My loneliness starts when I see you,

It stops when I'm alone,

Yet I stay.

Feeling an emptiness, consuming my heart, wanting much more but where do we start.

Both of us turmoiled by life's unfair claims, the ones we were given, assigned to our names.

Desperately seeking to find you inside, everyday being different, unsure of your promises, possibly lies. 

When were together, unable to talk, inside I am lonely, feeling forgot.

Once I go home to lay in my bed, my brain starts to put together the words that you said. Alone I go back and then I return, wanting to believe the words that you say, forget I was burned.

Are we together to fill the emptiness inside, afraid to be alone.  Or are we apart, avoiding the loneliness we feel when we are together.  

We're just friends, but

Every time I see you, something inside me glows

And I have to look back a second time to keep that fire lit-

And once when you were high-fiving me

I wanted to entangle my fingers in yours

I wanted to not just touch your hand but catch it in midair

And never let it go

We're only friends, but 

I think about you for an unhealthy amount of time

So much that reality's gravity loses me in those moments

And I feel weightless

When you speak to me, nothing else matters

You could talk about anything for hours and I would listen

And it's hard to think we'll never get past this point in the universe

Since you think of me in a normal regard, you're holding me down

I am a spaceship that cannot fly without you

I am a plant that wilts without you

And you are everything without me

And knowing that kills me because

We're only friends, but

Sometimes I wish we could be more

Memories come late at night.

My brother’s sixth birthday

and his crying sounds more like a prayer.

My father is

just back from the pub

and he’s staring in the bathroom mirror

but not looking at his eyes.

He turns the sink on and then off and then on

and I watch his hands shake under the water,

which turns red, like pomegranates, with blood.

I’m done, goddammit,

he says to my brother, I’m done.

Memories come late at night.

It is Christmas and it is raining

but we are pretending that it’s snow.

My grandfather’s hand is scarred and blistered and cut

and it is pulling me in to the cemetery

where, one day, he will go.

These are my parents, he smiles and then

lays blue flowers on his mother’s stone,

and, because the rain is pouring down,

the flowers begin to wilt, just like his eyes.

I haven’t been here in so long,

he says, so very long.

Memories come late at night.

Summertime

and the air is filled with sun-kissed skies

and dandelion weeds and butterflies

and gentle things that float

in the warm honey breeze.

Your lips are soft and I’m kissing you

where the stars fall and hold the nighttime sea,

where the sky pours out, across our backs,

and lingers along the surface of the bubbling water.

I’ll never forget this,

I whisper to the moon, never.

Memories come late at night.

June, years and years later,

and I cannot sleep.

I am drunk,

And I hate this,

And there is no point

In being mad at the sun,

But I hate that it still rises

In the same way that it

Has always risen

Even though the

Best thing in the universe

Is gone.

And I think this is why

Sunsets always remind me

Of the doctor’s eyes

When he told us that you died,

And I think this is why

I hate the rain

But I loathe the sun,

Because it keeps shining

And I am here sinking

And you are just gone.

I miss you like heck.

That's all I want to say.

Can't you come back?

Face reminiscent of a long gone grandmother 

my own dark eyes echoed in the faces of all my family 

Uneven hair brushing against rounded flushed cheeks 

Lipstick hurriedly painted across full lips that I can't keep closed 

This face isn't mine, it's borrowed, a loan unpaid  

Passed down, like a name or a fortune, 

One that I will pass down, too.