me and may 28. 2018
this is lonely and the morning dark becomes the evening dark and then the morning dark
and because i don’t pray and because i would never pray – maybe when i’m gone you can imagine me as somebody you could have cast in a high school play about somebody who wished he could help you understand the intensity of his every single emotion and how can somebody tell you that this will get better because now i cannot handle the different punctuation marks after every single smile frown shake cry laugh moan etc. and you have no idea what’s beneath these feathers, do you?
because now i am beside myself when you’ve forgotten how to know me
and now we’re all older and maybe i’ve always known since i was able to know anything that this is how it would end with my chapters beside me suffocated beneath a white sheet and my eyes closed the note pinned to my hair and part two would make no sense to anybody else
and then a breath and a hold and one last sigh and a photograph and a twenty mile run through a cloud before a fall or a jump or another infinity mile run where you never get tired or a goddamn darkness that never ends but you are never aware of it and it will always be a mystery until i take that drink and then it’s just too late to scream – but right now it’s just lonely and i’m scared and i wish i knew how to let you know this
i wish i knew how to make those promises to you and then later
maybe you won’t remember me as somebody who for years would have to tell my doctor each month that the smell of suicide was always there and that each day that smell got worse and as somebody who would have to tell him for years that my brain felt like it was constantly covered in ants and mosquitoes and if brains knew how to scream than mine was constantly crying and pounding face into the pavement
maybe you won’t remember me as so terrible and maybe at some point my ashes will smile after they’ve been scattered because the winds have brought them back together and they’ve hugged and laughed and settled in some random pond or vomit-filled new orleans street gutter on a cloudy sunday morning in september
i just hope sometimes i’ll still make people smile.
now life will continue to make these unscheduled stops inside and outside this sadness and that sadness
while i continue to write and burn draft after draft of apology notes beside my _______.
and i will wave goodbye to those i still love but who have been unfamiliar for years
and i will watch strangers melt into shadows that break and splinter
