more monroe than onassis.

driving home at midnight my eyes follow roads i’ve never been down before.
like even my organs dont want to be close to this.
from the outside, wholly from the outside, i am content. but what is eating me, wholly from within? i am not free, i am not even at war. i am just blank, pretending to listen and laughing where the silence allows it. i thumb pages; kissing marlboros and a bottle’s neck.
i still wonder what you had written about me.

it’s falling into 2am. i’m no closer to sleep. self medicating until i am sober. i wish i could hold her head through this, but instead i am holding my tongue and my cards so close. i’m closed, closeted until i’m faceless. i can’t see the end anymore, i can barely see the start. so i will wait out sunrise and turn myself into a paper crane. just lay your wishes on my back and send me with her into the sky.

i stare at my glass like it’s betrayed me. this old friend is supposed to numb, numb or give me release. instead, i just keep drinking and keep waiting to feel anything at all. i’m leaning on old lovers and brick walls, but there is just no saving me. not me, not any of us.

i still am having trouble, sorting fact from fiction. i dont cry and that frightens me. i can see her still, laughing in my bed. we used to sit so close together, always together. i spent so long pretending i’d forgotten, that my memories are playing tricks. like she’s just going to walk in and lay herself across my life again.

i barely make a sound, just wait out the night. wasn’t it if you die, i die? so what happens now. i keep waiting to feel something other than the air rushing out of my lungs but i am colder than all of the ships that have sunk into the belly of the atlantic. im building my body out of concrete slabs and barbed wire, making this something i will survive. but if i were honest,
oh if i told the truth.

september 2010: i think im going to go to america for a while.
i need to travel again, there is something in my bones. im going to get married in vegas, visit old friends in brooklyn, and chase the pacific all the way to california. im going to rent a car and drive the interstate. i dont want familiarity anymore. just her, just her and me. and so many strangers, so that my heart wont weep.

i dont sleep anymore,
i just
lay on my back, count my heartbeats.
i pray even though i am godless,
and spell out your name
through the book pages we loved.
through the tattoos and bars and the blackouts.
i dont sleep anymore,
i just
wait for my telephone to ring
and take you further away from me.