i know you're not fooled by my well intended lies and that you see straight through my quickly fading disguise and i know you don't believe my look-away eyes and i'm partially glad that you know me enough to know that much about me i don't want to have to have that talk because i can't recognize the image i see in the mirror i'm blurry and tear stained and feeling so drained that part of me slips away with each shower and the bare bone minimum is never as good as i once thought it could be i know i'm not fooling you mainly because i'm no longer even fooling myself i've been stretched so thin and etched so faintly i'm starting to lose my own outline and it scares me at times breathing in super slow motion like i'm relearning the whole act when it should already be memorized then again i always seem to be two steps behind the crowded mass that moves in front of me turning back around ever so seductively to remind me that what they have remains at the outer limits of my reach and i can't quite breach the code because my password has long been outdated and should by now have faded to the back of my mind but that's the way things seem to go now as i drown a little deeper in the sea that i can't quite see so there's no way to describe it it's beyond you and me so while you stretch out your hand i'll be squinting a little too hard to see you there right in front of me while i sit down and think about my constant wish to rewind the time and go back to a place in mind that made sense of the senseless back to a time when we thought we'd be schooled with all the right tools to figure ourselves out before we unraveled in the process of getting better acquainted with our insides that read between the lines and envelop our escape route in lines one word too many so for now let us sit in silence postponing my inevitable leaving the goodbyes and the times to linger in the air where they belong hidden by the stars and looking down at you and me glowing with good intentions and well rehearsed mentions of things to do and people to see and ways to be when rock hard outer shells turn soft and sway under all the weight of keeping things locked up tight and let's you and i
act like its all okay because i'm waiting for that day that inevitable day
to never come

m-i-s-s-i-n-g

i miss your eyes weighed down by words you left unspoken words that formed and moved around your tongue tied down by helpless emotion and i miss your silent laughter that bubbled up from within and never escaped never had a chance to but tried numerous times i miss your jaded memory that blurred the lines of our existence and miscommunicated the dates and numbers and times that we shared when we were apart and i miss the dreams you claimed you had but never did they were only words lovely beautiful well planned words of things you wanted to say without really saying without really owning them and so you named them dreams and i went along for much too long but still will if you will only you let me

let me in it's cold outside and i've stood here for days wondering when your body will arrive and take a seat next to mine on the bus that drives along the same path and always ends up in a different place like our love story that once had a rhyme but no longer resembles what we wrote down in permanent marker i miss that marker it left the day you did followed you home wherever that may be at this given moment in time you were always on the move and only stayed long enough for me to get in your groove and then you moved on to the city lights that shine brighter than the stars we always planned to sleep under but never had the time to we were always too busy with other things and plans and people that mention they miss your mind but not in quite the same way i do because i miss that mishapen mind of yours and the way it forgot to let me in and the way it fooled everyone even you yes i miss that mind because it was there that i made you

grows faint

you became entangled you became intertwined in mind with ease unseen before your moves and big city grooves and changes of heart that were typed in solitude. i became a little more than you originally bargained for. grew a little less faint and a little more sublime in time as we moved through the abyss of unschooled monday blues searching for clues that made sense of our shared stolen time line that abruptly came to an end. you fell. you fell like rain and didn't stop weaving through the november days and lovesick giveaways that had remained unspoken. i shook. i shook like recently faded autumn leaves weighed down by memories of past moments illuminated in my mind's eye and the we that had dared to be whispered began to grow faint began to disseminate began to form a lie that once spelled out you and i with only two letters.

now tell me why did we even try?



~ photo taken by doug