buddy holly wears big glasses

Even in your sleep, your body calls for mine to hold you down and finish the story.

You cannot hide the soil coating your fingernails and undersides. Your feet are rooted, but not nearly as deep as her coffin. “She lived a good life,” you’ll hear them say and it will shake you down until your wrists soften

like the silk of her hair. You wonder if you can still see beauty, if she will always be this ghost etched only for a moment as an image within a thought within a whisper. Your wrists soften as you remember

shared closets bursting with shared clutter, now grown thick with a dust of lost eyelashes so deep your stomach fills only for a moment. You wonder if you can keep your promise to the clouds that you won’t be bitter, but their shame is bright

with the silk of her hair. Even though hearts are denser and distance is louder and life is longer, your roots are not as deep as her coffin. You do not hide the soil coating your fingernails while your wrists soften and shake you down and your

I. Identify your terror. II. Weigh it. III. Belittle it.

Make passive remarks about your terror’s strange diction. Note its awkward gait and asymmetry. Talk at length about golden ratios and forget the point. Do not apologize.

Let terror believe, for a moment, that you’re laughing with it, not at it. Invite terror closer. First ask then demand its secrets and more importantly its shames.

Smile still; smile still; keep smiling. Graduate too quickly to blatant mockery.

Note: Refrain from sarcasm. Your terror has convinced itself its fluency in sarcasm is both its greatest weapon and its inevitable undoing.

Do not feed the fictions.

IV. Try, maybe, telling your terror that people do not laugh at its jokes not because they don’t understand sarcasm, but because terror’s sense of humor sucks.

i want to fly with the telephone signal. i never imagined i’d need to see you just to be sure that your voice has a tongue, that your tongue flits and dances behind lips shaping words. teeth in your smile, shining in the light and all that.

i took a walk in the park with an old friend of mine who doesn't know you. we drank a couple of Cokes, split a joint between us, and i told her one of your stories as if i’d read it on CNN. sometimes i have to pretend that i don’t know you either.

face down in the dirt, your boots torn off your feet, arms asleep. i want to have been with you. i want to feel that distant exhaustion in my muscles, watch the same film reel behind my eyes so that you could look at me and i’d understand and you would never have to explain the smell of sun-baked blood when you taste it on your lips.

i need to tell you that i didn’t turn on the TV for five months, but i’ve started watching the news now, watching with purpose. i prefer the eleven o’clock because it helps me sleep when i don’t hear your name. and now, before i go to bed, i pray to God. news then God, news then God, every damn night.

i need to tell you that i’m not sure your eyes will be the same light hazel they've always been. i’m not sure about the curls at the nape of your neck or the smell of your chest like a new Hanes t-shirt and coffee grounds.