the space above my ears.

Chapstick Blues

Most of the time, I find it hard to believe you were little more than a maladaptive daydream.

It felt so warm in your bed and it hurt so bad when you weren't there.

Every Wednesday, I'd sit down and sew you back together, stitching the miles of skin into something you could wear.

I admit I used duct tape on the inside, maybe a couple safety pins, but you were alright.

They called you Pretty Boy, and I took pride in the fact that my handiwork impressed them.

We loved, but something from the other side of the tracks was driving us to slather frosting all over each there's coffins and kick them off a cliff.

Times like this would happen often and your friends would call me saying you needed me.

I'd pull up to the curb and you'd be halfway passed out, leaning entirely on your friend, who looked scared.

He would then inform me that you threw up twice in the parking lot and you'd been crying for the last thirty minutes.

We'd go home and you'd cry a little more.

You asked me for time and I gave it to you, again and again.

Night would melt into morning and you would make breakfast or clean the bathrooms.

A few days would pass and I'd do something impulsive like smoke a stick of dynamite just so you wouldn't feel like you owed me anymore.

I'd bring it up later in the kitchen while wiping the blood off your chin.

You'd still look defeated and I wouldn't be able to kiss it better.

I'd try, though, and that was a start.

You did your best and I love you for it.

This is not about our legacy.

There are keys with no doors lodged deep in your abdomen, too many to count.

They've been there for years.

You feel like you need them and I understand why.

What I have yet to put in my letters to you is that coming down is a good thing.

You fight it only because you think you don't deserve it,

You want to stay up where the air is thin and the pressure clogs your ear canals.

You want to keep biting your tongue until if falls off.

I know this.

I know that half the time, one of your hands is at home and the other is buried deep in the cold sand.

On the stiff white futon, your brother and I played go fish and shared a sandwich from the vending machine.

You were unconscious, blissed out on morphine in the hospital bed.

How you managed to look so lovely after wrapping your car around a pole, I'll never know.

I wrote another letter to you on your skin with my finger.

You are not who you think you are, it said.

You pretended you were asleep and I still don't know if that was because you were trying to punish yourself or if you just didn't want to look weak.

I forgave you either way.

Railroads and ravines rippled past on the drive home, waving a somber goodbye to us.

You sang along to the stereo, something I didn't know I'd ever hear again.

I pulled into the driveway and the house looked smaller, no longer looming over us, no longer hiding the moon.

The first thing we did was fix the broken flower vase.

I said it was unsalvageable, but you said we had to try.

So we did, and we talked, and we agreed that the calm comes after the storm.

Putting those shards of ceramic back together, you realized for the first time that you didn't need keys.

You didn't need keys because there were no doors and there would never be any.

It wasn't a striking observation, per se; you had known it all this time...

But this was new and big and terrifying.

This was a bold blank line waiting to be graced your signature in gold.

You had come to terms with the fact that you were not ready and you never would be and that made you free.

Nobody, not even the protagonists are ready, and that's the whole point, isn't it?

To make something of love and fear and let it change you.

Let it change everything.