distance.

i wake up and you are not here. beside me. tangled in my limbs. you abandoned my bed in the middle of the night. yesterday's light turns to clay in my hands. and this. this feeling. this feeling is all too familiar. this single. solitary. feeling. that separates us most-- the one word that makes my heart race and sweat pour out from my palms-- distance.

i am sick.

i am here you are there.

i hate this feeling. this feeling deep in my stomach that burrows itself deeper. and deeper. into the depths of my stomach until it claws its way into my heart. and salivates on my soul.

somehow i knew this would happen.

i felt it in the middle of the night. i try to blame it on barometric pressure. the full moon. insomnia. but this feeling i know. and i know it all too well. the fear of the unknown. the unfamiliar familiar. and my bones ache.

it's 2:30 a.m.

my heart is pounding out of my plush chest. i crawl out of bed and go for a drive. no destination in mind. just distant from the distance.

old cd's skip faintly in the background. their lingering remains are faint and disappear. drowning in the bellowing roar of my breathing. hot air. my windshield is blanketed in fog. fog that coddles my unsettled self like an infant as i try to make sense of this. this feeling. this all too familiar feeling.

panic.

was it all just manufactured thought? manufactured feeling? maybe they are right. maybe nothing good lasts forever. i can't stop thinking about what parrish said. what's new is new. and just because it's new, doesn't mean it's the best.

i am home now.

a two hour journey. flying over highways and back roads. through skyscrapers and past sleeping houses. you are still asleep.
i want to crawl into your bed and feel close, but this distance is keeping me concrete and frozen. downstairs. but i can still hear you breathing. your breath trickles down the stairs and flows into room and floods my memory.

hello.

you knock on my door and turn the crooked handle. you look heavy. i've never seen your eyes look the way they do now. at this moment. unfocused. vacant. scanning and chasing after the thoughts that run rampid through that head of yours. that gorgeous head of yours. behind alleys, and in corners tucked away. hidden. under old thoughts. they spin. and they spin. and they spin. and your eyes follow. chasing them in circles; the way a dog chases its tail. round and round. and round. and round.

you said you need the quiet.

you lay down beside me. you are pressed up against my body, but i feel miles apart. maybe i am writing this because you asked for the quiet. consciously unconscious of wanting you to feel this distance. feel this distance while i write this beside you, as you watch, annoyed by the scratching of the tip of my pencil. i am watching you quiver. i know its song makes you uncomfortable. i am. distant.

and then.

that distance, though it may have not been physical, it is what brought us closer. together. together in this moment. i kissed away your pretty tears. my head on your chest. listening to your heart beat. slower. and slower. anxiously awaiting the metamorphosis. of you. letting go.

i know we are going to take good care of each other.

feels like home.

angles and beaming light. color and light cascade down my steep legs and flesh from the skylight above.

these rooms are overflowing with energy.

when i am alone i play with the vibrations of my voice; i throw them this way and that, and bounce them off the ceiling, the tiles, even the door knobs. i tangle myself in the swarm of pitches and tones that rickashay off every surface and i spin. and i spin. and i spin. if you were here, i'd dance circles around you.

i can hear myself breathe here. i lay on my bed, transfixed on the dance that my chest rehearses over again and again. up, down. up, down. i imagine what your breathing sounds like, wherever you are, and try i to mimic so that my chest will rise and fall with yours.

at night i chase my shadows, and listen to the quiet; the quiet that is occasionally interrupted by the beautiful people that i live with.

the first is a fabulously gay man with the most beautiful legs i have ever seen. he is statuesque. i imagine him standing among the greek and roman statues. tall, dark, and contrapposto.

he says things like, "does a cock ring count as an accessory?"

he makes me smile.

the other is the most beautiful thing i have ever laid my eyes on. i am drawn to him. i am painfully observant; i watch him and the way he rinses dishes, reacts to words, and absorbs light.

he makes my heart skip beats.