You
Invade my dreams, make me think
Suicidal thoughts
And things
Like butterflies eclipse
My sun
We
Escape from silence
Eradicate as you masturbate and fondly wait
For you to dream
As someone stands
The guardians of world time
And order expanding, exploding
Someone so much more and less
Enchanted
You
Invade the timeless
Energy
Masochistic tendencies
As we
Make thoughts like rainbow canopies
And spin cotton candy sunsets
Below the raindrops
That land, freeform, on unopened
Umbrellas
As you
Invade my dreams,
Make me think
Suicidal thoughts
And things
The butterfly eclipse
Of sunlit
Memories

We hear fragments
Information in puzzle pieces and placing it together
Like there are things (other things, different things) we should know,
We don’t know
And you are the edge of consciousness, the someone else on the other side
Of reality
The mirror image, funhouse remainder of me
Conversations picked apart and placed on the edge of railroad tracks
You are skipping along
Waiting for the wind to blow the lace on your skirt
You were espresso
When everyone was drinking tea
And now
Remixed, dancing to something outside the lines
You trace in harsh black, the eyeliner I forgot
Skipping beats on records I never saw
And we are cozy in our two bedroom,
The kids asleep
And somewhere in the silence
I can hear you curse us out
Long after
We’ve drifted off, clouds of sleep
And forgotten to forget
About you

We are tripping over syllables that should not be spoken, cigarette smoke and coffee grounds empty on the sidewalk and remembering the emphasis on her syllables. The resonance of space between words and the way she lingers with me, questing for moments lost as though stillness is a price we pay for too much laughter nights and midnights previous. She offers me a cigarette and I feel the weight thrown, my old life for a song – like nothing has changed and she will revive me, recreate me, mold me into the image of who she has intensified and glorified in her mind. But I am no longer the child she knew and there is something slippery here, I taste it in the stillness. Something acrid. Something not worthy of the person I want to be. I shake my head. I do not want this here. It is already the mess it was and nothing has happened.
First this, then harmless phone calls, then the solidity of steel and she is blackmail, the egocentric grip against my soul
And I will not have it marking me again
Denial moving me,
And I am rising, thinking of the space between beats, the stillness of a night too far from me,
Too close to not recall
Call it last
And he lying still in sleep, his eyes with laughter, heart a piece of mind tucked deep inside
And I am shaking at how close she came to thinking of stealing a piece of that
And I am shaking at how close she came to wanting to even come near to a piece of me . . . of this life we have and lead together
And I wonder
What possessed me to say yes
To this
Sitting in this booth,
This innocent sitting and talking
This invocation of friendship
And knowledge that I have friends, this knowledge that I do not need this in me
And I turn and move away
And in the silence of my car I sit and wait, pick up the phone
Voice mail
His voice in the silent darkness but therein the relief . . .
He and I
And no other

Turn the key and press the car into gear . . . go home
Where he waits just for me
As I have been waiting just for him

Sometimes i don't even have to go . . . the truth is there if i seek
. . . . . i just have to seek