MOG

its raining in the people's republic of beer, walking down a side street deep in the fan, three story houses slammed up against one another and opening up to a grey blue comfortably distant sky, the color i've seen his eyes a hundred times if i've seen them once.

its amazing how much of a person can bleed out of a place that you've never been in at the same time. amazing.

ipod in my ears, blood red chucks on my feet, ryan adams in my brain, tears on my face. Hot in the middle of winter, carrying my hoodie and unconsciously freezing in my too thin t-shirt. walking for miles. one side street, another, turn just before the bad block, make your way to the river, make your way to the bottom, to the hill, to maymont. i made myself sick that day. when i showed up in boston it was tears and a cold and the rain from richmond carried in my soul. the pressure in the plane hurt my sinuses and my soul and i figured i deserved the pain, taking it, letting it wear me down a little both ways.

so close and so far away. waiting for a plane, of course, to carry me away, to take me a million miles away and easily pretend that nothing just happened when really, really, everything that could have happened did.

flailed out failure in fishnets and green eye shadow watched her heart walk out the door and slip into someone else's arms. funny how it works out in the end.

standing six hundred miles away aching legs on the concourse and the side of my face still sore from a midnight blackout god knows what happened but i woke up with that disconnected left cross to the jaw emotionally gone and not coming back anytime soon.

i've been hit in the face more than once.

I settled in against the wet concrete steps that trail off halfway down the edge of the hill into some sort of archaeological mistake, step off, fall for miles, fall into a water filled locomotive, 4 dead, no explanations from a hundred years ago, and look over old tobacco warehouses and places i've fallen, face first, into a thousand different moments, for better or worse, face the angry river careening toward the buildings with a breakneck pace we'd all pay for in a few days, the things that we thought would keep us safe biting us in the ass.

its days like those you don't wear makeup and you don't expect a goddamned thing to be pretty, for a day to match a mood is so rare and perfect, falling into it is the only thing left to do, and there, on the edge of the concrete steps to nowhere, on the edge of the overgrown church hill, in kudzu and ivy and a dead tree, on the hill where so many things happened once, ryan and i decided, we wished you were there after all.

_Cotton candy and a rotten mouth You know you're so fucked up You know I couldn't help but have it for you_

_And everybody knows the way I walk And knows the way I talk And knows the way I feel about you It's all a bunch of shit And there's nothing to do around here It's totally fucked up I'm totally fucked up Wish you were here_

_And streets that only turn to boulevards And houses with back yards and it's raining like hell on the cars And everybody knows the way I walk And knows the way I talk Knows the way I feel about you It's all a bunch of shit And there's nothing to do around here It's totally fucked I'm totally fucked Wish you were here_

_And if I could have my way We'd take some drugs And we'd smile We'd smile We'd smile But not tonight, my dear Wish you were here Wish you were here Wish you were here Wish you were here_