7.

there are people who shine.
they are not yours,
you cannot hold them. still,
some things you do not give
away.

stars are on your ceiling.
a token of years of your life,
something that you cannot part
with. a matter of breath,
dust, scientific theory.

you are not your past,
where you came from. these
are only mile markers of the
choices you continue to make.

some things are too strong to fight,
some things are not worth the loss.

6.

there was a slide,
a shift of a nature
we have yet to speak of.
you, the diagonal,
waiting for a flux of time
or distance or fortune.

there aren't as many
misunderstandings as we
extemporize. and we make up
messy with non-traditional
patterns traipsing through
larger parts of town.

some days grey,
the others blue. there's no
explanation for being
everywhere at once.

5.

she only calls with fits,
rage, or tears. the color red
and how for her it doesn't
fade before anything or
anyone else.

we can only extend so far.
i listen with a full heart
and hang up exhausted.

my hand and wallet
are absent but everything else
keeps going.

4.

i have been cold. it's
a testament when you tease
yourself about having a grey heart
and how you claim you don't
care about shel silverstein poetry or
what it did to you as a child.

i never was a giving
tree, something you
come back to later
in spite of circumstance.

it's forty degrees out,
i won't wear a coat
that i don't own.

and i'm still following the traditions
of winter versus summer.
what that means for
the color and length
of my hair based upon
the life and death of
my father.

the further down it goes
the harder it is
to get back up.

there isn't much left to swallow.

3.

it's christimas.
your favorite sheets are on
your empty bed. to you
this has always been the season
of loss and losing. the gates of hell
swing freely. a secret hope,
no concern of anything else
marching in. the phone turned off,
the other unplugged from the wall.
though there is no such thing as
isolation. we are walking around
the words we don't want
to admit.

you consistently tell me
what i am, what i am not,
and what i could possibly be.

i haven't been listening but
have been busy waiting,
quiet contemplation and hoping
the next year is about more
than survival.

my feet are in the mud.
don't worry, i know what we're in for,
and what comes next
but there will be no telling.

2.

no one will cart your joy for you.
eventually the path
with so many curves becomes
something you fully recognize.
the sharp turn is just a muscle,
everything anatomical. i won't
every go into too much detail.
over three million beats of the heart
in one lifetime, conduction systems,
sternum, greater trochanter,
oxygen we think that others steal,
everything is there.

you already know what can be spread
through scare tactics. it doesn't matter
we are still the same; every action,
every reaction. we don't know where
we are going because we reached the end
when we began feeling again.

i could never survive you.

1.

it's december and that means
all the calendars are being taken down.
there is nothing in the night, no last
punches to say we made the year what it
was supposed to be inside of wars
of biting our cheeks and gasping
for breath we didn't have and couldn't borrow.

you know better than to be kind,
no mighty god is bearing gifts
or waiting to save those of us
who were never worthy.

and really, fuck you for the comparison.

i can measure the seasons,
the weight of the tone you carry
and how your text is heavier than
your action. and i also know
you can get too busy for missing,
this is something i was taught;
an exhibition on barren ribs
and a bloody mouth.

believe it or not i have seen every season,
just not yours. so i'm continuing to promise
myself at the four corners of the country,
hoping one itch is scratched and i can
meet a face that will see mine smiling.

there is a shadow with words,
this makes me laugh. you
aren't familiar with that type of world
or perhaps even the gesture.
and i don't think you know -
i barely recognize myself anymore,
much less myself inside of you
and we are fading, we always have been.