Dysfunctional Dysphoria

The night has been good

Drinks strong

Music loud

Dances uncool.

Someone asks for a break

The alley, as crowded as the bar,

beckons to me

As the fag is lit and dragged,

smoke enters my lungs

I'm taken aback

By the scent of Him

The memories that surround Him

The ways I was never enough:

Too much.

Too little.

Too naive

to think it could be me as I age

That I would become more than He ever was.

Cherry embers stare back at me,

Following the wind, in a dance we once did.

I see His image through the smoke, 

hear His laughter somewhere in the crowd,

the joke I croak out to try and entertain the onlookers

is His, and yet, 

my voice couldn't be farther from

as if to say "I haunt you.

You will never be me. 

And yet trying you will always be."

I light another as my face gets warms.

His ghost taunts me in the flames

Maybe this will be the one