fishing through old cds to listen to late nights. looking for the one i burned for you for the night i left you. for home. i spin an unmarked disc. shiny. and it breaks. goes. and i sink into the couch. pretty in pink sloppy skipping on the muted television. so many songs in, i close my eyes, drop shoulders. sigh. think. maybe i didn't realize how much i shouldn't have been kept up late at night. how i shouldn't have said those things that i said so much late at night. with so much spite. how much you really did know me. rock my head. kick shoes to carpet night time closing. trying not to think about it. the last time you told me you wanted me to spend the rest of my nights without you. until the songs said. this wasn't you. and me. leaving this all behind at all. it was one of those soundtracks of men who have loved me--so starkly honestly and crashing years later--when i was just a slight of hand. some great tragedy of knowing why he would find the love of his life, soon. and that it wouldn't be (a girl) me. and i think to myself, why didn't i put on what jess said to me one night, when she knew it would be just the right thing on a long weekend after a bottle of cheap red without much courage to letting go and just sliding in to bed.

i miss you guys in a bar in oxford that none of us ever spent any nights in together. because, right now, i need something to mend me.