my fake ID
Nothing was more fun
than loving you,
running around town,
raising hell everywhere we could.
I’ll always remember the night
we tried to go bowling
but my fake ID
got taken away,
or the night we went
rock climbing and I beat you
and you grabbed me by the waist
and asked if we were going to do it
and we did.
Nothing was more fun
than loving you,
running around town,
raising hell everywhere we could.
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A summer evening in Boston
Three men with fishing poles on the Charles River. A cellphone plays radio music on the dock. Flowers stink from their trees. A dead squirrel flattened on the concrete path. Runners speed past in formation with their highlighter yellow shorts. A boat cruises past as we dodge duck droppings in the grass. You lay your blanket out first while I open my basket with hidden wine. Do all beautiful things bloom before they end?
heartbreakandcigarettes.com
A personal note about Thanksgiving and Black Friday weekend:
We went out for Thanksgiving dinner. It was a beautiful time filled with warmth, laughter, live music, and excellent food. Today, I went out for the first time since the holiday. It was another cozy day with great food. We partook in two-dollar oysters from Legal Sea Foods and stood in line to buy seasonal candles and Wallflowers from Bath and Body Works. Now, it’s time to relax with a book, one of the candles that we secured earlier this evening, and a wilting bouquet of Trader Joe’s roses.
If you’re curious about shopping the book or candle in the photo, follow the link below for more information:
Just FYI, I could earn a commission from the link above.
heartbreakandcigarettes.com
Pink roses wilting on sogging
thorny stems, resting in a faded
vase, half-filled with rotted
water. Through the window,
the milky sun sits encrusted in gray
fog. A spider weaves its cotton
candy web in the corner of my
studio. The clock glows neon
white on the silvery
face of the microwave. Has new
love finally found me?
Wood splayed together like
crossbones crackling in the summer
night blaze. The evening sky looking like
winter’s salt-sprinkled tar. Chatter was a torrential
downpour as we approached
the bonfire. Remnants of earlier rain
sprinkled lightly over all of us. News
on a forgotten television. Sapped mahogany blocks
burning up and perfuming
the air with its spices. The bittersweet feeling of
the end.
As I draw my ring finger along
the wood grain of the deep oak restaurant
dinner table, you ask me
what you have always asked me:
What do you want?
My favorite question, asked at
our favorite restaurant. My answer
never falters: hibiscus soda. This is the only
place where we can get it. The lighting is always
too dim at this hour, and I can barely read
the menu even if I tried. The rest of my order,
you still have memorized, from when
we were still together. I swallow down
the memories as each one rises, stretching
toward the sconces high on the wall. Each one leaving a sour taste
like the fruit that swirls alongside
the herbal flavors of my drink on my tongue. Every time I
think to ask you something new, you replace the question
with our old script. Old feelings bouncing back and forth between us like
the marbles we used to play in schoolyard games.
Dirty and silent as the blue wallpaper lining
the hallways of this old restaurant.
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heartbreakandcigarettes.com
As he twirls a fork around in the storebought
ramen noodles on the stovetop, painstakingly emptying
every ossified crumb from the synthetic bag
into the boiling night of the saucepan.
Even with the hardest clumps, we cannot
afford the waste of anything, seasoned or unsalted.
We think of our children nearly decades
out of the house and almost weep – now
is the time. We decide poverty is a cousin of risk. Like college
students sprinting through stipends, we savor every
morsel of time. Seconds expand with great focus on
every wish wrestled into fruition. Now, we celebrate.
I unseal, crack through, and unroll the cans
of tinned fish. I then break out the crusted bottle, delicately
palming it like wheat-stained window glass.
It would have been house wine at our old
favorite restaurant, at best, before the hard times. He tosses
a few ice cubes into each stemless cup. Our cracked
teeth are worth yards of silk as we count out
our undusted dreams. There is nothing more satisfying than
shining shooting starlight upon the unbroken,
blackened lines of tarnished hope.
When I lean against the velvet coolness of the glass door
at the first entrance of the new apartment,
sunshine boils like golden tar
against the reflective blue parasol handle on the blacktop.
Dishwater silently evaporates. It hisses under the weight
of the atmosphere. Evergreens sag in northeastern winds
and lurch onto the parched West. Ice caps soften as blood bleeds
into the Atlantic Ocean. So much vast
and limited space. Dust and remains kick up
onto blinded windshields from the tires
of mindless drivers. Concrete, crackling.
Neat gunpowder clouds – shimmering charcoal glistening
in September’s spark and flames. Is there anything more violent
than the vinegar and lemon, jagged edged
magic apex of summer’s end?
A glass of espresso rests on an onyx desk. The air is filled with acid and heat. You asked me to make it, to serve it to you. Anything worth loving is worth doing first. Creamy steam slips through the crack between the slabs of shower doors. A podcast blasts from the speaker you sat on bathroom marble. Hotel staff impatiently tap at the suite door. Burgundy-stained wine glasses scattered about symmetrical nightstands remind us that it was our door – for the night. Our once ironed, oyster-clean bed sheets. Our Chicago skyline glistening in the distance. Sparkles off skyscraper windows whisper it’s time to go home. You made time. We made time. I look you in the face and say, “I miss you.” I already miss the hit. We needed our fix. Once in a supermoon. Like drugs, like addicts. We wait in agony, until we can get up again, with sealed lips. What space in silence lasts so long, crossing terrain and time zones. I shake my head, willing you to answer me back. When I open my eyes, I’m on fire again.
Our love
is like dusty
land scorched
from arid heat.
A centuries-old
volcano, still active
and threatening
eruption.
We beg
the gods for airs
wet and sweet, but
the rain never falls.
How best
to describe a thing
so thick
and oppressive?
That fills
us up and lays us
out, bloated
and plump to the touch.
What leaves words
limp and inadequate,
yet binds us
forever.
Such sounds
insufficient – how many
ways to say souls
split then sewn back together?
Cotton candy has nothing
on the way you
delight me with every
mouthful of your love.
I chew and savor
until it disappears,
melting in my mouth
and I beckon you for more.
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heartbreak and cigarettes 