well all float on okay

[bloomondemand]

we sit behind ourselves when we talk about death. we dont pretend to be afraid, we don't pretend to know the facts of the matter, the feeling just before. there is a table spread infinitely out infront of us. you say you almost died once. i laugh at first, but you don't understand, and so i ask you how. but it doesnt concern you anymore. you say you want to know where my laughter comes from. how do i make it come from my mouth so easily. it's like a punctuation, you speak of it now as if it were written on a piece of paper. like an exclamation point. you add so much joy. we are talking about death and laughter. we arent talking about graves or bodies or bones. we are talking about the peace within ourselves. the place we go. the corners of our interiors. the smallest pains. i stop to take a breath and you supercede that spot where my voice once lived. i see you come back from where you'd sunk back into listening. you continue where i left my ideas of eternal. people with cigarettes walk by. in my mind i begin to write this thought of how our words are not symphonies starting and ending in the same place. our words are not the way we live our lives, or the ways we can look at the scars on our bodies in the mirror and smile and say, these are all roads i've walked. these are all things i love. we are only ticking off time now. we are only tracing our steps back through the alley ways, and kicking the cans. we talk about death not as if it is an eventuality, but instead as if it is here already. as if we are about to step into it like a puddle, or a door way. this is the place i hope i go when i die. back through all of the discussions of good, of bad, of who we've been and what we've done and of what has brought us to this door we now stand at. i hope i go back past the hunger and boxes stuffed with memories. i hope i go to these words, to this light, this separate-from-myself place, where i laugh when someone says they almost died once. i hope i go to a place where i can laugh. where i can take the chaos into my stomach and make something of it. where i can look through it, like a window or a keyhole. i hope i can remember who i was and be okay with the eventuality that lives in my blood and traipses back past every start and stop, all the way to the beginning.

i remember finding poems
in your words
now i can't find hellos