Night sits on my chest
Squeezes poems out of me
And grinds my poor soul

He sleeps while I lay awake
No news.
I think this is the nature
of boys.
How many times have I lain awake
while a boy I was ******* slept?
Sometimes when you are faced with absurdity
All you can do is sleep.
I think I've made a terrible mistake
but this isn't the first time I've felt
this way.
I am not to be trusted.

I don't think I've slept in nearly two years.
Instead closing my eyes only in the merciful combination of desperation and design.

Last night he went to sleep at 12:03
I listened for his breaths to slow.
I rubbed my feet together
softly;
In near panic.
And didn't turn on Josh Ritter until
12:33.

Aside:
Falling in love =/= being in love
Life is all about lessons. Choices.

🎶🎶🎶🎶🎶🎶🎶🎶🎶🎶🎶🎶🎶
I never felt alone until I met you.
🎶🎶🎶🎶🎶🎶🎶🎶🎶🎶🎶🎶🎶

Not alone like this.

Do you dwell in this space also?
Am I less alone in at least that much?

Sleep softly, babes.

I heard a song today that I know
I am not better for having heard.

*******, Steve Forbert and
******* for
 
                       "But everything burned
                         And fell from my hand
                         I had to turn back
                         Or build a new plan"

My life was better before this affirmation
of the universal human experience
of whole entire worlds burned
to less than ashes
in those moments of clarity.

                          "Meet me in the middle of the day
                            Let me hear you say everything's okay
                            Meet me in the middle of the night
                            Let me hear you say everything's alright"

We could have stopped at
"Romeo's Tune"
and danced forever
in the kitchen of my heart.

That might have been
the nostalgic space you occupied
but you weren't ever happy
until you had force ****** me:
                          "You're thinking you've found
                            The one special place
                            Where all your dreams
                            Will walk out in line
                            And follow the course
                            You've made in your mind
                             It isn't gonna be that way"

1978-2020
More than forty years apart
the same soul sick hurting!

Can you feel it now
when the sun warms your skin?
Does your heart sing love songs as before?
Did it feel like betrayal when you
rejoined everyone who had been waiting?

I need so much to believe
you are ok now Steve Forbert.

Words are wind
is a thing you used to love to say
when I would start "defending"
him
"Words are wind, Mandi!
Anyone can give you words!"
You would leave the air silent
only then with your own.
The space between us entirely empty of you.
This was not the vacuum of last spring.
There would be no side of highway hand plucked wildflowers.
No phones vibrating with your messages between thighs in sessions.
No intertwined sweat soaked limbs in the sauna of a midday tent.
I was thankful of it.
I longed for your nearness but not your misplaced romance or hope.
No -I would have you now in the Autumn.
Too depressed to breathe;
you would never draw me close.
Your words only came with
alcohol, ***, or some combination of
supposed truth serums.
As you had said though:
"Words are wind, Mandi!"
And your words somehow both too abundant and too few
blew through that space between us
like a winter's Gale.
Seeking shelter from the elements you created
meant leaving you to find your own  way through.
The only way out for either of us.

It is nearly spring again now.
I know it must be because
I can see primrose
defying all logic with it's
near invisible courage.
I champion it on with its
welcomed heralding of a needed
new season.

I hope that we both get to be
Ok.

The shallow words you offer now
will never begin
to fill the deep chasms
you've eroded into me.
Me.
My person.
Into the heart, soul, bones, brain, sinew of
Me.
When we were still new
you had already begun
to chip away at
Me.
But you said
with each raise of your maul
“I love you
and I would never
do anything to hurt
you.”
No one
but NO ONE
had ever loved
Me.
before.
I opened myself wide
and you crawled inside
to make yourself a home in
Me.
I was empty before then
and still I am empty.
According to Bukowski
I should have let you ****
Me.

In the moments before death my brain had flooded with DMT  
And I could see in my mind’s eye all of the best that had been between us.
From somewhere above my body I silently screamed that the DNR was a mistake
I was comforted then in knowing that you would soon follow me into the dark
-a willing victim of our shared cancer.
I had seen your hospice nurses and heard your death rattles for years.
Even still I longed so much for you to grab the paddles and force me back
but we had agreed not to resuscitate;
so paralyzed I watched my life leave.

It was first with a whimper and then with sobs
that I grasped wildly around the small pitch box
in search of you who had promised to die with me.
I found instead more darkness, the smell of dirt
and that not even the ghost of you had come to lay.

I can sometimes hear you eulogize my goodness from above
when you come to pick the flowers I’m growing with what is left of me.
I won’t reach for you anymore as I did last night.
I will lie very still.
Without a whimper.