12.16.08 (day 6)

dear noah,

your album is just the right length
for midnight walks on a monday night, and
with your voice inside my skin
i can almost forget my own.
remember the year we first met?
louis lived in the blue house
at the wrong end of beech st., by the high school,
and you won people over
by singing a song about fucking
that wasn’t really about fucking,
(or was it?).
we were both just kids then
with dreams as big as the monkeys on our backs,
and no idea what the word truth meant,
let alone what it implied.

and when that same song
comes through my headphones today
i tread lightly on new york’s heavy streets,
because i have heard the past in your voice—
and this is not that.

when i haven’t left the big apple in 6 months
and i’m getting close to nostalgia
i put on “streetlights” and think
about the cities i’ve loved and lost,
now numbers etched on tight skin,
and i don’t feel the need to drink
but it’s quicker than counting sheep.

sometimes, after a few shots of beam
on a shitty weather night,
i do a downtown carolina waltz
and know that no matter what
i have thirty nine and a half minutes to dance
before the world comes back to life.