Today I took the sheet of glass off my coffee table. I washed away the greasy fingerprints in an acid bath; I kept trying to fit my fingers between yours and was tired of the illusion.  I put all my green tee shirts in the washer, your smell was fading from the elongated hugs and I was starting to sound alike a basset hound trying to keep your scent in my nostrils for 58 days. And then I solved a rubiks cube with no stickers. It sits on my dresser, black and unfinished. Do you see what happens when you are gone? Tomorrow I’m going to lie out pennies in a line stretching from the foot of my bed to the nightstand next to your head. If it’s a penny for your thoughts I’m going to put in my 2 cents worth, think of how 82 million pennies is going to keep me in your thoughts. My love for you is a roundabout on a mountaintop. It was tough to get there, but now that I’m there, I’m not going down without a parachute or you. I’ve become accustomed to pouring out buckets of water filled with kisses addressed to your lips. I’ll watch it evaporate and blow the clouds north. Lamps like raindrops help me to reminisce on your infatuation with luminescence and I just paid the electric bill. Also, I applied to pilot school yesterday so I could go up in the air and always have my eyes on you. 2,000 feet above the ground my breaths get shallow and the air gets thinner, all of which I attribute to the fact that in a plane above the midwest you still bring out the 15 year old boy that was always more willing to save Princess Zelda than talk to a living breathing girl.

And do you remember driving around Dallas that first week? I killed the clutch on purpose when I was with you. Is seemed like an accident because I was shaking, and the car was jerking, but I would’ve taken that sucker behind a shed. Just to send rush hour to the ice age so we can have our longest kiss. It sounds more magical than harry potter and more beautiful than a Da Vinci’s documented deviant smile. I still sleep on that couch and lay out a pillow, blanket and my phone. If enough of you can sift through the airwaves, I could fill that empty seat with your voice. When you are gone, it’s not that I understand the world less. On the contrary, I find more creative ways to find you, like the pebbles I skip across my bathtub to your lake. I photograph the letters of your name from signs I pass by and make them into a collage with glue sticks I found under my bed. I take these mentions of you as Dallas telling me who I should be talking to. To get closer to you I folded a map of the United States hot dog style. A simple solution of symmetry uniting similar minded lovers. Then I walk down the street with my hand painting the air next to me. Fingers spread, my hands make a jaw and only half the teeth to our zipper. I don’t worry or count the miles though. I’ve converted to kilograms. Yesterday I bought 82 pinwheels so that when you blow a kiss I know where to put my lips.   

The sun is bright outside. Peeking through my curtains like movie goers unsure of which theater to go in, the luminescent rays creep through the blinds and sit on my nightstand. Stretching over he grabs my eyelids open. Through a squint I see a vertical barcode glowing through the drapes and roll out of bed. After my clothes climb on me and breakfast slides into my stomach. I open the door. WELCOME TO TEXAS I get smashed in the face by a 70 degree glass bottle and walk into the hot tub that is my car. Black is not the best choice for a Texas summer. Then I start my drive 39.28 miles into Dallas, my one hope and prayer along the way is “please give my car Back to the Future hover tires, I hate construction.” Someone from Minnesota should not be here. There are no lakes and I know there is someone in the crowd that will say otherwise, but you are wrong. 

Today I took the sheet of glass off my coffee table. I put all my burgundy tee shirts in the dishwasher, and I alphabetized my rubiks cube collection. You see when you are gone. Not a lot makes sense to me. This afternoon I have an appointment with my veterinarian to talk about my imaginary pet sloth. He’s acting up and starting to move….fast. I seem to have lost that patch of grass where we laid in the sun and kissed. Who cares if we didn’t study for our modern historical corn silo final. I count 3 legs on this chair. Does that make it a stool? I find these minor things arbitrary when your gps coordinates aren’t in the same zip code as me. To get closer to you I folded a map of the united states hot dog style. A simple situation of symmetry separating similar minded lovers. I don’t worry or count the miles though. I’ve converted to kilograms. Yesterday I bought 82 pinwheels so that when you blow a kiss I know where to put my lips. I would say I miss you like Mario misses Luigi. But I KNOW that those two love being apart. So instead I’ll miss you like you miss me. Our love is that one carnival mirror teen girls hate because it makes everything bigger and bolder. So I’ll finish painting my calendar with honey mustard and count the pillows in the water softener. Hopefully you get back soon. The clouds smile nothing like you do.

(Source: wthrbug)

Driving by an apartment complex

I saw girls playing limbo underneath caution tape. 

bending beneath the bright yellow ribbon 

the wayward breeze interrupting 

the defending champions turn

but they played on

their only equipment 

their neighbors last gift. 

Every child loves it and most adults dread it. It’s the question of “what do you want” whether it be for your birthday or the winter holiday you celebrate. What do I have that I can give to you so you remember me, so you know that through my gift I want your life to be better. You asked me this and you do on a weekly alarm that I set on my phone to your name. One week just like always I didn’t have an want but an answer. I can’t ask anything from you I don’t want anything more from you because you gave me the best thing. You gave me my legs, you put a pair of size 11 1/2 Asics on them, because a 12 would be too much and an 11 squished my tootsies. You took those feet and sent them on the road. A bone and rubber battle with rock and asphalt. 

“It’s not a matter of body” you tell me “It’s a matter of mind, if you think you can keep running, you can” 

You gave me more than what I wanted for this weekly check up with the gift doctor. You gave me what the people jumping from marijuana to meth are afraid of, what obese people try to avoid, and what’s making me better at it to this day. You gave me a full on addiction to running, to giving up on your current location 2,000 times per mile. You gave me the need to buy a watch and let the seconds tick off my hand and shower my feet as I start cutting them out of my life. 

You had your hair in a ponytail like a beard that day, at first it started out as a joke, but it became more evident that you were a Santa Clause wanna be, that got rejected by the mall, but I will gladly sit on your lap and ask you 

“What am I getting this week” 

The kiss on the cheek will land crazy and stealthy like the lastest installment of Mission Impossible and I’ll feel your lips graze by my side burns and hover over my ear like a reverse tractor beam sending information into my head while you tell me.

“PUT YOUR SHOES ON BABY WE’RE GOING FOR A 10 MILE RUN IN THE RAIN AND WHILE WE DODGE THE CATS AND STOMP IN POODLES I’M GOING TO PULL YOU OVER AND KISS YOU EVERY QUARTER MILE.” 

“I don’t know what that is.” is the most common phrase I would hear you say down the hall in our apartment where you claimed that you had it all. Where you would talk about candy apple red ferraris and your sour apple mentality when it comes to greenbacks. You compared food stamps to feeding animals at a zoo and advocated not to distribute them. Every night I would sleep in my room and think about how less than 15 feet away from me you slept on the top bunk because you are too high on yourself for a close to floor spot.  

Flash forward to a world where daddy can’t give you a job or a nice car. A world where you are paid by the sweat from your brow and your empty jar of character makes it that much harder to get a real job. A world that only stayed on the prescribed axis and no inclination to go near you. You will feel humbled and humiliated to join the ranks of the lower middle class. You will become a regular at the plasma center and sperm bank. You will have to return your new stereo when your sperm gets rejected and when you get a bruise and can’t give plasma. 

At the bottom of all of this, you will apply for food stamps. You will fill out the paperwork, enclose your social security number, yearly earnings, and you will plead with the woman to help you eat. To help you send crumbs into your bloodstream so you can get through another shift. She will see your family earnings and see your dads name. 

The next thing will be cinematic. You will look down and the camera will pan around the room while the government worker laughs and rejects your request. As you walk out you’ll hear her say 

“We wouldn’t want you to get dependent, like animals at the zoo” 

He stares at the road while                                                                                              his gaze fixates at the speeding yellow dashes on the road.

After all this time they fade                                                                                            away into blips on radar of the horizon.

Numbers make up a language he’s becoming                                                                  more and more familiar with.

The Texas heat beats down the windshield.                                                                     On the way down the the shifter,

his foot weighs on the clutch and                                                                                     his hand grazes his right pocket.

There is a crumpled up kiss on a piece of notebook paper inside. 

“The miles and minutes are blurring and I hate this.”                                                             He says

“I hate that the only way to hug you                                                                                    is to fold the country hot dog style in half.

Even with that shortcut I still have to swim                                                                   through Pocket Lake into your right hand. 

You’ll be my inner tube                                                                                                       with a hole covered up by 2 crossed rubber bands. 

I don’t need a chair with you 

These students are full of promise and hope, and ready to make their imprint on the future. I read this in the whenever it comes alumni newsletter. Not only did it shock me to see that I was an alumni, but that my school was using it’s students like trading cards. Collecting the ones with the best stats and throwing them in a laminated laser printed book to share with the world. Who says that someone in the honor roll can’t roll a joint? How come the D1 full ride can’t do a drive by, and who made the law of nature that the soccer captain won’t drop out to work at Pizza Luce? My issue isn’t so much with success you see. I’m fine if your resume is 30 pages long saying “I’m awesome” in 12 point times new roman on repeat, but that doesn’t mean you will get the job. Character is a lot more than just accomplishments. Struggles aren’t put on lists of accomplishments. Nobody has told the girl that works 3 jobs to help support her family that she is full of promise. No one is advertising for the struggling writer, aspiring doctor, or student that is setting a good example for their siblings. If we only celebrate the accomplished, or as we call accomplished. We miss out on half the equation.