It's late, love, and I can't sleep. I should sleep though, should go, the clock is ticking to tomorrow and I know the slow explosion of exhaustion will drag me down eventually.

I mean, I'm sorry, I should sleep, should take myself down before the grenade does, but I can't lie, tomorrow morning I'll be pulling myself late out of bed either way.

So I'm still awake. Because there is no one to see me cry, little love. No one to see me trying to write you into being again.

Longsuffering love, I wanna tell you about my favorite song two years from now. I wannanother tomorrow where the demons don't get to dance. You know? The singing summer's coming and I don't wanna go with its karaoke, but the beat of my heart is a ticking bomb too that won't stay silent at the mic forever.

No one else knows what I mean but you, lazy love. Larking love, lost in love, take a ladle, love, pour your liquid soup over these old bones and warm them like a lobster ready to feed five thousand in a bible story.

I want you to destroy me, lancer love, destroy me so I can't get out of bed no matter how bad the baby needs, but that's just a trick question, see, because the baby will be okay without me, she's got family closer than I, and you've got family closer for you too. You've got friends, just across the lake, people who will hold you and give you tissues and take all your crap. Landfall love, destroy this continent of my heart that no one needed but you so it quits beating the song you planted there last week, and last year, growing up into a forest of dead eternitrees--you're the last love of

mine, don't you know that,

I know you like that,

I know you spit it to the algae in the sea,

longsword love,

you are

the desecrater of my holy spaces

you are

the obliterator of my midnight moon ripple reflection

you are

the only lagoon boat to test my waters

you are

still in my head at 3 am and you know it.

It's late, love, and I can't sleep, for no better reason than you're here but too watery to hold

you're here in a trick of the fan tickling me like your once-scented citrus fingers

you're here in the way the sickle moon smiles,

you're here

like a humming in my ear,

So what I wanna whisper back, little love,

is how do I move forward without you?

How do I laugh with anyone new?

When I cannot send it to you, who do I send this letter to?

Listless love, do you remember, that night in the tent, making Seadragonus Giganticus Maximus shadows on the walls while the cicadas counted down the stars?

Lacy love, do you remember, leaving the school grounds like a trampled graveyard on your birthday?

Lavender love, do you remember, sweltering in the greenhouse to cultivate breeds of blackest begonias?

Lucid love, do you remember, us posing in front of the hot air balloons, how you photoshopped it to look like we might take one and climb over the oceans?

Loitering love, do you remember, when you said we were vampires and had no reflection in any of the raindrops?

Do you remember, lonely love, that crumbling wave taking our ships to one final tomorrow?

Because I do.

Tick, tick

echoes that pulse you left on my piano in the woods, shimmering so dark it sparkles with the moonlight but never my face,

tick, tick

there's no one to see me weep, looking love,

or strain through the sound for some warning of when the bomb will finally go off

and leave me breathless underwater

tick, tick

there's no one to remember if I sink what I know of you deep in the little sea

tick

it's late

and I don't wanna get up

but I can't sleep,

I can't sleep, languid love,

do you remember when we swore for all time to the good heavens above?

Because I do.