digital memory, an absent reality.

I still walk by the train post,
Where you'd stop,
Where I first held your hand,
The place where we promised,
so many things.

With head bowed,
and eyes askew,
I can hear the whispers,
The haunting voices of you.

Pain and peace,
both bubbling up,
on the surface.

Everyday,
I ride my bike
past your old house,
an abandoned stoop,
still tortured by the
whimsy of laughter,
an unkempt yard,
left to grow wild,
and untamed.
Like this heart of mine,
Like the foolish hope
for anything blissful or sublime.

I will not delete your texts.
I read them in silent times,
I smile to them,
I fear them

Can we go back..?

I still have your shirts
and boxers
packed away,
the smell of you...
fading.

I still have pictures in frames,
turned away from view.
I still have gifts
in attics and
crawlspaces...
still moving through
the fantasy of an absent reality.

I've saved voice-mails,
reliving those moments
inside the soft, warrantless
timbre of your voice.

And, if all these things,
should go away,
I'd still walk past your
train post,
I'd still ride my bike past
your old house.
I'd keep those messages,
I'd still smell your shirts
I'd still be moving through
the fantasy of this
absent reality.

Jason Christopher Johnson
October 10, 2014

purgatory

I shiver
when I think of your touch,
the way your hands,
slightly calloused, felt against
my skin.
Your embrace,
seeming to have no end.

I catch,
in my breath,
when I see a photo of you,
a slight smirk,
ever-present on your face.
You were always calm,
whatever the pace.

I swoon,
to light feet,
when I hear our song,
a melody,
a dance,
neither of us could
withstand.
A love that died
before all that we planned.

I laugh,
remembering,
early morning talks.
When your face was still
puffy with sleep,
When your breath was thick
with night,
but still sweet.
When your cold feet would
tickle me
and my whole being would be filled with glee.

I shout,
thinking of all the things
un...
done,

un...
said.

un...
lived.

Like some one-thousand lives,
that can never be recaptured,
lest nurtured.
I cry with the weight
of all the mourning
I have ever known,
And, still
I am here.
Relishing, shired and undone.

I confuse,
nostalgia with memory,
the face of the way,
I'd always hoped things would be,
with what was reality.
Never recalling,
that
you could be mean,
I could be treacherous,
you could be violent.
I could be elitist.
We could be
all the good and
all the bad things.

I grieve,
the end of some/thing,
I never did need,
but, wanted so badly,
no warnings, could I heed.
A moth drawn to a flame,
for no reason.
Never realizing this
was no life/long tangle,
but,
simply a season.

I wallow,
at night,
with the ghosts
of your touch.
Not being able to put out
my flame for you.
No ending,
in sight,
Not willing to give up this fight.


Jason Christopher Johnson
September 8, 2014

The innocent.

I came to this place,
Full up with wide-eyed innocence
and naivety,
Thirst full for wonder and surprise,
Longing for a passion I could not word,
But, hoping it endure on my
skin.

I lingered in your arms,
on your tongue,
hanging on to every word you said,
like a knowing of
the last heartbeat.
Cocooned in some makeshift abode,
of a hope,
doomed.

This dance of sorts,
between us,
delicate but prodigious,
too short,
but seemingly eternal.

I came to this place,
With dreams of imagined,
comfort.
Walls constructed by the breadth
of your word,
your truth,
your promises,
unrealized.

I moved with a life/crawl,
Infantile, desolate
desperate.
For a hand,
an embrace,
a word.

Suns would rise,
and set.
Hundreds of times,
Clouds would move in
and out of our skies.
Still, I would never have those
spoken, promised things,
and, I did lose voices
and lives
and movement.

I became a still thing,
quiet,
struggling for a hold
of that forgotten innocence,
listening, looking for the
remnants of all that had ever been
me.

I came to this place,
Cradling hopes that
were willingly handed over,
to you.
Blind to your guile,
Enraptured by your smile,
your hold
your hand
your surety
your interminable glee.

I left this place,
heart,
hand,
empty.
Shattered, like sleep to a
thunderous night,
I left having to battle,
While, in me there was no fight.
Arms full up with
empty boxes
and loose foundations
of dreams.
A life to rebuild
with no means.

Jason Christopher Johnson
May 31, 2014