#timber jim

Fate, she might allude to our destines,

though I'm allured to make it harder for us both.

You would still have to come back— and you know

I would try to try

and leave first.

Time's gale wind only blows harder and remnants of our range are weathering into sea and sand.

The erosion in me you used to fill serve now as monuments—

carved canyons, sprawled through emptied man.

Gassed in a vacuum with lorded empathy,

where once, the breath of the sweetest nectarine skies used to feel me...

She said they looked sad (like we didn't build them)

but it looks like they're laughing to me.

this world,

it's trying to ruin me      with every opportunity it gets—

     every day, i sharpen my no. 2 pencil

     and get ready for the test.

     well, not every day. some days, i sleep in.

some days i'm high before i wake up,

     still running from the night,

bathed numb from the white alphabet game,      cheap beer,

sweat and glitter.

     and, though i wish that i didn't,

i almost      always remember.

     the test doesn't stop.

the timer's still ticking.

     for the longest,      i thought i was too young to tell

but this old dead head said,

     "if you're still living, you're winning.

and whenever you're ready to get off this ride,

     just

     stop

oblivious might've escaped

except it was obvious in our eyes,

cursed by the other's—

our key.

purr her engine even gentle, and i'll roar to life.

relationship simple, it wasn't relatively obvious to me,

so i sat and i watched the pages turn,

the words authored telling a story i'd never heard, or never learned:

warlord of self-deprecation, centrifuged from proper nouns, found at the animal's entrance of surly, sweet, syrupy you:

"bears!" "how many?"

the room was cold, to me, not to her,