paved roads missing their yellow lines and unimpressive traveling bands brought me here, to this soft wooden table, its texture, its veins. black bears circle this place, they approach in silence, announced by the dogs you (we) watch over.

because on nights like these, the rooms fill. space fills. the sky feels smaller in big sky, the people fill bigger, the music is louder. the clouds are bright, they’re lit, ablaze, and we dance beneath their pink glow.

but i can’t be here.

i can’t be here because i’ve forgotten how to be, i’ve forgotten how to dive inwards and explode, just a little, enough to discard the weight that rests on my shoulders and the fog that fills my brain because here, under the big sky, the alternative is worse.

here, i forget to exist, i remember to pretend. my thoughts are sharper, darker, heavier, louder, unpleasant. they’re scattered, they roam free, filling cracks and crevices, jumping through the years, among the people, and especially to the love i pretend i’ve forgotten about. these thoughts reach for the future, they run from the past, and settle somewhere in the middle that’s anywhere but the present.

maybe someday the past won’t be the tragedy i’m determined to make it.