You were not the first person I ever loved
Even though I always say how
Love is just another word people say
Spoken too lightly, spoken too often, and too soon
Love is just a word that I cannot bring myself to say
But I loved you, and how when you walked into a room
All the pressure would drop right out of
My stomach and into a pile of nerves on the floor
Just like the pressure drop in the air filling this town
The moment before a summer storm
You once told me something like I was ice water roaring
Down a mountain, and you were my gorge
I wish I had told you how you were the downpour
Drenching my years of dry rot and drought
How you were every tender moment
I forced myself to do without
You loved me as you found me, overdosing on darkness
Choking on the very moment when forever came crashing in
When all hell came home to call
Loosing every last demon, pushing through tired skin
Pressing lifeless lips to taste anxiety’s biter kiss
In all that years after this one:
I will mourn neither one of us learning a thing
About how to be gentle, or how to keep loving
When all the weight of distrust and trauma
Sets in, and leaden absences send us sinking
All hands on deck, straight to the bottom
It’s a short story, with a dismal ending
The same tired tale told again and again
Growing even more worn with each telling
Written on repeat, until the ink runs out of our pens
Longing for how we could have been everything
Instead of all this time wasted
Lives short lived, and far too full of bitterness
Our years spent in silent regret
Because we never learned a thing about gentleness
And filled our listless lives with beautiful broken things instead
Signals Fill The Void 