M O N C H É R I

Sometimes I feel like you’re there still

In that house by the water,

Waiting for me

And I’d return to you with a kiss, a hug, the morning paper

We’d sip our coffees collectively, gazing at the sky, at you, at me

As if time eluded us

Distance no longer existed

I will go the rest of this lifetime loving you from afar.

You were younger then

Time was kinder to you

In gentle lighting and harsh lines, you wept for feelings you’d never feel again

All the while, your friends were wasting themselves in barrooms and bottled blondes

And you cried for them like you cried for yourself

Partaking in the revelry like you could feel the last time the liquor would pass your lips

And spread its fingertips across the nape of your neck, down down down your back

It would slide its way along the ridges of youth, to find disgust sitting there in the aftermath of the morning.

Yet, you reminded yourself gently, warmly, lovingly

This is what it means to be 20.

You’re not 20 now but sometimes you feel like you are

Time is not so gentle anymore.

It doesn’t dance across your lips,

Instead, it imprints itself in lines by your eyes

You no longer recognize yourself in photos,

But you learn to try

Gently, warmly, and lovingly.

You try.

I wanted your pain. Your suffering. Your Monday mornings. To point at you as if you were a map on my wall and say, “I’ve been here. And there. And just along this jagged line. I’ve tasted these streams and made home in those mountains.” Cedar and pine and nothing more. I wanted to avenge my sudden fall and bask in the brilliance of my own death.

I am nothing if not in love.

I break my bread alone

In the solitude of the fortress I have created

With hands scarred and touched

I need freedom again

Soon

To feel the wind brush my face and paint my skin red

Violently

I will throw my words to God and He will hear my pleas

There is no good in man that I have seen

So I have created heaven within the thistles.

I realized then that I wanted your Tuesdays

The taste of you polished across my teeth

I wanted to smash your vases and pick your flowers and scream your name down city streets

I realized then that I must be in love with you.

Surely, this must be it.

The fine line between misery and acceptance and true, harsh apathy.

And yet this,

So simple and misunderstood,

Is what the poets wrote about

What God forbade,

What I’ll cling to forevermore.

The taste of saccharine dripping from old photographs

Memories of before, bleeding into now, hemorrhaging into the future

I didn’t understand the feelings then,

But I know now.

Time has always meant nothing, but you have always meant everything.

I want you to tell me you miss me

I want you to lie if you don’t

I want to forget this past year and find myself in cigar smoke on a downtown street at 1am

Where sidewalk prophets leisurely stroll and window shop

And the buskers don’t ask for recognition, only coin currency

I want to eat at that diner in Tennessee

I want you to be there too

And when the food gets cold and the coffee runs out,

I want to go home with you.

I hope when you leave, the lights are left on

I hope the windows are open, softly letting the breeze dance through my paperback novels

I hope the sun is out and I can hear the birds

I hope there is peace

When you leave, I hope there is closure

I hope that my hurts didn’t leave a mark too large in your memory to cover the love that was felt

I hope the dances are remembered slightly more than the fights

When you leave, I hope you know that I understand why

And I hope that you leave the door cracked behind you.

it is enough for me, anyway

to share a space, a room, an existence with you

however fleeting it may be