He said, "Who cares if one light goes out...in a sky full of stars." And I leaned into you. A distant voice on a distant line. My voice cracked and the tears fell and your slow southern drawl soothed my ears.

Through the Miles and the oceans and the white line dreams. I toppled down. Something like a game. Dominos click clacking as they fall.

"I hear the destruction in your voice," you say and I take a draw and shake it off. The Mollys wearing thin and my minds wearing thinner. Just an aching bottle and a xanny to my name.

I hear your words like a muffled sound, crackling like an old ass vinyl in my ear.

You called my name and they called you out. Whipped and abused and used.

"We're both the same," I think and then I shake it off. Crush it up, push it down...our tracked mark scars show a different world, a different us.

Soft Gibson strums melt me down. Burnt up spoons and burnt out dreams. Some black hole destruction of the soul. You say something low and I wanna ask. Tonight I'm too crossfaded to care. Something about love or gratitude...its all just fading words in self-destructing mind.

Aching brain, half-assed thoughts...I try to focus. I try to focus on your words and your love and your wisdom. (So wise beyond your years.) And I wonder how you learned so young, so fast and I'm still here... fighting against everything you know, everything you love, everything you are.

I mumble something about being worthless and I shut out your response. I can't hear the good, I can't hear your words. Just once, I wish I could see me the way you see me. You make me so very fearless and strong. An idea, a carefully perfected image of something I'll never be.

Sometimes...just sometimes you make me believe my own lies. Tonight though, tonight I'm numbed out. The pills from the plug went fast and hard. Leaving me confused And brave and unaware.

"Talk to me," you say. There's a pleading in your voice. I should react. But, I don't. I just breathe in deeply and load another round. I want to say I miss you. Maybe that I'm lost without you. I want to say I need you. I'm silent instead.

I see the dominos falling. Click, clack, click, clack. A quiet exit to Silver Springs and Xanax dreams.

I broke down north of Dahlonega,

In the Georgia heat.

With a broken heart and an ounce of weed.

I rolled a joint and took a draw and I settled back.

Another fuck up in another town. I found the flask in my console and drank it down. Roll backs and Ubers and Oregon bud. The driver was young. Dark skinned and bored with life. It was evident as we spoke our hellos. I took a sip from my flask and settled on the nearest bar. The ride was quiet, for the most. He said I smelled like weed and Chanel and I handed him a bud before I slipped away. A small smile and a nod and I found myself alone.

Trapped back in my mind. Too much inside to sort out. Intrusive thoughts and my mistakes. I wondered inside the bar and ordered a Woodford and a Black and Tan, a perfect Chaser to another lost day.

The band was playing, a backdrop beat. Some soundtrack to my life. I was studying the walls, portraits of random souls...they'd probably passed through and found their home here. Scatter phrases on the wall, in too many hands to count. Their words say their like a ghost of what had been.

I was lost in another time when the rhythm caught my ear.

I turned away. Some makeshift band from out of town. But...the harmonica drifted into my mind. A soothing sound amidst the bedlam in my Brain.

The frontman had a drawl... something Appalachian and raw. It brought me home...back to the foothills of my youth. I ordered another round and let the music have me. It turned my heart inside out and stroked my open wounds. Healing me from some unknown tug a war. I didn't know it then but it saved me.

She fell off the earth as she stepped away. A one line goodbye and that's all she would say...

I stood there, a makeshift soldier broken and bent.

Dipping in and dipping out. Euphoria and pain feel the same when you're free, a distant thought, in a different world. Drunk and unaware.. Just broken bones and shifting thoughts.

The Reaper grew anxious, as my breaths slowed. A sudden crisis inside a muddled mind. It was too easy to go, there was chaos and fear and mumbles words of "I love you..."

Death stole my breaths and stepped away. Like something weak, He faded away. Into the darkness of Nowhere, Kentucky.

There were lights and there were voices. Colliding into nothing and fear. Someone somewhere, between heaven and hell and Here...held my hand and drew me back.

Drew me back from the starlit skies and the candy colored fear.

The blood was crimson and dark and matted through my hair and it dripped into something obscure and beautiful and lost.

I felt you leave, before you left...

I said something about Immortality

As she packed a blunt.

She was young and lost inside herself and

She somehow fancied me wise and somewhat noble.

Her hazel eyes were strained, exhausted and stoned.

Some irreversible confusion had settled around the darkened lines. She was perfect and I was gonna hurt her and I knew it.

She didn't seem nearly as convinced.

But...I was bad for her and I'd made that clear from the start.

I'd seen her a year before, drunk at the end of some stupid night and some makeshift bar. She was feigning rebellion in some faded black V neck. I'd taken off her off brand Ray-Bans and handed her my Versace's. Some sordid, calculated line to get her back to my room. She'd smiled then and reached for my hand.

I'd lied about the engraved elven band and she'd laughed...some naive, innocent giggle. Uncharacteristic of the tattooed, hardass exterior she produced. But, I let her fingers fumble with mine, for a moment... before she drew it back and glanced awkwardly around.

And here we were now. Her eyes meeting my glance in some bizarre sense of shame and tension. Some Madonna song as the soundtrack and I knew I'd fuck her. Even with my bruised jaw and her ashamed eyes and all our lies.

She asked me to see the stars and I had nodded in an absent trance. There was too much noise in my ears and too many lines in my nose. But, she wanted to see the southern skies through my eyes. And Williamsburg mountain wasn't a hop skip and a jump, but she was there. An hour drive to heaven and peace and her wrapped in my arms. An hour drive to show her something in me, something unsettled...yet rooted and wild. And so I lit a joint and slid in shotgun. A far cry from the noisy bar on main street.

She took my joint and I took her hand. Feigning for a cigarette, I fumbled for my dispo, just to take a hit. Needing something. Something more familiar than the sound of her voice, singing quietly along with the silky tones of Lana del Rey.

*We were Born to Die or we were immortal.

Tonight nothing made sense *

The roads were empty. 2 a.m and counting and her hand was on my inner thigh. Resting easy and comfortable. We turned the curve and shifted down. The hum of the engine and the softs sounds of the radio melted together, into some melodic hum...with fireflies and crickets and the sounds of the Appalachian Mountains, swaying in and out of my mind. Torn and broken, addled by drink and drug...

I felt her lips against my neck. Warm, soft and inviting. I pulled away, for a moment.

A tinge of guilt.

And then I pulled her closer, kissed her deeper before I let the walls rebuild...

I stepped outside and she followed, sheepish.

I pointed out the constellations,

As her hands slid beneath my shirt. A sudden give inside of me...and I gave into to the softness of her touch, calloused fingers exploring my skin. I leaned into her and gave in.

Naked flesh finding naked flesh. She was warm and wet and ready.

And the quiet moans, as I slid inside of her, seemed to echo through swaying pines.

We watched the sunrise from the hood of her benze. Lost somewhere in the coming sun and our discretions.

There was a glitch, somewhere in the system. Broken codes and broken words. We were torn and thrown down. Just bare now, raw and naked and confused.

Our bloodshot eyes matched the burn down of the Nashville sunset. Stoned out and staring hopeless and bewildered at the southern sky.

She had asked me to go. Then asked me to stay.

Whiplash and uncertainty settled in. Shading the balcony with comfort and dread and fear.

We weren't the villains here, I thought. But, we weren't exactly the heroes either.

She picked aimlessly at the strings of an old ass Gibson as I tried to roll a joint. The sounds of the city were familiar and foreign all at once. The unanchored traffic beneath us, distant horns and distant sirens stirred into the velvet tones of her guitar and the coarse softness of her Appalachian tongue.

I needed to go and wanted to stay. I tried to detach, to disassociate, to turn down the volume of my mind. Too many thoughts of Decisions and deceit. I was lost out there beyond the sunset. Trapped Somewhere between her hazel eyes and home fires burning...I'd checked out.

There were Virginia nights and dank ass weed and visions of Kentucky summers and streetlights and sneaking sidewalk kisses beneath their iridescent glow.

She was beside me before I'd known. With her arms lashed around my waist and her head against my chest. I dropped my guard and leaned into her hold. "Why don't we run," she said, whispery and quick. Her words drifted off into the Nashville noise.

And we both stood in silence, acknowledging the cowardice and fear between us.

Worlds were folding in, imploding around us. Those home fires we had stoked with gunpowder words and gasoline lines...they were burning down now.

Nothing but dying embers and ash.

We'd made little effort to revive them, I thought.

Maybe we lacked the drive to save ourselves...to save ourselves from the approaching days. Our pasts were closing in around us. You could feel the end drawing near. Clingy and thick. Everything we had known, everything we had loved, disappearing into the smoke, deep and black and cleansing.

We'd fucked that night...on the balcony, where just hours before he'd held her. And we knew, even then, that our ecstacy would be their demise.

I was gone before you knew it. Drunk, trying desperately to roll a joint. I looked out at the Pulaski County sky...just horror movie moons and crossfaded clouds. Dancing out there beyond the street lights. The smell of weed, the smell of you, the smell of my Chanel... it's all dreamlike and unreal.

I'm tryin' to impress you, a miserable fail, you don't seem to notice or you don't seem to mind? It looks like it's all in or all out. And I'm standing here bluffin'

And you're holding all the Aces

I'm fumbling with this half ass excuse for a joint, pregnant and loose, I give up and toss it down.

I try to offer you a shot of Woodford and I see the hesitation in your eyes

And I pull it back and throw it down. I push the bottle back behind me, look ashamed and look away.

But, you've rolled the joint and we're looking at the stars and you've moved closer to me.

I don't know how we got here, in this half turnt up southern town. But, we're here now, with dank bud and an open sky and your eyes...

Like some hazel eyed dream of golden rods and dogwoods and mid-day Virginia skies.

We were no one then, in some nowhere town, planning dreams we were never sure we'd reach.

But, the promotions came and the spotlights called and we've lost ourselves in the mix of Nashville and Nowhere and February in California and the distance goes unnoticed in the dimming numbness of the day to day.

And you're there and I'm here and the mistakes go unspoken. We smile our simple smiles, we hold one another and we fuck...and then we find ourselves in another town, in another bed, feeding ourselves common lies.

She was slightly more honeysuckle than hell

You couldn't see that In her eyes, not always.

But, sometimes she'd turn... Just right

And you could still see the innocence inside her.

Somewhere through the inked out skin and the bubble wrapped dream.

She was there

Some sweet summer night in No Where, Virginia with No Where, Kentucky on my mind.

And her Appalachian twang echoing down the creeper trail.

Stoned and Running from life and love and Reality...

"we're a long way from pizza houses and bars, baby." Hair and make-up had been done and she was postured up. Last minute adjustments and hotel room antics.

I passed her a joint as I fumbled with the buttons. I muttered something about leaving the bottom stud undone and she shook her head...and she smiled.

I'd made some mad dash escape

from Orlando to Austin to get here.

For this.

To see her honeyed eyes light up. To see it all click.

I wanted to see her, as she took it all in.

I watched her hand quiver in the pass...I took an inhale and took her hand.

Pulling her in to me. I needed her close to me. I needed to take the self-doubt from her mind.

There was the rapid *beat. Beat! beat!!!" Of her heart. I wanted to believe she smelled like me. But... She smelled like her and so I shut it down.

And I whisper something akin to, "you've got this, babes." I felt her grip tighten and her head bend into my chest. "You're here," she says, "that's all that matters."