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I am grateful

for the way you

make me feel

Real.

I am grateful

for the way you

hold me when

you can tell

that the

ground has

shattered from

underneath me.

Sometimes, just

the sound of

your voice

brings me back to

Earth when I am

spinning endlessly,

losing oxygen in

the far, thin patches of

my atmosphere.

Every word brings me

back, slowly,

reminding me that

I am here and

now and

real, very real -

and still

very much able

to breathe.

The last

ice cold glass of

bliss I ever tasted

was on my

Grandmother’s front porch;

slightly sour, slightly sweet,

all refreshing.

II

The insects of summer

buzz vibrant in the ears of

my cousins and I,

second only to the

cars and the heat and

the rush of

the suburbs of Hartford.

III

There is nothing like summer

when you are seven years old,

when the world stretches out

yawning before you;

reckless, restless, endless,

as if you could exist there forever.

—

It’s been a minute since I’ve posted here, hasn’t it. So many things have changed for me - even the drive to write completely disappeared for a while. But I can feel it coming back in little spurts, when my mind is just quiet enough to hear it.

i’m starting to forget

the way your voice sounds.

at what point do i

begin to wonder

whether or not you

i wonder if

this must be

what it feels like

to fall in love

sometimes i wonder what it would

be like to

be the old man in the moon.

what, then, are moments?

months, years, generations?

who am i to feel

the scale of humanity

under cratered fingertips?

is this to be an existence

lonely but for the stars?

i breathe in the void of

space and exhale

dreaming of you is

the absence of light,

sand slipping through my

fingertips, fleeting.

i tried to clear the dust

from your place in my mind

only to find that you’d

grown roots in the grey matter

that makes up every last thought;

the first breath before a

spoken word, the last after

these neon dreams

looked better on the

November first feels like standing 

on the edge of a cliff, 

wind battering, sandpaper on skin. 

Jump. 

I am afraid. 

I long for solid ground and 

the comfort of a distant horizon. 

They are nowhere to be found.

Underneath is 

A great wide nothing 

And still my heart pounds, 

Racing to find the difference 

Between jumping and falling. 

Jump.  

I’ve searched for years 

To find the definition 

Of the word beginning 

As it morphs, grotesque and graceful 

Dances into 

That great wide nothing 

Reflecting back the   

Infinite black Of the universe. 

Jump. 

Jump into the great wide nothing

Of that beginning 

Not to fall 

But rather

i’d hoped that 

perhaps we were

in a perfect world

it is always summer and we,

with no responsibility 

(but to one another),

would simply lie in bed

explore each other until the

clouds turned blue and the moon

engulfed the sky. 

out on the edge of nowhere,

in a tiny quiet corner 

of another dimension,

we are growing old together

in an endless

i thought by now

i would have found

my own magic

--

i had a dream that there were

one-hundred million versions of us

kicking and screaming and

breathing and 

hearts pounding, 

struggling to find one another

in the fog over Los Angeles. 

every single version of us

ends differently. in each universe

you and i are fighting to 

feel the edges of the other, 

skin like silk, muscles 

contracting with each breath and 

in some we share the same air

through a kiss. 

if we blow hard enough maybe

it will scare the clouds from the valley,

reunite us and 

the city and 

the stars, 

all together, all 

most days i’m so concerned with 

the act of leaping that i don’t realize