I look back, and I see my friends being taken from me, one by one.

There was beauty, is joy still. But I remember my first steps into darkness. I remember the first tokes, walking for hours because I couldn't feel the pain in my legs. I remember the terrifying steps up to the front door, feeling alien to my own home. I wallowed, hid in my room and listened to the insect purr of my own mind.

I woke up in time to see my friends fall over the cliff, one by one. The powder made them hollow. I believed their empty reassurances. I was paralyzed but couldn't bring myself to hate them. I wandered with them, admonishing vaguely but staring, blankly, at the violence. Then Sean was gone from my life and the wound opened. It's still deep enough to hold the child soul of every single one of them.

Then the bad news, weeks and weeks of arguments and pleas and terror, absolute terror before the awesome power of the law. Then seeing Grant lowered into a police car and weeping into a pillow because tyrants were eating my friends alive. And they did; they ground the happiness from our bones. I wandered again, we all did, in a new and lonely world.

Just remember it, is all. Leave the emptiness. We've earned the right to be whole again.


Cars At Night

That was our holiness,
the thrum of engines.

I loved you then,
I was distracted.

I’m sorry,
I didn’t hear you,
the buildings looked
like they were going
to say something.

Is it cold?
What are we buying tonight?

That was our holiness,
caravans in the dark.

It took you then,
and I told the Earth
to shut its ugly mouth.

And I loved you.

That was my holiness,
watching you fall.

Turn down the radio,
the streets are saying
their goodbyes.