i feel better, but i still feel worse than ever. at least it’s summer, and i have cigarettes & lucky beers.

and now you actually are dead.

how can that be true.

(nothing happened)

there are fire
works outside a window,
iced canals of spurting
flame and life you
pushed into my lungs and

nothing happened, nothing
upon breaths of empty
pure and frigid winter
air,

masks and gloves did
nothing much.

the air lit up in other flame,
a backdrop mist of tear
gas, smoke from curling
bodies, burning homes

and nothing happened.

and he erased, and
every time we’ve turned our
backs we have exposed
another white lace silhouette.

there is no one to tell.
he has gone, with promises of
ice skates, fingers linked as
they collapse on couches, under
pillows, the ceilings of dead
living rooms with walls whose
paint is chipped and split;
there is no wait.

the calendar is pencil, gaps
forged by passing
time and wrists.

still. his death has broken me in a way i can’t describe to my family, or friends, or boyfriend, or anyone. only he would know the things we shared as kids that we promised would stay important forever. the things that didn’t.

i miss his existence.

that’s really the most i can say.

one day, should i ever start publishing, it might stop. but still, i know it will just come back again. i’ve done it for 12 years and can’t picture myself not doing it. i would rather write here than risk having to speak, i would rather write here than risk having to write something i’d want to hear read aloud. and besides that, these pieces i have are just pieces, memories, poignant flashes like the visions of last night’s horrible dream. they’re never what i really want to say.

fields.

i have not stopped recalling
a february you, a lit
face by candles and dim desk
lamps in your pale bedroom

power hungry, and yet a
spooked horse, a man of little
knowledge and impossible
timing, dashing through torn
fields of grass and thistle
because you thought it would
repel me, propel me harshly
from your back

i pretended, walking on the
curb, to be a model

we pretended that no one
had accidentally pierced anyone’s
foot with a needle last night

you pretended to not
see me fidget, let the ball drag it
self to the gutter

you said i really could be a model
if my eyes were more blue
and less grey, if i had
eleven more inches

the fortuneless
lengths of vine arms reaching
out from the dirt have
been chopped

the borders of gardens the boys
built last summer are strong

he came there with me and with
her and she stared at the sky
they both closed their eyes
to the stars as they
kissed. i looked away,

raked the leaves with the
soles of my shoes,
built a garden with nothing
but grass

i don’t have any money, as per usual. i can’t afford to buy a bottle of water to drink in the car a week from now. i keep justifying it by saying that i pay all my bills and i have my own apartment and i’m never truly starving, but then i buy another pack of cigarettes and all the justification turns into guilt. but on the other hand, i don’t need a bottle of water. i don’t need anything at all. so fucking whatever, right.

last summer was easy. i was even poorer than i am now, but it was still easy. i didn’t have to feel bad about not having food in my fridge. i didn’t bring my own food or camping supplies or tent when i went camping, i just brought myself and there was no pressure. there was no pressure the whole summer, really. there was just me and justin and leah’s back porch and ordering beer in the afternoon and playing board games in the living room and sleeping alone on the picnic table in my backyard under the stars. getting locked out of my apartment and having nowhere to go and not caring. getting trapped in storms and walking the canal alone for hours. i’d go to hamilton for the cheap lunches, cigarettes, beers, car rides, pizzas, late nights with my friends.

i don’t own anything.
this isn’t as easy, but it’s definitely better.

there are very few bugs in this house but the sink doesn’t properly drain, there are pros and there are cons but if things truly bothered me i’m sure i would fix them. not just the drain. i’m handier than i let on. i am a lot of things i never let on.

we watch the daylight come and go and we meander from the workday morning to the sunday afternoon to the drunken midnight stumble somehow seamlessly. i smoke and do essentially nothing else, i cross off days on the calendar or study patterns on the ceiling but i am never bored. i write and hide the evidence, i apply for my passport, i read and toast bagels and eat them slowly with fresh fruit and wait for the coffee maker when i am alone.

it’s summer.
i never do anything productive when it’s summer and i don’t care to.