a series of short poems by neil hilborn

This poem is called “everything you ever needed to know about silence”.
You’ll never be more wrong than the first time you say ‘I love you’.
You’ll mean it, sure, but you’ll still be lying.

This poem is called “I didn’t recognise you without your glasses”.
Though you died 5 years ago, Alex, I still write your name on chalkboards and stray sheets of paper.
I always leave out the e: I am not finished with you yet.

This poem is called “how to kill yourself without hurting anyone”.
Don’t.

This poem is called “things that are unfortunately not real”
- like heaven, money, the colour black, family, the phrase “sure I will”. Tomorrow.

This poem is called “things that are exactly like having sex with me”.
Having a sunburn. Defending yourself in an argument online. Eating one more piece of cake than you actually wanted. The day we realise wrestling is fake. The day you turned eighteen – probably boring.

This poem is called “I am trying to break your heart”.
Cynthia, if you could stop being exactly like your mother (who is a delightful woman)
for one minute, I could leave you before we discover we’re perfect for each other,
get married, and in forty years have one of us ruin it all by dying.

This poem is called “on watching my ex flirt with a seventeen year old”.
This bad.
Do not like this.
This like watching a puppy fall into pit full of penises.

This poem is called “I am the Michael Jordan of anxiety”.
I get so nervous, I got an underwear endorsement.
They pay me to keep my clothes on.
I get so nervous they’re gonna put a silhouette of me chewing my nails
onto a bottle of whiskey.

This poem is called “it has been (and will be) the year of airports”.
I don’t know where I’ll get the money.
I don’t know what I’ll tell my friends,
I don’t know how we’ll love each other in the nights of cold and quiet, but
airplanes exist. And we’ll fly between where I live and where you are so hold on,
I’m coming.   

This poem is called “don’t give up the ship”.
When the winds are picking up,
When the sea around you turns from blue to grey,
When the sky grows veins of light before you,
Let your arms become sails, keep the lighthouse at your back.

This poem is called “I don’t know what it is, but I do know where to find it”.
It’s in the light sifting through your bedroom window
It’s in the street when the whole world is pitched and slow
It’s in the basement, where you left it,
It’s in the ground,
It’s in your head.

This poem is called “I cannot answer you tonight”.
No one ever taught me how to pray, so I won’t.
Instead, I’ll just say this:
God bless the shape your head leaves in my pillow.
God bless your insatiable hair.
God bless you though the hour is late, for you have come to me at last.