a nice kind of quiet, alone with the statue of the god we worship.

birthday thoughts on the bus

Friendship will be the worst thing to have happened to me by then. On the bus I'd wondered through which screen I'd fallen through, and which one I had fallen out of, and which was replacing me in the reflections past midnight. You will meet your past with loved company and I will mine alone. Less than one year halved, a third of which is already gone. By its end the ocean will be bare again with her own tides, the swimmers gone home to their wives and mistresses, a long vacation spent.

if not to me then i should not want, waiting.

i dreamed that i sang
stuck in the long comedy
such beautiful things

childhood toys on the side of the bed
about to fall into the gap: the wall
wants to catch them as they go,
is but a paralyzed observer.

we, a quiet night
on our backs, the grass grew thick
the water ran through

metal retreats up
in the embrace of the throat
a trigger is pulled.

withdrawal symptoms.

it is a toothache pain, a useless act of missing what you can't have right now, cradling everything soft in your bed, thinking about how good it was to you when you had it.

there was nothing wrong with the candy. the pain is caused not by the candy, but by the absence of it.

you aren't suicidal. you fill your mouth with other foods, fill yourself until you are sick of food, and then you go to sleep. but you are still hungry, you go to sleep thinking of it, and with your sweet tooth bellowing on empty, you fall unconscious into the longing, cradled in everything soft and fading.

blood suspension
hair loss
ill under the bed
the mice come
the cookie crumbles

rain
drops
in

all the little sounds
the body shouldn't make.

don't talk too much

you'll make it lonelier
no one is listening

she's got little hairs on her arms
growing fat with the pulse
beating in the middle
of her creased elbows.

easy enough, we didn't say too much.

one piece of comfort
rolls on the bed
ration out the smells
recreate the sounds