all the houses look the same here. these too thin walls and worn down frames. i keep seeing your ghost walk through, but i can’t tell which one bears your name.

it’s taken me a month of therapy to realize i’m not crazy. to start learning to sleep at night. and to know i can’t stay here and stay sane.

i left before you woke. at eighteen, you were the first girl i kissed because i didn’t know better. the first ghost my mouth knew.

• i realized how much of my writing is about smoking cigarettes
• or drinking

Seperate from each other, but indelibly intertwined.

Sometimes, when nights are particularly lonesome and dreadful, I think about writing you letters. Letters I’ll never send. Letters, that like the others, would be returned. Unopened.

The loss of your friendship will continue to trouble me until I become a quiet, old man. Though, I know, I will someday read your books.

We have the heat on as a peace offering. My own arrogance working its way into your pants as we smoke our cigarettes too fast. I feel like we would meet each other again, if by chance we never met.

Tonight I smoked my cigarette way too fast. Inhaling deeply, letting nicotine flood. I smoked the rest of the pack in the same fashion, wishing to numb your arrival. In my thoughts you were still one and the same. It’s been years since we were, while some days we still are. And I feel like we’ll be competing forever.

I should have gone for the gin.

There were the first few times they collided. Head first, or feet first, or sprawled out on an undersized bed. There were the first few times they actually spoke to one another. Names first, desires first, moving along. Hoping their actions, not words, would lead them into a place where they could silently follow. Step after step, after… just moving along in continuity. Occasionally they would dance. Occasionally they would begin to know one another, or lose track. Occasionally they would begin again, colliding. Repeating the motions, begging to know each other as they played in silence.

Tonight we were summer, and I reveled in it. Only for a night, and only in the briefest of moments. And only in the broken circumstances that led us to the same table. It had something to do with how I always sat alone in the same diner, on the same Saturday’s. It had a lot to do with how you were light headed, part of the air. How I had four or five beers too many and how we ended up wandering through parking lots, feeding each other laughter.

Summer was becoming on you in a way reminiscent of childhood adventures. The way that it gathered on your shoulders. The way that summer stole your shell and returned instead with friendship. How our cold reflective callous juxtaposed the warmth collecting around us. How it brought us together with the force of an avalanche. Summer was for us a paradox, a perfect juxtaposition to express the broken circumstances that continued to lead us into each other.

I began to tuck myself into corners, wondering if you would stumble through every Saturday. If you’d continually come, replacing anguish with life.Taking away aberrance by placing concrete under my feet.  Wondering if summer would face me in its radiance, and deliver on its promises.  And, like clockwork, you appeared every Saturday, bringing vivacity to an otherwise empty booth. Bringing a drink or three. Coaxing me to come out of my shell, now that summer had stolen yours. Begging me to feed you the life I thought you already possessed.

We moved along in this stupor. Feeding each other adventure as our parking lots emptied, changing as reflections of us. They became long hikes where we learned each others names. They became movies on a couch that sunk us into one another. Laughter that gave way to silence on a balcony, where we learned our passions. Where we learned to understand. We slowly became summer ourselves, and you became the subtlety which held my attention.