147.

in the winter, which is coming sooner than we thought,
we become a cold and nameless memory
and I go back to just wanting a goddamn cigarette.

in the summer at least we were melancholy
and made of a little missing each other.
when the frost comes
we will be blurs.

remembering is for the springtime,
but by then, the picture you kept of me will have faded
and my smile will be lost in someone else's
in the back of your pocket.

and I will be here, still, thumbing through
the notes you left for me, reading them aloud
to a few empty chairs.

the summer is over.
winter is the season for staying in,
because the roads between our hands have iced over,
and I guess your tires are
too weak for this.

I'll go back to warming my throat with whiskey
since you won't be here to kiss it,

and I don't know where you'll go.

146.

flitting birdlike through my memories, gathering

little bits of broken shell and soil between my knuckles as I go

to build a nest

there are so many things I have learned, so many things

I have yet to learn, and I will make a house of them

I will be indiscriminate

weave and sew the slivers of self-doubt

with shame and brash confidence alike, like slender twigs

padding with fluff from old lovers' mattresses

I have been made of so many things

over these years, 

stained glass and skinned knees and everything in between

and I am patchwork quilt beautiful

with sticks and stones sticking out at the seams, all the things

people have thrown at me, all the things I have swallowed

I will make my home amid my feathered hopes

and oiled fears, and I am not pitting myself 

against myself today. 

there are too many pretty things

in my lacy framework, in this tiny cathedral I have built
there are too many berries and too many thorns

too many storm clouds and sun showers

I don't want to pluck anything out

of myself. I want to keep

all of it.

145.

you make me wanna write good more, find
healthier words with leaner muscles and better breath
words that can stand on their own two letters,
and lend you a hand
when you need it. because you always lent yours to me.
you were always my favorite thing
and I miss when you were
wrapped around my wrists and ankles, like a brace
the doctor gives you and says,
"this will help you heal."

and your words are strong like prairie winds
and they make mine wanna stand up taller and
puff out their chests,
and paint murals
with their typewriter fingers all along
my skin, and yours. because I write in the dark
with something breathing down my neck, but
you leave your pens out to dry in the sun
and they leave Texas heat
on the page.

you make me wanna take my medicine
every single morning, because I never want to push you
into hospital waiting rooms again. you were always there
to lead me by the hand, and show me
the green grass
when the sky seemed too bright to look at.
and now I'm on pretty good terms
with daytime, but I still write at night anyway,
and your country words are nudging me
out the door again,

telling me stories about us, and binding them
into a little book that I can read.

I still remember the night you were so drunk
that you wouldn't open the door for anyone
except me.
and I'm so sorry that I told everyone later.
it's just that I felt special to you
like a keepsake you wore in your shirt pocket every day
and telling the story helped me
not to forget.