Disclaimer
This collection draws from real emotions, lived experiences, conversations, and memories. Certain events, timelines, locations, and identifying details have been altered, condensed, or fictionalized for literary purposes. Some characters are composites, some moments are reconstructed, and some truths are emotional rather than literal. The stories reflect personal perspective and memory, not objective fact.
- Where the Bouquinistes Wait
- God honest truth… I regret you all the time
- for Jacobo, somewhere past Denver
- Phoenix night, passing through
- Route 66, with him
- Lonesome Traveler, Midnight
- “You and I are not the same”
- 20 questions… ?
- Something as simple as this
- Leaving On Ghost trains Across New York
Where the Bouquinistes Wait
(A Paris Elegy)
Take me not to fame nor fire,
But where the bouquinistes wait
By the Seine, with hands like poets’ ghosts
And spines of books in tangled crates.
Not built for banquet, stage, or crown,
I ache for rain-soaked afternoons
Where no one knows my name but you;
And time drips soft from café spoons.
I’ve loved in silence, loved in ink,
In windowpanes and weathered sheets.
Not one of them could hold me still;
But you, you write between my beats.
There’s no applause for feeling this,
For loving past what sense allows.
But still I’d rather burn for truth
Than wear contentment like a blouse.
Let others chase the Louvre at dawn,
Let others dance in chandelier light.
I’ll take a bench near Père Lachaise,
And dream you back most every night.
For Wilde once died beneath these stars,
Alone, ornate, and out of place;
And I, who never learned to stay,
Would gladly vanish in this space.
My name won’t last. Nor will the ache.
But still I’d leave the world this line:
I loved a boy with eyes like dusk;
And made his longing part of mine
God honest truth… I regret you all the time
If you had never crossed me
I would’ve stayed where I was
streets still open, nights still mine
nothing taken, nothing questioned
I would’ve kept Madrid the way it was
untouched by what came after
and the truth is
I don’t miss you
I miss everything before you
the version of me that didn’t measure
didn’t hesitate
didn’t look twice at what should’ve been clear
because of you I left it
left too early, left unfinished
left things I was meant to live through
and you walked away from it clean
no weight
no consequence
no echo following you
I carried all of it
every missed night
every friend I didn’t stay long enough for
every version of myself I cut short
no I sit with it
and the God’s honest truth is
the pain felt like something worth keeping at the time
but now
now I’m here and it doesn’t feel like anything but loss
of the life I didn’t get to live
and Phoenix is quiet in the wrong way
too much space for memory to settle
and it comes back in pieces
not even you, not really
just what I lost when I chose you
and it doesn’t leave
it stays in the background of everything
like something unfinished
and I wish
I wish you had never made it feel like something I needed to follow
because I would’ve stayed
I would’ve stayed where I was full
where I was moving in the right direction
where I didn’t have to rebuild what was already mine
and now I know too much
now I understand what it cost
and I can’t go back to not knowing
I can’t go back to that version of myself
and that’s the part that angers me
not you
just the distance between who I was
and who I had to become after
and I keep thinking it will fade
that one day it will just be something that happened
but it doesn’t
it repeats
it returns
it sits in the quiet
and I regret you
not for what you were
but for what I lost when I let you happen
I regret you
in ways that don’t resolve
in ways that don’t end
I regret you all the time
Bleu de minuit 