wordplayground

...i have these moments, and
in the midst of them
i live

i remember so much happiness
in you, with you
and it haunts me
curses me
now 
to live
in a void
lacking the presence of our laughter
so vivid, so light
so happy
in these memories
we live
and how will anyone
ever compare.

i'm slipping into this
pain and paranoia, isolation
my mind dripping with black, with
words i have to force onto the page,
my days never adding up to
what she could have been in one
and i become so little in this shadow
of her, of my memories, of the moment
in time when we were entangled

i'm slipping into her, 

cornflower blue, and so very
soft
we could sink here
into my memories...
this is how i remember you
giggling
naked
happy,
always 
cornflower blue.

let's go back to the early mornings
when you would sit in pajamas and slippers
and watch me opening the store
the first customers always looked at you funny
as if it weren't our coffee shop
and our morning to be in pajamas

let's go back to trying to keep warm
in my room at the house on broadway
we'll be safe under the weight of the blankets
complaining about goosebumps and not shaving
elwood is still just as entertaining
we could make it up as if nothing changed

these are days gone by.
girl, just a few bucks left to our name
and we've got it all.
all we ever needed was a couple pots of coffee -
but you gave us life,
then drained us of it.
why sleep nights when we've got our corner table waiting?
we were empty, but we found god in the arms and cups of the third shift servers.
we found a reason to get through the day.
people spend their whole lives looking for that,
and we had it at IHOP, open twenty-four hours a day.
then just up the block to darryl's mike's jay's caesar's jada's angelina's, your brother's,
girl, we could make our world here.
but in the end we got more than we had bargained for,
trade in those last few bucks for some coffee, stories, cigarettes, the corner table, a boyfriend, a baby...
all we had asked for was coffee and god.

...what happened to our nights, our coffee, our corner table?
we had found god.
those are days gone by.

junior high tasted
of strawberries and bananas 
and after all these years
the sting is just as strong
funny the memories i would leave with
of piles of wet leaves
of breaking into your house
night after freezing cold night
the cold i will remember better
than the sticky hot summer
when i had no commitment 
at all to the world
strange the thoughts i won't part with
of cheap gasoline and unlit streets
two lane highways and downtowns
and the stories i tell six years from now
won't resemble what happened
but the memories will fade into a flavor
that i will always carry with me
and enjoy when it touches my tongue
just as junior high now tastes 
of strawberries and bananas
i wonder, six years from now
what the taste of here will be