I’ll never forget
our walks down
empty city streets,
grabbing each other’s hands,
gripping so tightly.
I’ll never forget
talking all night
about everything
and nothing
as we fell asleep
to the sky changing colors.
Even though it’s
over and there’s
no more
“us,”
I’ll never forget.
![Joshua Beckman, “[Lying in bed I think about you]”](https://heartbreakandcigarettes.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/joshua-beckman-poem.jpg?w=1000)
Lying in bed I think about you,
your ugly empty airless apartment
and your eyes. It’s noon, and tired
I look into the rest of the awake day
incapable of even awe, just
a presence of particle and wave,
just that closed and deliberate
human observance. Your thin fingers
and the dissolution of all ability. Lay
open now to only me that white body,
and I will, as the awkward butterfly,
land quietly upon you. A grace and
staying. A sight and ease. A spell
entangled. A span. I am inside you.
And so both projected, we are now
part of a garden, that is part of a
landscape, that is part of a world
that no one believes in.
Joshua Beckman, “[Lying in bed I think about you]”
Friday nights
are the best
with you.
Whiskey in hand
by the fireside
with nothing to
do and nowhere
to be except
in each other’s
arms.
“Friday nights.” – sugar and sandalwood
I don’t love you as if you were a rose of salt, topaz,
or arrow of carnations that propagate fire:
I love you as one loves certain obscure things,
secretly, between the shadow and the soul.
I love you as the plant that doesn’t bloom but carries
the light of those flowers, hidden, within itself,
and thanks to your love the tight aroma that arose
from the earth lives dimly in my body.
I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where,
I love you directly without problems or pride:
I love you like this because I don’t know any other way to love,
except in this form in which I am not nor are you,
so close that your hand upon my chest is mine,
so close that your eyes close with my dreams.
Pablo Neruda, “One Hundred Love Sonnets: XVII”
heartbreak and cigarettes 