tunnel vision

I was alone and it was snowing. I rode my bicycle over creases in the asphalt that buckled up to meet my spinning spokes as they rose and fell with the consistency of a heartbeat. I ended at a restaurant, just a glorified bar where no one really expects you to order anything complicated – just fries and a beer, please. Maybe a double shot of plastic bottle whiskey if I’m feeling extra self-aware, a double dose of certainty that I’m alone and will be for a while. This place looked so damn cool the first time we walked in here, together, and yes, we’d like the patio seats; it’s such a nice night. We’ll spend too much money on watered down beer and pretend I’m not drunk when it’s time to drive us both back home. Our home, our overpriced, faux-chic apartment next to all the other families who can’t afford a house and want to act like they don’t want one when it’s really the husband’s blooming alcoholism or the wife’s shopping addiction keeping them from actualizing the title of “homeowner”. I’m getting off track.

I sat at the bar with a plate of half-frozen fries sprinkled with hypertension and a hint of future obesity and thought about nothing. This is something I’ve been developing recently, a talent I never thought I’d have: the ability to remove you and the years from my head for a few minutes at a time. It feels like Atlas shuffling the earth from one shoulder to the other, but it’s worth it - especially when I have my hands around the glass, slippery from condensation and concentration. I barely maintain any periphery, any awareness of any other sad fucking soul crouched over the bar like we’re all panning for gold with our pints and shots and fancy fucking martini glasses. I’m just trying to count the rings in the fake wooden bar in front of me – another beer, please.
I think she sat down somewhere after the fourth – not too far to catch up, if you’re really trying. She’s talking to me and I’m following her lips more than her words, the way they grip and grab each syllable before it tumbles out. I’m watching the way each word is shaped, molded, spit-shined before it hits my ears, and I’m in love with language. I’m in love with the ideas she speaks, but I can’t remember her name. I hope I’m responding, I’m never quite sure, but the sentences keep coming so I assume we’ve made it another moment further into the conversation. And another, and another, and another. It feels like I’m walking deeper into water with every sip, and I’d say it’s somewhere around my throat by now, that semi-frantic feeling where you tip your head back to gasp for air and stare at the sky like a cloud might see the whites of your eyes and let someone know you’re drowning. She notices my eyes sliding, notices my hand clutching the empty glass like I’m a cheating student reading all the answers by braille. She’s watching me and the water's up around my head now, so I feign surprise at my empty glass and signal the bartender. By the time I’m full, she’s gone, and I’m alone.

uncomfortable shifting

I used to think about death, your death,
dying suddenly in an accident and the process of coping with that loss

I used to think about devastation, hopelessness,
shaking in an emergency room while your body lay on a steel frame hospital bed

I used to think of you broken, as a shell
a shell made of flesh to contain all the love I felt

I used to think about our children, and the future
and the future that died along with your fragile frame

I used to think of how I would kiss your dying lips
Now I wish that I could lay by your side
For another night
For just another few hours of uncomfortable shifting
From side to side and wishing
Wishing I could get out of bed
and comfort a screaming child
Wishing I could stare out the windows of the house we bought together
bathing in the orange streetlight.

Dusk

I saw the color you love as the sun disappeared behind clouds. It was thick yolk slipping through syrup on my California approach, a sinkhole tugging great flat horizons of colors I've never been able to empathize with. Comprehending a thousand miles is violent and stunning and sits caged behind two thin layers of window suspended in the nowhere desolation as land slides sluggishly past my dark endless reference frame. The sunset was a framed picture spun at rapid speed and set into false motion, the illusion of escape before I let my mind wander to those minute connections that build into bullshit interpretations of fate and significance. Pockmarks of city grids flash into existence to spite this funeral for a sun and I can almost smell the city lighting its cigarette under a streetlight struggling for life. Dusk is a line in the desert for the boiling tar to relax with a shot of jet fuel and crossed fingers. 

Moments

She was crying so I flipped the switch to madness and leapt straight into the air, thirty thousand feet of troublesome sky. She stood in line to watch me go, waiting her turn with the ghosts I've left strewn across the country. The Atlantic looked on with disapproval, and I hoped I could find a piece of Pacific before word traveled that far. The light hits me square in the pupils so I reach for some mountain shade to pull over my head. I just need another hour's sleep and enough oxygen to last my lungs till landing. She dropped her wheels straight in California for the sickly sweet Oceanside style and some Oakland flavor, but I kept my distance and flew on over her head with all the world beneath me. 

It's three drinks before my mind slips out and I'm left with a vacant skull full of fading Northwest sun. Something restless is being painted on the cavernous cave that echoes with empty thoughts and she is the Michelangelo to my Sistine scalp. I am branded and collecting donations, a visitor's fee because no one gives a shit about beauty unless it costs something. 

No photography, please allow the moment to be a moment and hold your breath until it's done. Hidden in all moments is an expanse of experience that must be cradled as an infant. The lines she draws in cranial nooks follow her pattern of sweetness and there is too much beauty as layers of grey sink into bone like roots digging for water. The world has crowded in to watch, everyone minding their elbows and sneezing into palms slicked with anticipation and ignorance. The dull roar of thoughts hurtles ceaselessly around this bone canvas. Her tears fall as she paints and I stand in line to watch. 

This is

So this is today. 

We are mountain fog and misty thoughts, coming down incessantly. 

Coming down from atmospheric heights, pure perspective miles above our surface

Lending gravity to the weight and fall of each drop. 

Aiming for water, not land. 

Hoping for ripples, not craters. 

Soluble missiles, dead in the water, muffled communication. 

Sound travels through blades of grass and echoes across asphalt quicker than swamps and silt. 

So we aim for water, not land. 

Drain the lake or walk on top. 

Absence

I feel the ache of absence

Without the parallel bars of twin lives

Instead of straddling supports,

I try landing on my feet

But the earth is warming, 

Bringing groggy contentment and treacherous sweat

Making every step a game

Of easy smiles and ground-floor memories

As I grind my teeth

To the rhythm of typewriter keys

My roots expose

And twist in nervous numbness 

A roadmap of shock

Sending grey to my eyes

As the keys type goodbye,

I escape to a bar named You

And stare at the answers,

Swimming in alcohol. 

Summer

I'm riding in the backseat, with my arm out the window and almost too cold summer air filling my vision. The street lights flash orange-tinted images of my veins and the color staining my skin; a tree with roots running through the back of my hand and down each finger. I turn decay to oxygen and spread my limbs to the black sky. 

Pacific

I have Southern California sand 

between my toes

Carefully carried cross country

To bring Pacific back with me. 

Expanse

The grey span of earth, laid out beneath me

And dirt roads that cut 

Like capillaries

As monstrous cotton covers peaks and ridges

Endless expanse. 

Fear like photography

There's a fucking half smile on every stranger

And It makes me sick with jealousy

Of everyone who sees your lips

without fixating like this

I develop fear just like an allergy

Listening to songs about hope

And hating myself for apathy

There's a look on everyone around me

And it tells me I'm crashing

There's a book open in front of me

But every word I read is you

Every word is you

I'm holding fear just like photography

Snapshots of doubt

I just can't throw away

I'll keep thinking poison

Sketching fear with ink

A tattoo made of shades

To let you get some sleep