After

If time stands still because you are absent from the world then life has failed and all that is left is to gently pack away the remaining remnants of you.

Coded

Those words I say
“I’m fine.”
When you ask
How I am
They’ve coded meaning

What you should hear is
All I fail
To disclose

What I want to say is
Everything
Which tears me down

How my world
Has been consumed

That life
Is a daily battle
As I fight
To draw breath

Struggle against
Constant chaos
When all I want is calm

And behind this façade
Emptiness has crept forward
Chipping away
Until I can’t remember
Who I could be

I was good
Once

Now
I cannot say.

We Drop Out

If today is the day
it all falls apart,
crumbles and breaks
in my searching hands,
or splinters along the shoreline
then it is ok.

You do not need to find
new things to talk about
or fill the space
with conversations
that will keep me present.

Today
the time has past
and it is all ok.

I'm ok.

Clandestine

Four yards down,
Lingering wistfully by
The fading roses
I could hear your mind working,
Trying to figure out
Where the truth lay.
It seemed like I was
Defending the devil,
Keeping alive
The poisonous tendrils
As they strangled
All that was once
Good and new.

But I was not.

Inside,
I exposed the stifling scream,
Willing you to open your mind
And simply hear
All that I had been
Surreptitiously hiding from you.

She was so loud
I failed to understand
How the world
Was not deafened and destroyed
By her ravishing voice.

Writing important messages

The message you wrote,
amid the condensation
on the window to my soul,
ran.

Does she laugh with you?
OR at you?
Does she talk to you?
OR down to you?

Does she?
Does she?
Well, does she?

But it’s only in my head.
What did I expect?
Something.

Silence Here

What happens when you hit the breaks
And silence becomes your only friend.
A silence so loud
It tears your world apart.

So here is your silence
The friend that you never had.

A friend that you never wanted
Who appeared out of no-where.

Maybe that is where you are
No-where.

And are you happy there?
In that silent place.

You hit the breaks looking for an escape.
One last effort to eradicate the pain
Ease the blame.

But all you found was silence
Which nothing could penetrate.

Still
You hit the breaks.
And are you happy?
And are you really happy?

Girl A

Disappearing from view,
disappearing,
slipping from you,
consuming myself
thin;
the last
the first
it was always you,
all the rest just
in between.
Kissing the sky
late at night
I closed my eyes
as time went by.
If I was lost,
if I was faithless,
you found me
exceeding,
dreaming,
nameless.