you could take feeling like all this in conjunction with one's absence, so it dipped your mind in dust and shoved it in the corner, forgot to mention it. Stings will be aches now, then only a far off throb. It hopes you will work past this, and stop falling into its arms. It brings matches and lights up that smile and convinces those of us still left you're still all there, when you don't have the energy left to.

And even mountains come crashing down.

We will forget today and what we said

and the tilt of the grimace

which you pulled off your face

when you saw I was looking.

I can rewind my VHS tapes and watch them again

and recall what parts made you say what things

and how your hands fluttered up in frustration

when you couldn't hit that note

or think of the phrase

or remember to ask how your parents had been.

I asked, they're fine.

The times of we, they have been dissected

and pulled apart to pieces of pasta

digested and spit back out.

I feel like we're still speaking

over that dinner in the summer

or was it the spring

where you had on a funny color

and I was wearing socks.

I never wear socks.

You loved that orange cup

and I kept picking up pieces of lint from the bathroom floor.

I don't think those leaves were ever so green again.

I'm writing this song I said I would

I think I showed you one time

but you didn't know so much

back then.

We did this thing where you'd find something to think on

and maybe you remember, maybe you don't

I'd think with you, like it was osmosis of the minds

and you'd hand me a rubber band

and I'd show you the right keys to press

and we made lots of food

to eat, and think over

how much we loved how easy this was.

You told me, on the street, when my nails were blue,

in one manner or the next

that it had been slow shades of goodbye

peeling back and back and further yet,

down to the very quick, since we had met at first,

when I was on the lawn,

and my nails weren't actually painted at all.

We knew, I knew.

It was to wreck this pretty picture

that we made it in the first place.

There was the once, when your window got broken.

Sorry about that.

Well, you busted up my sidewalk anyways

and I spilled something on your shoes,

so I guess it evens out.

I'll leave you back there,

from when I knew you

and not as the cold stranger

who really I could call

but honestly could I?

When a mountain falls, it meant to.

it wants to stay down and sleep

too tired too sad to be a bright spot

for us to look at

and wonder about how it went from that to this.

You'll stay back there. I like you there.

This is heaven, surely not here.

When I turned 15, everyone started catching up with me

At first it was a fun game.

I bought new running shoes

and stayed a good mile or two ahead

Never minding the people I brushed past.

But bystanders are only bystanders

if they don't speak.

Mine knew me and how I see.

My feet were walking quietly but quick

and the race didn't seem as such,

and I retained my tenuous rank

as leader untouched by the pack.

Fine, and funny,

those behind can sneak by too

when you do not look to check

yourself against them.

Walking now, sliding down

Not given up but steady

not good enough to break

the mold is cold

and a few years down the road

I won't be worth that effort.

Pop, bing.

I hide you away, become myself.

The mad grass feeling on your arms

Deep blue, cool blue, roll and dive

I don't know what I'm writing.

Dirt and walls crumbling onto skulls

standing there plain, in a white dress.

So. Soft and brush your cheek

Freckles. I bite my nails

My eyes whipped on wind taking me to a different place,

we're back and I'm crying

Blood on my palms, dripping.

Does this mean anything?

Smoke ring, dancing

Oh, cry cry.

Sorry.

Flashlight eyebulbs

take my words love them not me

No, didn't mean. Love the latter

purple white and the stripes

have you seen them today?

Vomit bubbles up and please don't leave.

This is pathetic

Back on a cliff, forks fall down before I do

You built me a table and a lamp

and I hug you

on the way down. Stay here

There's a theme.

Oh, you know?

I think

I'm done.

...

I am so sorry for everything I put you through.

Do you know what you did?

They've never seen the likes of what you have of my utmost heart.

The path to it is all grown over with thorned vines.

And you thought it was pretty. Sunny.

There was an air of reckless abandon on it you couldn't,

can't, help but admire.

But you prefer paved roads made of concrete.

So you put up a gate and charged $100 a head.

Nobody but you would see the intricacies

in how the flowers grew in the dirty dusty road,

so would never think to pay so much to pass,

and slowly you would so starve me of company

and hoped the dirt would dry and turn to ash;

for you to mix with water and stick bricks in;

for you to relegate to another back-road for your personal use.

But I've loved you for the time you spent walking with me.

These thoughts so often now seep

and crawl into the folds of my brain

and settle in between its soft tissues,

saturating and bonding with the rest.

Your winter comes to call,

to lay its hurt down.

The words arrive in flurries.

You obscure my vision for all else.

Ice in the brain, ice in the brain.

You exit and leave only the cold,

my mind to atrophy

after your echoes have knocked down icicles

to slice into me

and leave rivers where warmth once was.

I swear I'm back the moment it all melts

licking at puddles in my palms

to tide me over until I find your face.

This is crippling.

Oh, how I long to bring you down to my level

and make you stay.

I could take you and keep you and twist you.

But I'd be sorry.

That's the difference between you and me.