• Am I loud and clear or am I breaking up?


    I can’t hear your voice anymore. Have I gone deaf? No. The streets are alive with the music of life; I can hear that. Is it just you? Or maybe it’s me.

    The phone’s gone dead.

    Am I still your charm or am I just bad luck?
    Are we getting closer, are we just getting more lost


    I can feel what you gave me in my pocket. It doesn’t weigh much, but it’s the concrete block encasing my feet, weighing me down as I sink, clawing frantically through the water. I’m somewhere I didn’t know existed, somewhere in between and I don’t know where.

    I'll show you mine if you show me yours first
    Let's compare scars I'll tell you whose is worse
    Let's unwrite these pages and replace them with our own words


    We wrote out pages of our own history; you’ve seen the whole me, every inch; the pale, pockmarked scars, every defect, every flaw, the sparse places of bare skin, all of it.

    And I’ve seen yours.

    We’re even. At least until one of us tries again with these baby wings, these pitiful, underdeveloped things that are meant to give flight, but instead, only weigh us down.

    And then? Then we fall, we plummet, we drop like suicidal snowflakes. We are gorgeous in our subtle imperfection, but doomed to death because of it.

    We live on front porches and swing life away
    We get by just fine here on minimum wage
    If love is a labor I'll slave 'til the end
    I won't cross these streets until you hold my hand


    This carefully crafted life has fallen to pieces, our attempts at normalcy have been woefully inadequate. And I can’t think why. Or how. Of where we – no, it, where it went wrong. Or what it even was in the first place.

    But despite this… I still feel the champagne in my heart and head when I think of you, the bubbles of giddiness, lifting me for a moment until they explode with the knowledge of what we have become, dropping me back down.

    I've been here so long; think that its time to move
    The winter's so cold summer's over too soon
    so let's pack our bags and settle down where palm trees grow


    I can see the clouds are black with snow, the proverbial ‘storm on the horizon’ is no longer just a metaphor; it is very real. And it’s staring me in the face.

    I have a decision to make. Soon. One so momentous that I don’t know if I can do it. God help me. No, that’s not right. I can’t look to something that’s not there for help.

    There is no light at the end of this tunnel, only a bleak decision.

    I've got some friends, some that I hardly know
    But we've had some times I wouldn't trade for the world
    We chase these days down with talks of the places that we will go


    Funny how, when faced with something like this, people you never knew, never cared to know, suddenly become some of the most important in your life, simply because you don’t know them. Life’s ironic that way.

    I’ve decided.

    I hope I’m right.

    We live on front porches and swing life away
    We get by just fine here on minimum wage
    If love is a labor I'll slave 'til the end
    I won't cross these streets until you hold my hand

    I'll show you mine if you show me yours first
    Let's compare scars I'll tell you whose is worse
    Let's unwrite these pages and replace them with our own words

    We live on front porches and swing life away
    We get by just fine here on minimum wage
    If love is a labor I'll slave 'til the end
    I won't cross these streets until you hold my hand, until you hold my hand


    “Stay with me.”

    “… Why? We were. We stopped. Now, we are not ‘we’. Now, you and I are ‘you’ and ‘I’.”

    “… There is no me without you anymore.”

    “… I’ll stay.”

    Swing life away