reaching out into the day
eyes closed, hands tied
I feel like I can hold on
longer than anyone
feeling you like
a disappointed drug
I suffered all the things
that make people cringe
and shut their ears and mind.
is that rain or just static?
I can't distinguish what of this
is meant to be here
so many parts of me going out to take the pieces
bits of every man that say the same
burnt wishes flutter on the wind
like little black butterflies
into a garden iced and frail
strange, but it won't cost anyone but me
in the end

---

when I put this up, November 27th/01, at 2:28 pm, the rain outside had just escalated from a drizzle to a shower. I went outside, naked under my bathrobe and barefoot, and I stood. It was cold. I could see my breath, scented by the cherry cough drops I had been consuming, as steam in front of me. I lifted my face to the blank sky, and the rain falling on it made me laugh. So I stood outside, laughing in the cold and the wet with no one else around, and thought about the people I missed and the people I hurt, and the people who hurt me, and decided that just for today I could love everyone the way I used to. Before I started to think too much.