a_note_for_someone_who_will_never_find_it raze dear_you, i'm sorry. not for anything i did or didn't do. for the way the world wore you down until the only light you could see was in the firth of a fire you tried and failed to start in a dead man's house. i don't think you ever knew how much you meant to me. i didn't have the words to tell you then. i don't know who you are now. i wonder what you sing in your sleep. i can't find you in my dreams as often as i wish i would. but i see you sometimes. you look the same, but different. not older. just less alive. i still have the water_damaged_letter you wrote me and your address scrawled on a cd-r insert. i should have found a way to hold onto your poems, though i know they weren't mine to keep. all i remember is a line about an unambitious conversation that felt profound, even if nothing of substance was said. it wasn't written about us. but it could have been. 260615 ... ovenbird dear_you_too, We once allowed ourselves the luxury of dreaming a literary life. Shared days spent in book-lined rooms, every evening a ritual of pages turning. It was a brief imagining, which imploded in such spectacular fashion that I’m not sure I’ve ever recovered. I still think about it, you know. The future we saw through a narrowing peep-hole, in a door too heavy to open. When I knew it would stay closed forever, I went down to the ocean, and screamed. 260616 what's it to you? who go blather from