The noise from the back room
Filters to the front
Flowing up the stairs
Seamlessly through the air
Passing from the actors
To the watchers
And eventually
Towards her ears.

For those in the back room
It can be both imagined
That she will hear
And believed
That she will not

So on that paradoxical duality
The actors settle.

They place their faith,
Their religion,
Their belief
On contradiction

As they must.

But of course
When believing in a future,
If an actor
Or when hoping for a future,
If a watcher
Those in the back room
Are quite often wrong

Maybe
She will hear
And maybe
She will know forever
What the actors did
And what the watchers watched
And the god with a lower-case 'g' knows
It will **** her

But as long as those acting in the back room
Believe
And as long as those watching in the back room
Hope

No harm
Will come
To
Them.

Inside drifts out
Spilling noise
And sometimes silence
Out your door
Which won’t be your door
In two more months…

Your eyes dance
With sad smiles
And you don’t hide
From your brokenness

Which makes the girl who you love
All the more
Worth loving.

She understands brokenness-
That girl who’s lying in your bed
Waiting for you to join her
Behind counters full of empty bottles
And hallways full of empty moments

That girl understands brokenness
More than anyone
I’ve ever met
And it’s so refreshing
Because rather than make me feel
As though everyone is broken
It makes me feel
As though everyone
Is capable
Of being unbroken.

I like knowing
That you and that girl
Wear your preemptive nostalgia
With no fear of judgment

It makes me,
A person full of preemptive nostalgia,
Feel welcome
And home.