Meeting at Night

Before I Caught You, Fishing Kinda Sucked The tide smells like ghost fish and the fan blows you all over my apartment. I feel your hairs clinging to me and grasp to find nothing, another apparition. I changed the sheets, it had been weeks, you were there on that spread, but I had to change it. Wish I hadn't. Changes are flung like fat plastic bottles into the river, filling you and sinking you and drowning away into a new less life form flailing like a salmon in a story by Hemingway that's overrated. The times I have ahead, the thought of fishing and not catching you, using my bait on small fishes instead of big loves, it is the way it should be, but the salt taste in my mouth is one of loss, and it won't sweeten soon. One Dance, More Than Physical You say the boys never danced with you in school, that you were too tall, you intimidated them, but I’m inches over you so slow dance with me in my living room, music not all...

She found my nickname on a six-pack of cheddar crackers: Whole Grain In jest, she gave me grief for my diet, said I eat too much Great Value Cheerios and too many store bought bagels – is it too much fiber she kidded me about or that I ate ghetto fiber? As a gesture, as a joke, as a token of care she would bring me old jam jars filled with genuine yellow box Cheerios so that I could live it up once in a while. In time, when she asked what I ate for breakfast or lunch or dinner she just answered herself – hell, you only eat three things: cereal, bread, and oatmeal, oh, and noodles, but only if they’re whole grain. These wisecracks, were always just needles that didn’t draw any blood but still found the biggest veins and made way to my heart. The day, the last one we kissed together, on her way out, as part of her farewell to us as we were she said – I love you, whole grain. I still have one of the jam jars, but it’s empty now, no more Cheerios. ...

My eyes don’t lie, and they say you’ve never been here before but my vision feels you all around me all the time, like you live inside me everywhere I go these days a passenger I will never drop off my couch. I smell memories of sex that never occurred here or did we, did you come out of my mind while I slept and have your way with me on top? My ears pick up the echo of a scream, an argument we had once, but never really, about me wanting you to leave with me for the other place where we do all things easy every night, where we love without any ties, where we cry only together for sad films. My fingers find you on me when I wake from short naps and your skin presses me down into my sheets of sweat so thick as you do me in waves of slow then fast in stages of love and regret in licks of no then yes and you never stop me when I pull you down with me into the salt water where we can’t drink at all but live forever submerged into one thing found when ...

The Reason I Hate The Shining Another night of fear Just like the last, just like the next Another gulp slides down her hatch Impossible to count how many there have been Another bottle hits the wall I hop, skip, and jump through the brown glass Escaping her fumbled attempt at capture A little soldier in a minefield, Running from the enemy My feet, somehow, are uncut I run, faster than when I'm on the playground I slam the bathroom door Booms, bangs, and bad words demand entrance I hide, curled up in the corner of the bathtub It feels weird here being dry, un-wet Like an empty throat waiting to be fed I wait It has been calm for a while I think I slip out of the tub, away from my refuge And tread across the the dirty tile towards the door As my arm extends for the knob, it happens The thick, shiny blade pushes into the door, almost all the way through I, aged eight, return to my cold tub and tease it with tears while my Mother tries to chop the doo...

You asked me to stop talking about sex stop whispering about love to start talking about us. But can't I still talk about you? And how you smile grandly when I walk in your space even when I look scrubby and sleepy. Or how when we walk and your arm brushes mine I feel the sun exchange from your skin to my heart. But don't forget that day by the fence when you looked around first before tugging me into your body and I lifted you laughing into the sky where your hair is always at play. And the night the boundary blurred gray and we met for the first time beyond the box in an empty park where dusk engulfed your fears of loss and gave you to me for but only one hour as we held out for as long as we dared before your world rang you away from me again and reminded me of finality. So that night my inbox bumped up one digit and you were back in our space where we are free of ties and lives to just be alone inside each others' mind and hug with v...

That moment, your new girlfriend discovers that all your Internet passwords are the name of your last girlfriend, that moment, well, it really sucks. That next moment, the one where she looks at me with beggar's eyes wanting to know if I still love my ex, that moment, yeah, is even worse. That last moment, where I look back at her knowing the truth, but not sure if I want her to know it too, that moment, sigh, I wanna lie. *This was actually the very first thing I ever had published. It appeared in the Daytona State College Literary Magazine called Aeolus . It is far from my best work, but it's important: this was the first step, a small one, but a necessary one.