silence and crowded spaces.

uninformed.

i know
how you think
how you act
how you treat people
how you look

i know
how you procrastinate
how you disregard everything 
how you think of me

because “i know” 
these things,
i shouldn’t want you

in actually,
i don’t know

but i want to

i want to know
how you love your mom
how you can’t wait for summer
how you dont know
what you want to do
with yourself,
but that’s alright for you
how you can’t listen to
that song without thinking
about that night
how you learned to live for yourself
how you have a section of
freckles on your shoulders
how your sister doesn’t get along
with the rest of your family
how you love it when people
rub your ears with their thumb
and fore-finger
how your nose and your eyes crinkle
every time you talk to your dad
because he never fails to make you smile 

the little details that hide 
in the cracks and crevasses
of our bodies and our minds
are the ones that interest
me the most

and i want to know
all of yours 

The Swings

Alex. 

He was seventeen and five days that day. He was wearing a green t-shirt; the same t-shirt Michelle Lienson wore after she “fell asleep” as his house, “nothing else Jamie, come on.” I studied him, I wanted to remember this moment. He had a look on his face like he was waiting for me to say something. We were sitting on the swings in his backyard on a hot June day. The same swings we had competitions to see who could swing highest on when we were eight; the ones we had talked about who liked who when were twelve on; and the ones we sat in between, as I, crying, told him about my sister’s death.

We’d been friends since either of us could remember. We learnt together that people don’t change, they just get older.

He looked up at me and said, “Jamie, where has the time gone?” and I replied “I hear ya, buddy.” We smiled at each other and went back to looking at our feet.

He was Alexander David Morris. He had blonde hair but buzzed it all the time. He had the same nose as his mom. He would always love the Red Sox, no matter what. He liked to say he was an optimist, but i knew better. He was my best friend, and I was about to work up the courage to tell him I loved him. 

Maybe if we just let each other be then everything would be ok. Maybe if we felt the need to know people’s names and stories and sisters and laughs and houses and families and cars and jobs and histories and interests, maybe then, we would be better off.

When you lose yourself in a conversation and you start feeling things instead of thinking them, you often start to see the beauty of instincts; we don’t need to plan what we’re going to say. Our brains process every sound, consonant, vowel, all the combinations of 26 letters we’ve heard in throughout our lives, puts them in the proper places, and lines up these beautiful strings of thought we call sentences. Until today, I’ve taken this wonder process for granted; I am ashamed.

conjectures.

today in my english class
i watched as a boy put his feet
in between the girl’s whose desk was facing him
in the group of desks across from mine.
i knew it didn’t mean anything,
the boy was probably
just stretching his legs out
and the way her feet were place
happened to let his between them.

but then i thought

what if it does mean something?

what if they have to keep each other 
a secret 
for some reason unbeknownst
to the rest of us.  

what if they have been together 
for a year now and are desperately
in love with each other.

what if the first time they met
they did the exact same
thing with they’re feet
and now it’s their own
little moment

what if they matter more to each other
than anyone else 
and they don’t need to tell anyone else
because they have each other.

and after all that
i had to tell myself that
even though i wish these
were realities
they are just possibilities
and the truth is probably that

he just happened to stretch out his legs.  

i’ve never felt
like things are
concrete

but i’ve also never
felt like things
needed to be that way

the way that we,
as people,
crash together
and fall away
from each other

like an ocean whose
currents change so rapidly
that it’s hard
to tell what’s happened
until you have been left
alone in the middle
of the sea

progressions.

Moving on and moving forward seem to be the same process but require different things, kind of like homophones. Moving on requires dealing with whatever obstacles are preventing you from moving forward, which usually turns out for the better in the end. Moving forward can also involve this, but when moving forward you can also just cast these obstacles aside to move on. I guess when dealing with things, it might not be the easiest option that works out for the best in the end.

i’ve always wondered
about how we think
and where all of these things
come from

yet when i do this
i just get stuck in
and infinite loop of
epiphany

in a sense
this is life itself
a constant revelation
an ever transforming path
of thoughts and feelings