 Relationships end. Sometimes, they run their course. People move away and you lose touch. If only that were the only course they could take.
 My youth was lost before I was ready. Before I could make too many mistakes, before I could break my own heart a million times, my time was up.
This is a poem about the night my best friend died. The night where I was taken to the emergency room by friends who love me. The night where the pain in my body was so great and the doctor so terrible, that I resorted to inappropriate humor to cope. But that was after I started hearing this Ramones song in my head as I waited for the sweet relief of medication. Yesterday, I realized why this song clawed its way out of my psyche that night. It was the perfectly morbid soundtrack.
 The world has always brought me comfort. Maybe because I spent a long time in a religion that forced me to believe that I was “not of this world,” or maybe because believing in a Creator made me want to see everything They created. I don’t know. Probably both.
 Sometimes, people don’t stick around for the hard times. For one reason or another, good or bad, they leave you behind. You can be angry or you can accept it. If you’ve gone to enough therapy, sometimes you can do both.
 I should have been more emotionally prepared. I should have taken a few deep breaths, but I didn’t. Instead, I walked into the Frida Kahlo Museum, excited and giddy to see her art in person and the home she lived in without thinking about myself. That’s usually fine, but not this time.
 I think about buying a pack of cigarettes all the time.
My body feels no need for it, never has, but my little heart remembers the feeling of the inhale in my lungs. It flutters at the memory of a second of ease after it all hits my blood stream. My lungs aren’t so fond of the memory.  I burned a sauce. It was a simple sauce: Can of expensive tomatoes. Stick of butter. Whole onion, halved. Simmer for 45 minutes. 45 Minutes later it was burned.
 It was one of those national holidays, the kind where none of us had to work. All my parents' children still lived at home and we were all around at the same time doing different things with our lives in different rooms of the house. It was hot outside, but my dad was building a shed to put all his toys in. He always had to work on his day off, the same familial curse I continue to carry.
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