MavericksRequiem

There are sirens screaming from halfway across the world as I paint my nails white, shaking. This was the fifth largest earthquake since 1900. The news won't stop talking about the devastation. The water. The fire. The radiation. All those people dead. Missing. There are so many people talking, pictures of debris washing across airports, homes swept out to sea. A green map flashes red and yellow at the bottom of the news footage. Evacuees are wrapped in blankets on street curbs, crying on their cell phones, holding each other as the horrible news keeps pouring in. Thank whatever god there is for their preparedness, for their swift actio

There are places that still smell like you -- spots in my carpet and my sheets and my curtains where there is a residue of your hands and your breath and your smile. There are places where your name and where your face are drawn on the walls in invisible, memorial ink, and I cannot decide if it is a trick of the light or if you are driving me slowly and devastatingly insane. I can see you still -- sitting on my windowsill blocking out the sun and smiling as you talk about the healing process of your first tattoo. The blue ink engraved into your leg is still the color of twilight over those pines and maples

By dictation of your eyes, it is midnight. The sky is specked by bright stars, and I am lost in the darkness. On occasion, a thin wisp of cloud works its way across the light emitted by the white spots and blinds me further. From here, I can hear the rush of the sea -- your breath. I take the only path I know, through the hollow of your cheek, and meet your mouth. The tide is louder, here. The petals of your lips part, and my feet are no longer on solid ground. Whatever nectar lied there is not sweet, but almost sickly bitter by the consumption of black coffee and mentholated smoke, and by some property of its construction, makes me able to s

The moon shines and lights the dark; reflected Sun. But such a thing holds not a candle To the brightness you produce with beauty -- Not just your physical, but, too, your mental. People have called it a dreamer's folly, To wish for what one cannot have. Alas, It seems 'tis they who are mistaken, for Approaching dreams in such a manner crass. They cannot quite see past the limits of Their comfortable reality and think, Perhaps, it's not so wrong to look beyond And connect with a different kind of link. They could repeat a definition of This technically and still not know -- it's love.

There comes a time when you have to know what's important. What you want. What you need. What's healthy. And at that point, you go to the closest gas station, fill a can up, and buy yourself a box of matches. You take that can back to every old, rotted out bridge you know, and pour the gas along its length, then strike up a match, and let the whole thing burn. There comes a time when you have to know what you don't want to go back to. And then baby, you watch those bridges burn.

I met you through a friend. She showed me your picture, and then my lungs collapsed. They called it spontaneous pneumothorax at the hospital, and told me I'd have to go back for a series of X-rays every few weeks, but said it would heal on its own. Later, in those chest X-rays, they discovered I had an enlarged heart which hadn't been noticed before in any of my doctor's visits. They did a battery of tests, but couldn't find a cause for it. They said it was very possible that I could die because of it -- and very soon. They told me a whole bunch of things and put me on medication, but I refused to take it. They didn't believe me when I told