tell me

was it me?

i feel sometimes

in the deep night

awake alone 

with crickets and cicada in my ears

that it was 

you

sudden and broken and whole

in my life

you saw inside a cage

i was barely beginning to believe 

was real

and you opened the door

or maybe

gave me the keys...

and waited. 

and waited. 

but too late

too late

we were on a course

feet on dashboard

songs on radio

the ocean on our right

heading home

and suddenly

suddenly 

veered

overturned

and now

that road is closed to us.

no more familiar foot paths.

no more songs in voices

we know better than our own.

no more entwined harmonies

exhaling

exalted breaths in tandem.

lost.

forever.

forever?

tell me.

was it me?

i...

i think

it was you.

in another life. 

Smoke and Mirrors

curls of vapor around my face

I wonder what this would have been like

between your teeth.

if we could have ridden the high

past our downfall.

were we inevitable?

that ending cracking through

words we wished we could take

back

to the beginning.

a spill of silence through my veins 

oh, god, my veins. 

but they must be silent now, too

a relic of a broken past that is 

being slowly

deconstructed

and lain in the dust of memory. 

do we lie when we say

we can move on?

that we have

moved on.

are there bits of me all tied into you

like the bits of you

that still scream your name

inside of me?

pieces that seem broken?

jagged enough to

cut,

but who's edges can be 

matched up

in gold and lacquer

if we are patient enough

to make some beautiful new

whole,

in a world where we

still smile?

are those smiles 

a betrayal?

do I feel guilty because I 

look back

or because 

I moved forward

past a bridge left burned

by another's hands?