Water Restrictions

You always take for granted the things that are seemingly free
The roof over your head
The air you breath
The water you drink
But what would happen if living in a home wasn't just a given
Or the atmosphere was so toxic
That you had to pay for the privilege to breath clean air
Or there simply wasn't enough water to drink
And you had to ration your allotment

Life could be so much worse
Yet
We're always concerned with how bad it is anyways

I Miss You

You don't come around nearly as often as you used to
We still keep your room the way you like it
Your old movie posters we took off the wall (they're in a box in the closet)
But your old stuffed animals are still in there
We even keep the old blanket on it
The one you used to sleep with as a kid
With a corner pulled back for when you want to go back to bed
Whenever you feel like going back to bed
Whenever you feel like being my kid again

A Passing Acquaintance

We're scared of waving at half remembered acquaintances
Wondering if their name will reach our tongue before their hand meets ours to shake
Worried that they will remember all the intimate details of our life
Memories and anecdotes from past lives
And worried more that we won't remember any of theirs

C'est La Vie

I dreamt about you again last night

My heart is not my friend

I know that now

Because for every waking minute I spend associating your image with red

And every stabwound I suffer to my soul for the idiotic things you say

I go to sleep at night

And marvel in your oddities

Like the way you can ball your toes and crack them when you're particularly pleased
Or you have a proud defiance in your driving ability

Or the rareness of your smile

Especially for me

Sonder Dreams

There is a whole different reality happening in every single person's head every minute of every day. So complete and so different that in their minds they fantasize what might be in the lives of people around them.

You have no idea the number of lives you've lived in the hearts of strangers.

Swept From Hardship

Sometimes more than anything else
You need to drown in the truth of their love for you

Quiet Thoughts On Long Drives

When I think of the future I imagine this great big hulking bridge. Kind of like the Golden Gate bridge, that I'm standing at the base of on one side. Except that it grows larger and more menacing the further along it you look. Until it's towering over my entire life, threatening to crush me. I feel intimidated by the future. Scared because I am so frightened of the idea of living my life, the way it is, for another fifty or more years. That right now might be the best it'll ever be, which isn't even saying much, and it will just be a slow and terrible decline into squalor and poverty and obscurity. That I'll let everyone I know and love down, disappoint them all, before they too drift from my life. I'm scared I'll never have the courage to fight for a better life, nor the courage to just end it. Just fated to live a long and cowardly and pathetic life.

I'm so scared my whole life will have been for nothing, and I'll have suffered a lifetime for no reason at all.

I'm just as scared that sometime between now and the end, I'll just stop caring. And just be okay with it all. And not be afraid any more. Isn't it sad that as scared as I am of living a meaningless and useless and pathetic and difficult life, I am even more scared that it will be all those things and I would be okay with it.

Being afraid is the last shred of hope that I have left.

Night Brings Fear

I lay with my arms wrapped around you
My head resting on your chest
And I pull it in tight
Willing my own pulse to stop racing
To slow down and to match the one beating through your chest to me
I fall asleep each night upset and stressed that I can never make our hearts sync up
Terrified that our lives will beat on in different directions
That tomorrow is the day we wake up and look at each other
And realize we've come too far apart
I fall asleep with all those worries and more
And I sleep
And I wake up to my heart beating slowly
And your heart beating in sync with mine
And I remember that everything will be okay

Shadows of the Forest

I can feel you slipping away

Becoming more and more faint as you move amongst the trees

Until all that is left is your shadow

And the night simply eats that up too

My Love Is Too Terrible and Wonderful for You

And you will know that it will be too much for your heart to handle
Too much for your soul to bare
But it won't matter
Because my love is too intoxicating to do without
And you are an addict

The Shit That Lives in My Heart Everyday

I don't want you to try and understand it
I don't want you to say you feel sorry or bad or what have you
I want you to truly feel how horrible it is to be like this all the time
To have this feeling of a physical sensation pulling you backwards from inside your chest
That it's yourself that you're fighting every day just to move forward
Just to get up and face the day
To smile and pretend everything is all right
(But pretending is not enough, you have to pretend so hard you even believe it)
To not wish that when you sleep tonight, you'll wake up 70 years later with a day left to go on your miserable life
And knowing even then it won't come soon enough
I want you to know I don't like being like this
I want to be like you
But I only know how to be like me

We Met Too Late

I sometimes go through my old memories
Like an old person might go through a photo album
And I think of all the moments most precious to me
Of how much better they would have been with you in them
I sometimes work so hard to believe that you were actually there
That I can't remember the first time we met any more
With each passing day there grows an older memory with you in it
Our first kiss
Our first date
Our first day of school
Our first word
Our first step
So much so that in life we had only a few years together
But in death we had a lifetime
And all I have left are my memories

Floating on Consciousness

You can live your whole life awake
And still never learn all there is to learn
See all there is to see
You can only hope that for every moment, that it was enough

The Evil You Fear

I can only hope we grow up to be the heroes of our stories
And pray that if we become the villains, that we live our lives oblivious to it
And die in anonymity

Endless Winter

That night. It was a mild July night. It might have been August. My memory is not so great any more. Nothing was different about that night, but yet everything was. Just the right mix of alcohol and tension. Enough of wrong, outweighed by too much now. An abandonment of tomorrow. That night, summer ended for me. I didn't know it, but it did. Followed by a winter that has not yet ended. And only now, in the dark of the night, years later, has fear found me. Fear that I will never feel the heat of summer again. That for the rest of my life I will live in this bleak winter. Worse yet, than if and when summer finally does crest, that I won't care any more, or won't notice.