Your muddy shoeprints are engraved into the carpets. And at night when I stare at the cracks in my ceiling, your soul is all I feel. All the watermarks on the coffee table remind me of your brown irises. The sky is gray, the ground is cold. In the living room, flowers are sprouting in pots, and his smile flips my frown. He’s growing, taking up space, a mere fraction of the space you hold. I miss your rumbly, sleepy groans, your thighs intertwined with mine. I hope the sun comes out soon, because it’s growing darker in here each day I live without love. I know she makes you happy, and it both makes me laugh and cry to know that. I hope you’ll understand someday just how much I loved you, when it all has faded like smoke into the summer air, and I walk in a white dress to a man who didn’t just rent my house, but bought it. But for now at night I lay with lonely legs and one heartbeat and tears in my eyes as salty and bitter as our handful of goodbyes. I wish you were here, and I wish you’d never come in the first place. Every day I check the weather, and I feed the boiler, and I do my best to stay warm without your body, but it never works. Teeth chatter while I count sheep, and I lie awake wondering why the sparks ever faded and why you can barely say my name anymore. Blood nourishes the ***** but not its treasures. Dogs bark and sleep folded in half, inside their little cottages. Where is mine, where is mine? I cover the roof and walls, with their creaks and faults, with convenient and daily tape; it’s holding it all together but isn’t healing it. The sheets are forming ice, and my head is forming thunder and snow. Darling, oh darling, why did you go? I swallow the medicine, I shovel the walkway, but I’m stuck in eternal January, with the front and back doors padlocked. This might just be a dead end street. Nobody wants the house with ***** rugs and splintered ceilings and ruined furniture; house for rent, house for sale. Somebody please just knock on my door. I want to float into the clouds like an angel, rising above it all not like a snow-capped mountain, but a green and grassy hill, rolling and free.

I have thoughts that capture me, enrapture me,
That scare me so shitless I just close my eyes,
Hiding from them like they are a buzzing squad of bees.
They buzz in my ears and in my brain,
Up my nose and in my veins.
Thoughtless karma, quick and cool,
Teach me to act with such self-assured judgment.
Burn my bone marrow, burn my brain,
These memories of you drive me insane.
These whirling twirling thoughts of you are inane,
For the you I miss is no longer alive.
I’ll smoke and create my own brain hive,
Hiding from all these bees.

An orange glow and bright red teeth,
Oh, darling, won’t you sing me to sleep?
She drank her morning breakfast, Percocet and tea.
She played piano with bitten fingers, feet shaking underneath.
Her daddy taught her years ago, his bitten fingers touched those keys.
I should have beat him at his game, should’ve made them know this name.
She twinkled like a little star, lonely diamond in the sky,
Beautiful and woozy, not perfect like that Lucy.
She’s nothing special, **** sure not pure,
Thought she’d finally found her cure.
She wears those star-shaped sunglasses, knows she’s nothing good,
Smokes cigarettes and Mary-Jane, what are your demons, baby?
I’ll be your demon, baby.
Roof over her head is burning, eyes inside are ice,
She’s glacial and she’s tree bark, she’s a set of loaded dice.
I’ll finally beat him at his game; make that ****** know my name.
He’s gambling with danger, daddy dearest why’d you go?
Hung flowers across her bedroom walls, wilting brown and old.
She likes the smell of rotting, the sly slickness of mold.
Before she was glowing amber, now she’s those fading flowers.
Her lips are blue like the empty bottle on the table.
The TV’s on but only for static, she doesn’t believe in cable.
She didn’t believe in cable.
Just play the piano and please don’t call my mother,
The only friend I ever had besides you was my brother.
He ended up in prison, Father left years ago.
I should have beat him years go.
I should have done this years ago.
I loved you.

Medicating my murderer, I am blood in the river,
She is the sunrise and I’m not a swimmer.
I am floating away, wake me up when it’s over.
Jack the Ripper, Jack the Lover.

Love is a sponge soaking in wine.
I will drink in your soul, more and more with time,
And as we age, it will only get better.

I think there’s something beautiful in sobriety,
In the sense of sincerity, in the rawness of reality.
I believe in drunken bruises, I believe in drugged thoughts,
But I believe in this world more than either of those two.
If our reality is perception, than there must be more than one.
I believe in the influence of motivation,
And the intoxication of being in love, true love.
For kisses mean nothing when the why? isn’t solid,
And thoughts are nonsensical when the how? is cloudy.
I will sip my wine and I will smoke my blunt,
But, to me, awareness will always be greater than numbness,
And authenticity of the human heart and soul
Will always be more important than temporary happiness.

We could both be busy working or being lazy
When at 11:34 he will say with keys in hand,
Get in the car, we’re getting cheeseburgers.
And we will go to a diner
And get apple juice and bendy straws
And we’ll put quarters in the jukebox
And play songs from when we were little.
We will ride bicycles on Sundays
And watch the History Channel.
He’ll believe in aliens and ghosts,
And make me try new things when that is just the medicine.
We will both love books
And believe making beautiful things is beautiful.
We will make love and lie in bed
And make shadow puppets on the walls.
We will remember to try our best to be
The person we’d want to be married to.
We will remember to love our lives
So we can love each other.
And even when we are ugly, in age or to each other,
We will kiss each other every day and always say I love you.
And we won’t know where we are going,
But will wake up when we get there.