Your Taste Still Lingers

tomorrow is my 18th birthday, but i will not hear from you. and
it's the permanence of that and of you that makes my world stable.
as long as you're gone, i have one thing to write about and one
thing to think about rather than a million unsolvable things that
take up grey matter but don't matter.

and it's like tree roots. it's like being so entwined with dirt
for so long that when some innocent child digs you up, you have
dirt stuck on you and you scrub and scrub for years and it's still
there, in the cracked lines of your palms and the crevice between
your nose and cheek. it's like when you stick a knife in peanut
butter and you can't for the life of you get the sticky mess off
unless you lick the sides carefully, and even then there are streaks
of brown, like the shit stains on your favorite pair of underwear,
and you cut your losses on the sharp edges of words you never said.

it's that feeling after vodka and coffee, when you're sitting in
a chair, legs crossed, quiet, wondering what the moment is called,
what the space behind your ear is called, what the people you've
left behind are called.