your every breath is a gift

we closed our eyes in that empty pool, while each wave that crashed over us resembled more and more a hand or a hat, a music note or a cup of beer. and as i let my hair run free on the floor of this musical watering hole, my thoughts traced the outlines of your face. blue eyes, green rings, muddy hair: traits reappear like a print through the press, back light on your limbs makes you look 10 feet tall. but under the airwaves of sound, i slept, and she was next to me, she helped me to remember that she was all i needed on most days. but my eyes always turn north from my friends, and i watched people make beds around us. i recall settling into you like they settle into the concrete, and with each pull forwards and backwards there is a sense of carelessness. but we are born again in our ability to forget; calm in that quiet city you said "you gotta leave 'em hanging like men from a tree," these men who have done no wrong like we have done. but i ain't saying i'm sorry baby, i'm saying it's time to turn around and remember what it was like before i was your easy way out. and your call from the couch pulled me back in like a bird's lazy song, and what mistakes were made! but these memories today glide out of me, as you did in your pool full of chlorine and alcohol, like fire you breathed.

'"I'm yours alone!"' you swore. Given cause to doubt you, I think less of you, dear. But more about you."

wanna line up all my memories and pull a firing squad on all my regrets. every minute under your godforsaken covers is a minute i wasted. every minute my hands sped up or we pushed ourselves further into each other, generating all that heat between us, i wanna knock to the ground with an AK-47. like the expert i used to be, my destruction was an art form. but i abandoned my post long ago, and today, i have nothing left to give because i realize now that i will waste my time and it will be another moment i could have been fucking someone else. right? but no, because i couldn't, because i'd hang myself with my own shame and guilt, and bind my own hands with the veins of my heart. my own, my own, my own. sacrifice myself! a concept i've nursed for too long, kept so close to my breast that it feels unnatural to finally peel it away. i understand, for i am a myriad of personalities and i have a certain way of looking at you with your own eyes. more or less, i have forgotten myself beneath the layers of soil throughout this state. my foot falls and a piece of myself disintegrates there, and it becomes the dust you breathe in as you trail me. i can't even separate this between him, you, me, home. cannot order what i've written, cannot tell you whom this is written for, if you were to ask. i suppose that's what they call a gradual descent into mental abandonment. into a trap door beneath my cerebellum. fill myself up with narcotics and look at you with those dead amber eyes of mine; even in my clouded mind i see the truth rear it's ugly throat, and i am able to silently dissect you as you plan your hand's movements, deep inside the threat of my leave. it is a shame how i will forget you, how i will leave you behind. how many men have been between the day i met you and today! how many men will be between the day i leave you and the day i open my throat to choke out a legal promise to another! leave, not in the sense abandon, or break apart from, but emotionally detach from. this exterior houses such a disgrace of a woman. my ability to blind myself from the wrongs of the people i love. they all leave me in a fury, a fuss, or a fear. yet i allow them inside when they cry for my forgiveness below my third floor window, where i hid inside my childhood. i allow them back into me, for i am weak at their promise.

journal #9

seeing you this afternoon was like looking into a crystal ball and remembering what it was like to love with all of my senses and lose it just as quickly, but i'm glad we can stand there and accept each other for what we have become and forgotten. how many cigarettes we have smoked since i met you, how many beds we have slept in, how many other people we've shared the sheets with. how many kisses were in between the last one we shared. how many times i forgot you, remembered you, and forgot again, only to remember shortly after. how many times i saved all my hope for this moment in my life where i meet you and my legs stand strong. to accept you and me, to accept that i will love you but i have left you, finally, where you belong.

Journal #7

choose the highest bidder. can't decide if it's me or you, which to choose. safety and precaution over danger and tear-stained cheeks. are you something i wanna pick up and carry home? no, you are not. you've gotta be left where i found you, i shouldn't even brother looking into you, but jesus it's too late for that, isn't it? but isn't that defeating purposes of man and life and love and hope in general? or is it just one day with a brighter smile? it is not my decision.



i'm too fucking high for this shit.

Journal #6

glory is being able to hold you with no feeling. look into those gemstone eyes with strong knees, a firm grip on my spot. answer the phone with a steady voice, choose who i love without concern, constraint, or comparison to you. Look at him, think "It's Him" not "It's You."

The gift of falling out of love. seems like repayment is in my future, hope it is, know i deserve it, wait for it. something new, something old, something borrowed, something you.

I WANT YOUR TEARS

god damn, baby! false pretense to think we could occupy one another's space. get in my bed, down under the waves and mountains of monumental covers, bury our heads in each other, that makes us charlatans after not too long. whether you love me or you use me i'm still a pawn in a bigger scheme of plays and recounts of ability and action. you've gotten this far, but my hips have a way of saying, "Not tonight, make it count, please God, make it count, please, please." i fucked it up but at least now you know i'm not full of bendable appendages, i'm made up more of a series of situational accuracies, part-time paramounts, roots, creation, confusion, smoke. ready to write about somebody knew, my life is a series of reconnections;we'll stick because when it starts it never changes and we are able to pick up at any point. it mostly comes down to, "jesus christ, that's a pretty face" and it's one i gotta hold, gotta kiss, gotta see. don't need to, never need to. i can choose to ignore, it won't cover me anymore in all that lust, that desire. but when i leave you again for years and years i bet when we make another our hands will feel our bodies like they do. like we find them now drawn to hips, cheek, ass, tits. nails scrape the skin on backs like chalk. always gotta touch my face, you can't stop kissing my lips. my young, young lips. young and new, young and yours.

Journal #5

time to get out. sick of your bullshit, time to cut you off. but let's not be children about it, no. it's so much easier to walk away without having to put any more effort into it. a little less calamity and a little more disinterest would suit us so fine. ah but the most trivial part of our pursuit to one-up the next player is that it's never a two-player game; that is, there is always someone else that this could be about. some other faces i've got lined up and crossed off 'cause it's time to go back home to the friends i'd like to keep.