There Are People Out There Who Know What It’s Like To Walk Around With A Book Inside You. For Years

Be Safe

I’m superficial, I know, and I’m growing, but I felt something last night when I hugged her bye. Maybe because I was drunk and she was high, but I didn’t want to let her go. She’s so cute and so stranded and so graceful and so damaged and so ready for whatever is about to happen next. She laid her head on my chest and said “be safe,” and I knew she was talking about more than just the drive home.

Where The Water Flows

See the river. Need the river. River wild. Tame the river. Want a city. Build a city. Flood the city. Blame the river. Build a wall. Hold it back. Keep it there. Dig it deep. Run a pipe. Get a drink. Water plants. River sleep. Board a ship. Travel north. Economics. Get in line. Hit a bridge. Sink the ship. Oil spill. Pay a fine. Snow melts. Up north. All that water. Coming down. High tide. Water rise. River crests. Leaving town. Higher walls. Deeper dredge. Levee breach. People drown. River mad. Eating land. Cypress trees. Can’t be found. Water flows. Downhill. Need a drink. Shit and piss. Flush the pot. To the lake. Don’t forget. Feed the fish. Oil and grease. Antifreeze. Down the drain. They don’t mind. Grab a pole. Cast it out. Catch a bite. Dinner time. Oil and grease. Fry it up. Kids say. It tastes funny. Wife sick. Healthcare. Plan canceled. No money. Take the kids. To the lake. Find a beach. Dive in. Fish stink. Sand sticky. Signs say. Don't swim. News says. Boil your water. After every time. It rains. House floods. Water dries. Do this all. Over again. River laughs. Lake cries. Travel West. Dry land. Build a house. In the hills. Fill your pool. Water plants. Never flood. Never rain. All the water. Drying up. River laughs. Lake too. Need a drink. Out of luck.

Just trying to find the art I’m good at so I can make more of it.

She was a half lit cigarette

  left smoking under the bed.

You had a chance to put her out,

  but you went to sleep instead.

As something slowly burned

  deep inside her core

You escaped into a dream

  as she set fire to the floor. 

Soulmates

You remind me of my ex-wife from a past life who I committed suicide to escape from when I made myself wings of feathers and wax, and fell to my death when I flew them into the sun. You just laughed and floated over me as I drowned.

They say birthmarks are entry wounds that show where we died before, and dreams are just memories we carried with us from the other side, which is why you looked so familiar the first time I saw you. Your feet never touched the ground.

My opening line was “you look like my daughter,” you smiled and asked “how old is she?” I said, “well if it all works out, five years from now she’ll be three, but I’m in no rush.” It felt like a third person existed between us.

And I wasn’t sure who we were before, or who are supposed to be, but I knew that on the other side of the world planted deep inside a forest there is a tree with our names carved into its side, and written in a language neither of us speak is inscribed

“forever is a pretty short time looking back on it,” and even though we may not be able to read it, we would instantly recognize our handwriting as evidence that we were part of the same tribe that died out a thousand years ago, and we would brace ourselves for

the earthquake as our souls shake and vibrate higher. We were sent here to repopulate so there was no time to apologize for everything we were about to put each other through. You just grabbed my hand and said “I look forward to getting tired of you.”

God don’t make mistakes, but people do. Souls only know wavelengths, and communicate through music and colors and sound; they don’t always remember to leave the key under the mat, or come home before 3 a.m., or put the toilet seat down, or

make sure to hold your hand whenever we’re out in public, because the flesh doesn’t understand it’s just a vessel full of flaws. Soulmates exist to serve as a reflection of how truly damaged we really are, how hurt, desperate and unexamined we are.

I never asked for a soulmate, just someone who hates all the same things I do, and in you I confronted all of the things I hated in myself, like a mirror that reveals the first time you realize you are no longer beautiful. My ugly is going take some getting used to.

I used to fear going to sleep next to you because I would get tangled in your hair and you would roll over, strangling me, leaving gasping for air in one of those dreams where you can’t quite wake yourself  up, until I realized that you only hogged the sheets so you could

expose me to the cold and wake up the other side of me whenever my dreams got off track. My arms would always go numb so I could never fight back. So instead of starting a war with you I would just kiss you on your cheek. I need you here with me.  

Maybe we’re just meant to walk through life trying to fill each-other-sized holes in ourselves. Feeling like we swapped souls at a crowded train stop like two strangers who picked up the wrong bag and were forced to wear the clothes they found inside.

I have that sweater you’ve been looking for, it’s a little stretched out but it still smells just fine. Find me again so we can make amends, or at least swap bags one last time. Everyone deserves a seventh chance.

I guess I’ll see you next lifetime when you and I are butterflies and during our migration we can gently clip wings and create a vibration that causes the tides to rise off the shores of Hawaii and forms a tsunami that crashes into the coast of Japan

and floods some kind of nuclear reactor that causes the world to spin backwards and we can finally rest our wings on the sand and look back on all we destroyed with a smile, and I’ll know that it was all worth it just to be with you when the world ends.   

Every time I see my Grandmaw she asks me why I never come around.  I tell her I’ve been busy doing things, like missing you, and leaving town.

Yet, you make me feel guilty whenever I ask for your company; I’m too needy,  get too attached, you can’t be all up under me. And I told my Grandmaw what you said, that I should spend more time alone, get to know me,  find myself,  do a few things on my own. 

Now, her memory ain’t the best, but she remembers that she never liked you much. Said that you were the needy one, so out of line and out of touch.

She told me that she missed me, but I’ve been going about it wrong. Grandmaw said we should treat love as a visitor and never as a home.

Lately I've Been Falling In Love

I try to fall in love at least once a week. Lately I’ve been falling in love with music and cities because people don’t always love you back the way you want them to. Instead of setting myself on fire, I’d rather buy a ticket to New York and fall in love with the view. Or listen to Coltrane and fall in love with the blues. Or run my finger across a map and fall in love with the idea of falling in love with someone new, somewhere new, in a place I’ve never been and in a language I’m not that fluent. But sometimes I can’t help myself and I still fall in love with you. All of you. Over and over again. I fall in love with the memories. I fall in love with the possibilities. I fall in love with cities I’ve never been to, like Montreal, or Paris, or Little Rock, Arkansas. I fall in love with new Prince songs I’ve never heard before. I fall in love with bad advice. I fall in love with that missing hour of sleep I lost last night. I fall in love with the people who love me every now and then just to see what that feels like. 

We love the beauty of flowers so much that we rip them from the ground take them out the sun put them in a vase and then watch them die. Such an ostentatious display of decadence and decay for one to think they can plant a garden inside. But whatever it takes to reaffirm us that we possess just a little bit of light to make tulips bloom in a dimly lit living room for just long enough to give us a glimpse of all the wonder the world has to hide. For just a brief moment we kept something alive. Even if we knew that it would eventually fall apart, we tried and we held out hope because for that short amount of time it was beautiful and we thought we had something to do with it. We felt we were the reason why when those petals finally opened up despite all the darkness we provide.

Where Are You? Please Don't Leave Me Here With These People: a love story