I started crying in the middle of our poetry bout the other night. It wasn't the poems being performed.

I realized something. This hasn't been so much about being in love. This need to talk to you, this emptiness... it's not about a lost lover.

No... you were my best friend. I lost my best friend. To you, it seems, I never was your best friend.

Not even a good friend. Not much of... anything.

I guess that's worse than any other loss.

I quiver in fear for that awkward moment,
that silence you won't want to hear while we're this near,
it's singing crystal clear and we're both thinking so damn loud.

Just the same anxious thought,
one word flashing like a red alert:
AWKWARD. AWKWARD. AWKWARD.
AW
KW
AR
D.

Is this why we avert our eyes from strangers in the street?
I talk to myself all day but when you look at me I forget how to speak.
This is not what I want me to be... there have been rarities of
golden, comfortable silence with a precious few I call best friends.
Those are divine moments of quietness. Peaceful. Perfect.

I want to share this kind of silence with the world.

The thoughts are crunched up, stuttering bluffs
in my chest cavity, ears ringing with the sound of
someone calling my name to someone else with my name,
I'm always listening for the fall of one drop of rain
in a thunderstorm constantly afraid that I missed my cue
to view the scene I've seen repeating in my dreams.
My eyes are splashed stone wet with pools
as deep as they are shallow, weather-worn
and thirsty but never hollow, I keep full on hopes
of fulfillment and pocket every vision scrapped for
a table, bed, chairs, and bread.
I've kept you all under my pillow like a favorite love letter,
sounding you slow like syllables in an effort to be sure of
what your life has meant to mine, I feel the deja vu of past times,
the rustle of leaves from trees whose roots are deeply intertwined,
and I want to bundle with your branches and transform from this lone twig
into something unbreakable.