the space above my ears.

Being So Sorry

You are sitting at the brink of consciousness.

I'm in the driver's seat smoking out the window.

You are in the dining room of the big house on the beach.

I am in the library attic.

You are alone in a dark cinema room watching a film, and you can hear the words they are saying on the screen but can make no sense of them.

I'm in the projection booth manipulating space and time for you.

Are there popcorn kernels in your ears?

Because it is all here, right in front of us, yet you still deny the inevitable in the shape of dollar bills and bad jokes.

You keep on walking through the valleys and the forests listening to your own heartbeat through a pari of broken earbuds with one side quieter than the other.
You still cook dinner and vacuum the floors and help your little brother with his homework.

I do not pretend to understand your methods of going through the motions.

I am not lying when I say you are a privilege.

I suppose this is how it has to be for a while.

We'll keep tugging on sleeves.

We'll always keep one forearm hanging off the mattress.

There's a slight twitch at the corner of your mouth when you say it, and I wouldn't have noticed if I didn't know what happened in the apple orchard.

At the latest part of the night, it hits me, why you never closed the windows when it got cold outside.

Until the very last minute, you had hope that the carrier pigeon would fly in with a rolled-up letter tied to its foot with a strand of twine.

You hoped that maybe, through all the spoiled milk and dents in the wall, those beautiful words would still find you in good health, and you could fall back into the same cycle of earnestness and superiority complexes.

It had nothing to do with happiness.

It was about which door had the most locks.

You would have boarded the Whydah if Bellamy told you there were enough cells below deck.

I figured you out in the empty parking lot.

You smiled at me, but I could see the dying flowers behind your eyes.

I would have run if you asked me to.

I still will, sweetheart.

I still will.