we don't get much sun in our apartment
when it's snowing
and the branches of the trees
scratch our windowpanes in harmony
with the blowing of the wind
as it passes down the alley
past the corner store and gas station
where there's always someone drunk and ranting

the present isn't all it's made out to be
when your life is full of ashes
and your bank account is empty

there's something about the way
you look at me
when I'm falling fast asleep
that I know it through my eyelids though their closed and drifting
you think I'm haunted
that a ghost moans and follows me
my skin bleeds out I'm porous
like volcanic stone I'm wasted
by the ocean as it washes over
my feet I look out on the beach
and see a world that treasures greed and fear and loneliness

our words so paper thin
little creations
we can't really lift up
the veil all around them
our lives so paper thin
crooked skeletons
that greedily drink up
the good all around them

would you follow me?
we'll be a team running from the din
and though we'll die alone we'll rebuild from our bones
and if you felt like living
we'll stay as children who
wear their hair long and walk
barefoot around the gardens
and why not,
reminded of truth,
we give up on the nothing before it swallows all our youth?

but these walls are paper thin
we found out when
our fists went right through them
and the sound of neighbors
slid beneath the doors
and up through the floorboards

her skin was paper thin
and her damaged little lungs
were searching for a breath
then searching for the next
a lonely element
deep within our heads
and deep within our chests