Sent yesterday: I miss you.

Sent at 4:33 am: no I don't.
Delivered.
Read at 6:51 am.

Sent at 10:16 am: I wish you would say something.

Sent at 10:20 am: don't respond I'm sorry.
Delivered.
Read at 10:20 am.

Sent at 11:43 am: you're the acidic aftertaste of swallowing my pride

Sent at 12:29 pm: I regret you.
Delivered.
Read at 1:02 pm.

Sent at 6:44 pm: I remember the last time I kissed you. Your lips were still dry because I stole your Chapstick and you held my hand and the back of my neck, I was afraid you were starting to think I was going to fly away.
Delivered.
Read at 6:45 pm.

Sent at 8:34 pm: I broke into my dad's liquor cabinet again. Remember when we celebrated my six months clean? It's funny how that was so recent.
Sent at 9:52 pm: that six months thing is hanging over my head like a ******* rain cloud and you're Zeus. Get your ******* lightning bolts out of my head.
Delivered.
Read at 10:27 pm.

Sent at 11:11 pm: I wish this was different.
Delivered.
Read at 11:11 pm.

Sent at 11:59 pm: goodbye.
Message send failure.
Try again?

You helped me dump the body in Lake Michigan
We kicked apart ice glued to the wooden boards on the pier
Before unpacking sandwiches in cellophane and styrofoam wrapped cigarettes
And the ***** bloodstained tarp in my trunk
Bitten by moths and stained with the smell of regret and rot
You grabbed the head and I grabbed the legs
We balanced out picnic on the stomach
Walking carefully down the small wooden road into the water
One two and three we threw the body into the lake
It floated but we made sure to stuff it with rocks the size of your fist
With gold and gray gravel in the small spaces in the mouth where the other rocks were too big to fit
The body sank and we ate our sandwiches under the street lamps where we sang songs and kissed the surface of the lake with our toes
You helped me dump that body
And we haven't mentioned it since
You helped me dump that body
And we haven't gone back to the lake since
You helped me dump that body
And it took a few months
To realize you threw mine in the lake too

Your voice was the engine of my car turning over
The noise of the radio cackling Fm stations whispering quickly before disappearing like the moon behind clouds
The driveway of your ex boyfriend's house cold and empty I could see his tire tracks on your neck
Your muscles contracting like car doors slamming shut I could her your mind tick tocking a plan sputtering to life and the wheels setting it in motion
You grab a rock in your hubcap hands kick it threw a window like gravel beneath your training wheel wrists
Twisting and turning and drifting I followed you as your google mapped memory traced a route through his hallways and closed doors
Until you found the framed 2x5 inch photo booth picture reel he kept of you
Noisily you shook it off the wall and we unlocked all his doors
Your high beam brown eyes shouted at me until God struck life back into my car
You threw the picture out on the Veteran's Memorial
Discarded it and the memory like cigarette butts hoping that could remove the cancer too
You crashed that weekend
You sputtered to life briefly
Turning over before dying

You are the monster under my bed
The boogeyman I cannot forget
The black hand red fingernails creeping lightly on my skin like daddy long legs mama told me couldn't bite
Your lips are splinters digging into the holsters you carved into my bones
October 15th I can remember your blackened eyes hollow nostrils like full moons
You were the werewolf mama told me only came out at night to catch bad little boys
I tried so hard to be good for you to be on your nice list mama said you checked it twice
I bit my tongue till it bled while your boogeyman claws paper shredding my thighs blood coming up like well water on your wrists
I didn’t look when the sun came up and you turned back into a man again
I didn’t look under my bed that night because I knew nightmares weren’t what I was afraid of anymore and
night terrors weren’t what was keeping me so late
I didn’t ask mama if I was a bad little boy and if the werewolf was going to be coming back for me again
didn’t ask her to tuck me in
didn’t ask her to read me another bedtime story
Because you are the monster under my bed
And when I don’t cover my feet under blankets like mama said would keep me safe at night you grip me harder than mama could
I can’t forgive myself and I can’t tell myself
mama was wrong that werewolves and boogeymen don’t come for just the bad little boys at night but you let me know
I was the cautionary fairy tale mama let me know I was the boy who cried wolf
you whispered it in your growling hissing nails-on-a-blackboard boogeyman voice
mama never told me what to do if I was that bad little boy
mama never told me how to fight off the boogeyman
never told me ******* a werewolf
If I should run a stake through your heart or
use holy water
mama I'm sorry I didn't know
mama you told me you could forgive me
That October night I prayed while I was falling asleep
Mama said it would help
“Dear god please forgive me
I let the devil inside
And he won’t get out from under my bed.”

I never liked winter
I loved to watch snow settle on the ground
In unfair uneven proportions
Decorating the space outside my window
But then it becomes gray
Painted in a heavy shaking hand on the trees and in the gutters
Like cigarette ash or crushed Xanax

your hands are the flowers on my uncles grave
wilted like cancer in his lungs
childish games played in the corners of his house
hiding when we heard his screams late in the night
a ticking tocking tick following us from his hospice room
.. / -.. --- -. .----. - / .-- .- -. - / - --- / -.. .. .
that sound click clacked its way into my childhood the way the broken gears on my dead grandmothers clock chimed somehow only on her birthday the way your car turned over your truck turning over your hands turning over .. / -.. --- -. .----. - / .-- .- -. - / - --- / -.. .. . you didn't understand the click clack paddy whack childish game that I thought could butterfly its way between you and me and the trees the way my uncle mothballed his way into my family with his months and dots and dashes  .. / -.. --- -. .----. - / .-- .- -. - / - --- / -.. .. .
my mother gave him his morphine and slipped three extra doses into his system because he said he didn't want to feel the pain anymore
he didn't want to look at me and my sister and cry not because he thought we were beautiful but because he could not breathe
he didn't want to cry and holler in his sleep because his chemo gave him night terrors because his chemo made him so hungry so thirsty he could not drink he could not eat  .. / -.. --- -. .----. - / .-- .- -. - / - --- / -.. .. . my mother could not listen to him anymore she could not tell me and my sisters and my brothers to sit quietly and wait for him to be able to tolerate the pain again
my mother did not want to learn to fall asleep to his cries as well as hers and my fathers and mine
he died peacefully and alone and tired
.. / -.. --- -. .----. - / .-- .- -. - / - --- / -.. .. .
but I still wake up to his screaming
and fall asleep to his echoes

This is not a love poem
Because I swear to god I'm not in love
This is not beautiful
Because I swear to god I'm not that either
This is a half assed pretentious poem
That I wrote to distract myself
From actually feeling sad
Because it's a lot easier to pretend
"I'm fine" is not an excuse
If you can say
"my poetry gets notes on Tumblr"

I strung Christmas lights on my bed
Because they make me happy
Because they make my dreams brighter
But some nights
We don't say goodnight
And I can taste the bitterness
On your tongue
Like rock salt and toothpaste
Those nights
I unplug the lights
Because those nights
I don't deserve them

I think about the way I would hold you
If you were with me at night
The gentle way my hands would fold themselves
Across your hips
And the soft canvas of your skin
Brushing against the drying paint of mine
The way my hands would fall into the grooves
Of your collarbone
Like snow falling on tree branches
My fingers like snowflakes fluttering down
On your neck
And how I’d carefully cover your mouth with my palm
So no one would hear your screams
As I throttled you until your neck snapped

Jumanji was your favorite Robin Williams movie
Mine was Dead Poets Society
You didn’t think it was too interesting
And you fell asleep on my shoulder
When we watched it on a pixilated
2” by 5” screen
Moving at 1 ½ miles per hour
On a bus
Going 5000 frames per second
Over a burnt sandwich chips
We stopped near Michigan and State
To talk about our favourite books
Yours was As I Lay Dying
Mine was The Old Man And The Sea
We talked about the relationship
Between Faulkner
And Hemmingway
And if they ever kissed
Or shared coffee
Or at least thought about it
If Faulkner liked Jumanji
And Hemmingway was partial
To Dead Poets Society
If it turned out
They were chips of a fractured whole
Did Faulkner ever take Hemmingway home?
Does the Hemmingway house still have Faulkner’s toothbrush
On a splintered wooden nightstand?
Did they ever wake up with the wrong socks on the wrong feet
And laugh it off because it was so funny
Were they ever afraid?
Were they ever happy?
Did Faulkner write to Hemmingway
About the Post office?
Did Hemmingway write to Faulkner
About fishing?
“The old man lay dying in the sea”
We wondered if they ever wrote together
Held hands
Traded coffee cups
But you fell asleep
And I kept writing
And watching Dead Poets Society
Wondering if Hemmingway ever would have

I should get butterflies in my stomach
Every time I look at you
But I don’t
Instead
I feel this buzzing
A beehive stuck in my abdomen
Burning and stinging underneath my ribcage
Moving up into my lungs
Puncturing the thin tissue lining
Filling them up with blood and honey
Flying into my throat
I can’t speak
But at least I can taste
The sweetness of the honey in my mouth
As you walk away

Nature disservices poetry
Because leaves of grass
Contain more water
Than my poems could ever shed
Because trees hide more truths
Than my poems could ever conceal
Because the tiniest mayfly
Knows more disparaging cruelty
Sheds more blood
And ***** more often
Than my poems ever could
Nature is the beatest poet
And that is why
I won’t recycle

​Bricks bruise the front lawn of
​The mausoleum
​Taking hostage the sanctity
​Of some long-forgotten man
​Decaying
​Like bricks decay
​As if
​The wolf
​Eroded it down
​With spit and wind
​Too long ago
​To be remembered

Stained Taco Bell napkins crunch beneath my sprained ankles in the back of your truck
The snap crackle pop of the radio itching my ear your ***** holding together a Rice Krispie treat crushing my jaw
Too sweet for my mouth you hold my hair in place pulling and ripping your finger nails a pack of wild dogs fighting over a dying deer on my skull
The back of your mother's truck smells like cologne and portillos fries like the first day I met you
The sun setting through the trees
And the back window
Just enough light so that I can see the ash gray carpet and the gray ash from the spot on my skin you put your cigarette out on
The white spots beneath your nose I imagined they were tiny moons and you were just a werewolf tearing apart the man who used to be in the back of his mother's truck now whiskey sour the way mad men change under full moons
Stretching past an empty interstate road
I saw the sun set
And saw the sun set
And saw the sun set.

The best part of lent
Are the Fridays when
We can't eat meat
Or before sunset
Because my mom and I drive to McDonald's and eat filet o fish while she smokes her misty ultra lights and I listen to her favourite classic rock station with the windows rolled down watching the wind chill work its way in from Lake Michigan to the trees on Chicago avenue
We talk politics and music and god and then our own lives which always seem so small after
I'll try to work the courage to ask her if she minds if I smoke too
And she will try to ask me how aa is going
"You have cheese on your cheek"
"Oh thanks, you just ashed on your pants"
"Oh thanks"
That'll be it
And that'll be nice
And we'll drive home under the wind chill and soft leaves growing again and soft moon gently shining like her watchful worried eyes
It's only forty days
But Jesus spent those forty with the devil
It's nice to get to know his wife

My skin feels like scales
A piano bench
Metronome passing the time
Impatiently
Perfectly
Living like death
Spreading along Petri dishes
And moving forward in octaves
Like a starving gecko
Eating its own tail

You told me once
"People who attempt suicide
Are just angels trying to go home."
That would explain all the pinpricks on my arms
From where feathers fell out of my wings
And the way you made me feel like I didnt belong
And although I've kept trying
I don't know how I can make it home
When you've torn out so many of my feathers

I liked to think I was in your prayers
Or at least your thoughts from time to time
Like when you burned fudge brownies on Sunday mornings
Or kiss your daughter goodnight
(I heard you got someone pregnant)
I liked to think you held me in the back of your mind
Like the quiet anxiety that you told me
Was begging for your love
I kept you in my prayers, if you were wondering
For exactly 372 days
October 22 2011 I stopped praying for you
I stopped praying
Like a storm cloud suddenly dissipating over Southern California in the middle of a drought
Like the color gray which isn't a color
Just a permanent frown pretending to be a shade of white slightly darker than the viscosity of your eyes rolled in the back of your head
Slightly darker than the background of a text message that I never sent because I erased your number from my palm washing away the gray ink you used to spill your life onto mine
Like oil
Like rain clouds, gray on June 25th 2011 the last time I talked to you
Gray sky like the permanent frown you wear when you walk outside and realize all of your plans are ruined

I liked to think I was your gray rain cloud
Evaporating into the air and into your lungs
Polluted
"Necessary and unnoticed"