I am twenty one years old and you are a little older but it always seems like a lot older and then one night you call me and say Can I Come Over? and I say Yeah Okay, If You Want To and I am in my pyjamas but I get dressed a little, or I put on a bra at least and you arrive at the door in approximately two minutes and I say, Hi Are You Okay? and you say Yeah I Just Need To Talk To Somebody, so we go upstairs and into my bedroom and I sit down on the bed and you stand up with your back to me and you stare at a wall of photos. 

So I am nervous because you don’t usually do this and I have been in love with you for a long time and we have been acting weird lately, like, I have been sleeping in your bed a lot but we never kiss or anything like we did before. 

And then Your body turns around and you suddenly say My Best Friend Killed Himself Today and I feel alarmed and rise to my knees and try to hug you while I am still on the bed and you are still standing and you are wearing a leather jacket that is brown, that I don’t like, and I am still wearing my pyjamas and you don’t move. And You are just standing there and Your shoulders feel wooden and so I recoil from the hug and I say I Am So Sorry and I think How? but I don’t ask How? I just sit down and say Are You Okay?

So You sit down too eventually and you drink a can of beer that you have brought with you and I say I Will Put On Some Music and I go to the CD player but I realize that you hate all of the CDs that I have but I know that I cannot deal with silence and I decide that I will play one anyway.

And I put on a jazz CD which you seem okay with and I decide that you would like to be distracted and so I talk at you, about anything I am thinking of. 

Only now it is four years later and I do not remember any of the things that we talked about, but I remember that we were sitting with our backs against the wall and that our feet were hanging off the edge of the bed and that the space between us was approximately the size of one human person and that one of my friends had died a month earlier and that, in that moment, I understood how you were feeling, somehow, even though now I cannot understand how either one of us was feeling, because time makes us forget things like that, fortunately. 

And I remember that I showed you a poem that I loved then and that you read it carefully and told me you liked it also.

And I remember that when you left it was late and that I text you and said You Could Have Stayed Here, You Know, once I knew you were home already, and that you didn’t reply. And then the next time I saw you, there was a tattoo on your wrist. 

I just remembered because I’m holding the book we read that night, and it seems to be the only thing that isn’t different about me. 

This is how it works. Selective Memory. I can’t remember anything that happened the day before that one. I can’t remember anything that happened the day after. 

(Source: lk-shaw)

haveuseenmywhalepress:

we are delighted to present to you have u seen my whale issue #1!

husmw1:

CONTENTS

1/ listening to music through earphones in my bedroom in the night by dave shaw

2/ clockery by austin kieler

3/ being cool and in love and my grammas couch by amelia gillis

4/ paul wall’s chinese restaurant and gold tooth on a white tooth by justin carter

5/ welcome back to the adventures of buck. (dedicated to amit) by michael andrew o’brien

6/ teenagers in love by chris dankland

7/ remember when we jumped and a poem made from facebook posts by bob holzhausen

8/ 3 poems about a food tray, a cigarette and cats by sarah jean alexander

9/ the gender confused college student had no idea what to wear to dinner by port morsby

10/ funeral by jesus moses

11/ a poem by angela shier,another poem by angela shier and another poem by angela shier

12/ orange roundballs by austin islam

13/ turtle and fox by alexander cox

14/ untitled by whit autry

15/ ode to ishmael and luke by ben taylor

16/ seaweed and untitled by grace millard

17/ don’t look yet by @lazzzyandoh

18/ hello there i am things and to the entire population of the world that i want to kiss by jakob maier

19/ butterfly sugar (baby) by beach sloth

20/ toenails by caleb bouchard

21/ on the concept of irony with continual reference to socrates and el marqués de los jardines de aranjuez by michael scarborough

22/ blank by hannah o’brien

23/ my dad lives in the woods in the countryside, i want to be dead in the woods and when i kis you in gibraltar trade center it is my first time kising a girl that is a witch by steve roggenbuck

24/ 21 excerpts from the reality dating show “baggage” and god help me by james ganas

25/ skeptical relapse by heath ison

26/ restaurant by james root

27/ *yuri gagarin is about to die young* by crispin best

28/ a play for men by cassandra gillig

29/ shark prints and albert coster by cameron churchill

30/ a thing called wasp by derek murphy

31/ don’t joke about death and wooliez by bianca elencevski, and it’s better to be sorry than safe, a selection from bianca elencevski’s twitter

32/ look at my head, it’s a pumpkin with a candle in it and norway by keegan crawford

33/ and finally, self-destruct machine, boob/butt Machine and killing machine 2 by jackson nieuwland

(via koof)