How strange it is,

losing the battle each day to an enemy you cannot see.

To a soldier with no sword

a voice without sound

a phantom with no shadow

a beast without bones

a master with no mind that knows all your demons by name.

On this same morning two years ago,
I lost you
I can feel the air leaving my lungs all over again

Or it was five years ago now on this exact Tuesday that we met, but you have forgotten and I have not
I will never forget that you forgot

Or on this very day, what feels like too many years ago, I was born. And there are candles
lit and there are people singing but my mind is not here with them and it is asking,
How many days like this do I have left?

Or next year I will be better.
I’ll start over, in January, and I will spend the rest of this one with my head down and wishing
there were a button that could push June into December and bring about, once again, the next rotation of the Earth.
Because I’ll get the next round right.

Why is this how we perceive our lives?
As if time is repeating itself
Like we’re caught in some loop that never ends until we do.
There is no overlap
There are no years, or months, or weeks.
There is no reset button pressed each time we finish circling our sun
There is only now, and tomorrow
and yesterday.

Someday I want to live in a house with a library that I have built
and shelved with all the books that I’ve lost myself in over the years.
I want to curl up with a hot cup of tea, surrounded by all the different
people I’ve loved and the many lives I’ve lived. The memories of
them not worn, like the ones in my head, but as clear and
detailed as ever, preserved right there on the page,
ready to be lived again.

You told me you loved me
2:00 AM
I threw off my shoes and ran outside
and it was pouring.
Everything was hot and wet and blurred,
faded orange light from the street lamps softening the black.
And my mind hummed
you, you, you

You keep tightening the screws as they come loose in your head,
worried sick that the whole thing is coming apart.

I guess I want to tell you that it’s really not so bad. That the cracks
in the seams are how the air and the sun and the rain get in.
Something could be trying to grow, if it only had the room.

You are not a broken thing that needs fixing, and your screws may be
loose but you probably look better that way.

I once heard somewhere that time reveals all, be it things or truths.
But I wonder how many secrets have snuffed out in the coffins
of the last lips that held them.
How many ruins and lost relics will lay buried in the soil,
on the day the sun swallows the Earth?

Time reveals most things, but what of the rest?