Myspace Blogs shut down, and I thought I had lost my old shorts forever, but they e-mailed them to me. And for that, I am grateful.

   They told me that you may have been able to hear me, even if you couldn't respond. I didn't believe them. If you could hear me, you would be incapable of keeping that straight face, incapable of keeping those blue-sky eyes comfortably shut. If you could hear me crying like that, you would sit up. You would take me in your arms and you'd tell me in that low, steady voice that everything was going to be alright, even though we both knew nothing was alright, nothing ever would be alright again. Because without you beside me, nothing could be real.

    I sat beside that electronic contraption of a bed and traced your veins with my fingertips, pretending they were a blueprint for our life and that if I could just memorize every twist and curve, then I could rebuild what we'd had. What we should have now. What was taken away by the Chiclet-square teeth and quick tongue of some million-dollar doctor who couldn't wrench his eyes from his shiny black shoes to tell me that the only man I'd ever love was going to die, and that there was nothing anybody could do, and that I should probably just go home and get some sleep because you weren't going to wake up anyhow, and that he was sorry, sir, but he had other patients to see.

    I was kept from your body by a web of wires and tubes and beeps and tears and memories. And all I could think was what Sarah said. That love is watching someone die. And I thought, then this should be easier, shouldn't it? This should be the most natural thing in the world. But instead, I held my breath, because I felt that I'd already taken too many today and you hadn't taken enough, and I watched as each descending peak on the LCD took you a little farther away from me. And I thought of everything that we were supposed to do. We were supposed to buy that little car, you know, the one with some ridiculous 30 miles to the gallon? And we were supposed to get married in a backyard somewhere, and we were supposed to honeymoon on that little stretch of rocks and sand on the edge of Lake Huron, in that cottage we'd fallen in love with one summer. And we were supposed to have a puppy and a house and maybe a kid or two, eventually. Eventually. But every plan we'd ever made was just a tiny prayer to father time, wasn't it? And now eventually would never come.

    I traced your shape with my eyes, storing you in my memory, trying to form a lasting image. And it stung like a violent wind to realize that our memories depend on a faulty camera in our minds, and that no matter how hard I tried to hold on, you would fade. And as the TV entertained itself in the corner, the beeps and whirs and the rushing of air through that tube in your nose came to a halt, and I prepared to speak a final word in that place where we only say goodbye. But it didn't happen like in the movies. You didn't slowly exhale, admit defeat, fade quickly and give way to the orderlies waiting anxiously with a stretcher, wondering how I was going to take it, if I was going to be one of those crazy guys that screamed and threw things and tore the curtains down as his lover died. You kept on breathing, even without the assistance. But you looked increasingly haggard and your breaths came in uneven jolts, like someone was shoving the air down your throat against your will. Maybe God. Maybe me. After an hour, it slowed. Your muscles relaxed, and you were gone. And Sarah's words still rang through my head, almost annoyingly, like a fight song at a college football game; yeah, yeah, it's that song again, lah-dee-dah, go fight roar, it was fun the first time, but enough already. Love is watching someone die. Right. But who was going to watch me die?

    As I drifted through the waiting room, everyone lifted their heads from the linoleum, briefly, almost unnoticeably. Nobody really looked at me. I wondered if it was because I was gay and they didn't know how to relate to me, or if they just didn't want to see the truth in my eyes, the blatant evidence of extreme loss that they were soon to experience for themselves. In either case, I pitied them. I moved stoically forward.

    I made my way downstairs and into the gargantuan parking structure, realizing that I had no idea where I had parked. I wandered the rows and rows of vehicles, remembering... remembering. You would have laughed at how silly this was, me, lost in this sea of impersonal SUVs and Hummers and pickups, emotionless. Like Pacman. Just doing my job, navigating these corridors.

     I retained the stone façade I had held since you'd gone until finally I found the car. I slid into the front seat and just sat, staring ahead at the glare of my headlights on the dimmed bulbs of the car parked in the spot in front of me, facing mine. My lights were giving life to those dead lamps, it seemed. I almost laughed at the futility of the thought that immediately ran through my head: that I wished I could somehow restore your life, just like that. One headlight to another. A simple turn of the key.

    I needed a smoke. I never smoked. You always did. Somehow it felt appropriate. I rifled through the CD pamphlets and discarded takeout menus in the center console with no luck. I moved on to the glove compartment, hoping to find your stash. Id always thought that the glove compartment was inaccurately named, because behind its door was nothing to keep my fingers warm. Except this time, I was wrong. There lay the intricately knit gloves I'd thought I'd lost two winters ago, the ones you'd bought me for Christmas the year I'd bought you that Espresso machine. You said you felt like a shitty boyfriend, but I said it was okay, because I would drink your espresso and I wouldn't let you wear my gloves. I pulled the gloves from their no-bigger-than-a-breadbox prison and ran my fingers across them. I brought them to my face and inhaled. The grey knit smelled like cigarettes, because you had insisted on warming my trembling fingers with your tainted breath. And I hated you for insisting and I hated you for making me feel like I needed you and I hated you for leaving always the faint scent of tobacco embedded in the wool and I loved you for being the only person I had to find such trivial reasons to hate.

    It wasn't cold out. It was hardly autumn. But I slipped the gloves over my shaking fingers anyway, adding a smell to my sensory portrait of you. And I could swear, as I pulled them on, I heard your voice in my ear. "Are you crying?" you asked. "No," I replied, voice stale and thin in the empty car. A single tear carved its way through my stony exterior. And it came to me then that you were a truth I would rather have lost than to have never lain beside at all. You asked: "Why not?"

that time

a poet cries for no one and everyone at once
and she hadn't seen him there, but
he'd seen her and
he couldn't pass by any longer
she had nothing to say, not sorry-hello-
and he couldn't just wait anymore
leaves are rain in the winds of june
strange breeze brings things for what they're worth
upside out and inside down the world spins oddly tilted

for what it's worth, i would have stayed forever
would have lived a lie if it was you
uncomfortable was easy in your bed and
me was we in the context of your embrace
you know i miss you, yeah?
like before-blooms too deep to drink
my fears like wildfires quenched in your eyes
and to think i was surprised at the time
that i wanted to leave

under covers sinking ships are saved in the night
to sail another dawn, just one more moment
before becoming lost at sea
and moonlight pretends it's permanent while
seeping its way irreversibly into your skin
blood runs concealed under present, past and
we must take cover from impending future's flesh
each day that you rescue me from myself brings
me-- at once further and closer to truth
i'll take my time
to hide from you and watch you slowly fade
watercolor too thin to stay bold

my secrets like bruises stain my bare skin
and i know you mean well and the world
but i still won't let you see all of me.
it's hard to stop loving when i'm not sure
if i still do, ever did, maybe will...

been a while.

just found a bunch of old writing in random notebooks and such while packing to move. probably nothing worth remembering, but I'd rather have them on here than on random pieces of paper.

1)

I go to Salvation Army to buy things I don't need,

things no one ever needed and that's why they're there in the first place.

Sometimes they play decent songs and I'll bop along to the music

through rows of apple-printed teacher's vests and

century-old prom dresses and

suspenders too tiny or too huge for any normal-shaped person.

And these plants, are they plastic?

No, alive-ish, and dying, and so am I,

but aren't we all,

and I move on to the electric gadgets,

some working, some long dead,

first the large (why would I pay $700 for a moldy fridge when

i can get a fresh one and

a smile with more than two teeth in it

for less at Lowe's)

then the small (what the hell is this amalgamation,

hot-air hair curlers and jumper cables and a lamp had a baby?)

and then I see something I could maybe actually use,

a griddle, but it's dirty,

and the rest on this shelf,

the twin quesadilla makers and the George Foreman grill,

caked with greasy cheese residue, make me wonder

why people don't wash things before giving them away,

why people don't just use a fucking frying pan.

2)

love tumors in my brain,

and tomatoes in the garden,

grow slow and keep me sane--

but i hate them, beg your pardon.

up by veins and through by blood,

you creep slowly inside.

slice me open, organ flood;

inhibitions forced untied.

various kitchen utensils:

forks and spoons and knives,

force us to live in these stencils

leading our samehouseseperate lives.

set me free set me free set me free--

no, hold on tight, don't let me be me.

3)

you spoke like my never-had mother

you made me

want to write

want to write more

and look into eyes and

play with the dirt and

faint.

you made me feel.

made me want to wrap myself in

your metal skies and

taste your sweet silverglowing sweat

and dew

and damp

and bloom.

you made me.

4)

i'm not daughter

after four years of college, i know the difference between drunk and high

invaluable education

she and i aren't close

some letters to write

formal goodbyes

she said, "i didn't mean to ignore you."

5)

i can see the stars shifting west,

and you're here but i'm there and

we're everywhere but each other.

and my tablecloth shoes want to go back to the desert,

but the graves and the spaceships

and the half-done cigarettes and

i love you because.

6)

the what ifs are killing me

sinking their teeth into my

ams and ares and will be-s

and tearing the flesh off my is-s

they yesterday their way into my tomorrows

and they keep me from living today.

my heart used to beat, once.

what-next. what-next.

but it's slowed to a dull what-if.

7)

my thumbs have fallen off

but i am not worried.

when the first to go are the most important,

you do not bother yourself with the rest.

it will be easy when my mouth and

my knees and my eyebrows are gone.

easy when my everything follows suit

and finds somewhere easier to be.

8)

a room full of mirrors and i can't see myself.

air glows incandescent and i breathe neon.

a bullet could come through these walls,

any one of these walls.

i can't press this button.

bows and curtsies and i'm still alone.

my lungs are bleeding.

a bullet could shatter this glass.

i spin and i spin and i knock shit down and blow shit up and

sew my mouth open and

a bullet will come through these walls,

any one of these walls,

any one of these upsidedown days.

9)

there is a bird who sits on my shoulder

he pecks my eyes and my teeth

he won't go away

he has my face and he sits on my shoulder and

he won't go away

my neck is bare. my thoughts are glowing.

he won't go away

he am I and I are him and

I won't go away anymore

and to see the fire in your eyes
like the rocky mountains spinning overhead--
great lake swimmers, oceanless, lovelocked,
kept here, our bodies as maps
guiding us to nowhere.
i see what moves beneath them, there:
hidden, shattering, no resolve, no remorse,
just the wind raging through my hair and
sweeping me off of my feet and into your arms.
i want to feel again what you feel.
i want to see again what you see, or
what you saw, maybe, in me, once,
before the world spun too fast, or
perhaps just tilted slightly further into oblivion.
i thought i was over, thought you were under.
thought i was gone, thought you had stayed.
but tumbling and spinning and splayed, i fell
faster than i'd ever been able to build myself up.
i didn't know, had really no idea
how destructible, invisible, broken i could be
until i was face down and drowning
in a shallow pool of someone i no longer knew.

i had to write something.

Sometimes I focus so hard that the glass disappears and I'm between the leaves.
Strange, how I only like them when there's a filter.
They're dying, and so am I, but aren't we all,
and then the sky's this color blue like steel in a storm
and I'm the horizon and I can't ever stop.
Hello? I can't talk now. Not to you.
Because we're not we, we're you and --- me,
and I'm in the trees, just trying
to find my pulse.

i try and i try and i try and i try
until
it's okay,
i don't have a heart anymore.
and the songs on repeat don't sound the same.
they morph and they bloom and they bleed into me,
and i care for a minute or two
and i wear down all my erasers
and my words become permanent.
but it's okay,
i don't have a heart anymore.
but then the sky's this color blue like
steel in a storm and
you see me and
i see you and
we swirl and we sing and we sink but
i don't have a heart anymore.

there are these days.
days where I want to take every song that ever made me cry
and every person that ever made me doubt myself
and every more and every no and every you're not good enough
and i want to put them all in a box
and climb inside.
today is not that day,
tomorrow will not be that day.
maybe the next day,
maybe the day after that.
maybe the day i wake up and you're gone
and i wait and wait and wait and wait
but you never come back.
and i'll get up and i'll go to work and i'll drive my car and i'll smoke my cigarettes and i'll write my stupid nothings.
and i'll tell myself to be strong.
i need to be stronger.
i need to be strongest.
but i'll never be strong enough
to keep from losing you.
if you say a word over and over it loses its meaning.
strong is a funny string of letters.
so are you.