i.
behind the perpetually empty lot is the old schoolyard, abandoned to the woods in my grandparents’ day. I came across you on the rusty swing set, you voice twining with their metallic screech in a gentle cacophony. my momma whispered caution into my childhood tales, so as easy as two and two being four, you ask for my name and I tell you to call me lovely. you bare your teeth. is it a smile? is it a threat? is the difference between the two significant in the slightest?

ii.
as we walk down the moss-carpeted forest path you slip your hand into my back pocket, light as chalk dust seen only in sunlight falling through a half-open window —a specter’s shadow, a half-forgotten dream.

our feet sink into the ground, stepping out of the trees. cloud shadows cut across the dappled starlit moore, unraveling its whistling melody sung in no tongue known to mankind. you warn me not to follow it, breath ghosting along my cheek. I have staked a claim, my lovely, you tell me. and I protect what is mine.

iii.
you tell me, ask no questions, receive no hurtful truths that cut deeper than the half-sweet lies you were taught to expect. Your face as you say this is a pane of glass, flat and transparent; your tears are the rain, uncaring outside of an expected cycle, though acidic through human contact. the sunset’s echo rings between us —us, the immortal and the ever dying.

iv.
oh lovely, my lovely, you whisper under glowing moon and winking stars, with desks dragged through rotted doors and upended behind our backs. near every creature has teeth. it’s human hands that are truly weapons of destruction, but look at how your fingers fit so neatly between mine.

I whisper back, the sins of your ancestors are not your fault, but they are your responsibility. your duty, but not your legacy.

you hum, thoughtful, and grin, eyes flashing. in shared silence we lean back against the desks and smile at the moon. somewhere in the back of my mind I’d like to think he smiles back.

h.f.m.

I am an afterimage. I am a bisected heart fluttering in half-felt contractions, pinned down to a student’s desk. Somehow there is no blood, only light. Light, softly spilling from my aorta, gentle and insubstantial. You shake your head to dispel it as you turn back to your teacher’s lesson, but I am painted in the space behind your eyelids every time you blink. Your teacher speaks but isn’t really saying anything at all.

Sentiment is one hell of a drug, cradling me docile in the back of the classroom. The box-cutter used to saw open my ribs is abandoned on the floor beside me. They’ll come for my vertebrae next, I think. They’ve already skipped over my eyes in the curriculum, but I’m okay with that. If they had stuck to the class plan, I wouldn’t have the chance to see you cradle my split, sputtering heart in your hand while you trace the inside of my left ventricle with the lightest ghost of touch.

In the back corner seat three rows behind you is an angel. I ask them why their wings hang so low, and they reply, the weight of human expectation. Their feathers twitch when the teacher walks out of the room, flinching when one of the students laughs raucously and declares in a half-heard conversation’s fragment, well, God can fight me behind the Denny’s then. The angel’s face turns pained, blurry, and they whisper for my ears alone, God has no wish to fight you, child. You, three rows ahead and still playing with my heart, are oblivious to their sorrow.

The aftershocks under my skin are a memory. Be gentle, sweet child, be gentle. Only old bones truly sleep.

h.f.m.

MY WALLS AREN’T CORKBOARD BUT THEY MIGHT AS WELL BE WITH ALL THE STRINGS AND SCRAPS OF TATTERED NOTEBOOK PAPER PASTED ALL OVER THEM, A MAP OF FALSE CORRELATIONS COMPOUNDING UPON EACH OTHER TO MAKE SOMETHING THAT COULD BE A COUSIN OF PLOT, A PORTRAIT OF SOME KIND OF STORY THAT’S REALLY JUST SEVERAL HALF-FORMED PANIC ATTACKS IN A TRENCHCOAT.

I CAN’T MOVE MY ARM. IS THIS AN INTERVENTION? MY HANDS ARE SHAKING AROUND AN OLD DEAD PEN I’VE NEVER HAD THE COURAGE TO THROW OUT. I SUPPOSE SENTIMENTALITY WILL BE THE DEATH OF ME YET.

ALL THE PATCHWORK PEOPLE I’VE INVITED INTO MY HEAD ARE TRYING TO GET MY ATTENTION. THEY’RE SCREAMING SO LOUD AND ONE LITTLE BOY WITH MIDNIGHT HAIR FULL OF STARS IS HOLDING MY FINGERS SO TIGHTLY YOU’D THINK I’D DISAPPEAR IF HE LET GO. HIS EYES ARE WIDE AND PALE AND AFRAID BUT THE CROWD OF US ARE ALL ALONE IN MY HEAD SO I DON’T KNOW WHAT IT IS HE FEARS.

DO YOU THINK HEAVEN SMELLS LIKE INK AND OLD BOOKS AND THE DUST OF CENTURIES GATHERING IN THE CORNERS OF EMPTY ROOMS? MAYBE WHEN I GET THERE I CAN FORGET ABOUT THE STATIC ENCROACHING ON THE EDGES OF MY MIND AND FINALLY TAKE A CHANCE TO BREATHE.

I HAD A TALK WITH GOD LAST NIGHT. THEY TOLD ME I SHOULD TRY TO SLEEP AND IN THE MORNING I WOULD BE ABLE TO SEE STRAIGHT WITHOUT LIGHT FILTERING INTO A KALEIDOSCOPIC FRINGE AROUND THE EDGES OF MY VISION. I LAUGHED AND TOLD THEM SLEEP IS FOR THE WEAK. THEY ONLY SIGHED AND REPLIED IN KIND WITH AN ASSURANCE THAT VULNERABILITY IS NO WEAKNESS AT ALL.

MY SEVEN-YEAR-OLD DREAM BOY IS HOLDING UP MY WEIGHTED BLANKET AND PEERING OVER IT WITH WET EYES. I SUPPOSE IT WOULD BE CRIMINAL TO MAKE AN IMAGINARY CHILD CRY.

h.f.m.

I HAVE BEEN THINKING —THOUGH SINCE I AM A SENTIENT CREATURE OF A PARTICULARLY EXISTENTIAL TEMPERAMENT, THAT IS AN UNNECESSARY STATEMENT BEYOND SIMPLE INTRODUCTION— BUT I HAVE BEEN THINKING AND MY MIND HAS DECIDED TO WANDER ONCE AGAIN DOWN A WELL-TRODDEN PATH OF DECAYED LEAVES AND LEANING TREES AND SHADOWED CREATURES GLIMPSED OUT OF THE CORNER OF AN EYE —A PATH THAT I CANNOT SEEM TO FENCE OFF. MY MIND’S A TRACEUR, AND MENTAL PARKOUR IS UNSURPRISINGLY EFFECTIVE AGAINST THE SIMPLE CHAIN-LINK FENCE ONE MAKES ON THEIR OWN WITH HOME-BAKED COPING MECHANISMS AND INSPIRATIONAL WORDS PASTED OVER OLD WALLPAPER.

I’VE TRIED MY BEST TO CONTAIN THE DAMAGE, BUT OFTEN I FIND MYSELF WRITING IT OFF AS COLLATERAL. I LOSE SEVERAL HOURS, ADRIFT IN MY HEAD DOWN TWISTING PATHS WORN INTO THE FOREST FLOOR BY ANIMALS ARMED WITH TEETH AND CLAWS AND BURNING EYES, AND ALL I CAN DO IS EXCUSE IT, BECAUSE WHO AM I WITHOUT MY OVERACTIVE THOUGHTS? WHAT AM I IF I AM NOT ALWAYS REACHING INWARDS AND OUTWARDS TO TRY AND MAKE SENSE OF THE UNKNOWABLE?

IF IT IS INSANITY, TO REACH FOR WHAT YOU CAN NEVER HAVE AND TO TRY AND KNOW WHAT YOU CAN NEVER UNDERSTAND, THEN I MIGHT VERY WELL BE INSANE. HONSELTY, THERE IS VERY LITTLE I CAN DO TO AVOID IT.

THE ONLY PROBLEM WITH THAT, REALLY, IS THAT I AM LONESOME LIKE THIS.  MY TONGUE TRIPS ON THE TANTALIZING WITTICISMS THAT MIGHT OTHERWISE ENTICE COMPANIONSHIP, CAUGHT UP IN THE COBWEBS OF MY SKITTERING, BRANCHING THOUGHTS. WORDS STUMBLE OVER EACH OTHER IN A SWIFT WHITE-WATER RIVER OF SPEECH THAT HARDLY MAKE IT PAST MY LIPS BEFORE THE NEXT THOUGHT IS WORMING ITS WAY TO THE FOREFRONT.

TIME AND TIME AGAIN, I HAVE BEEN ASKED TO SLOW DOWN, TO TEMPER MYSELF, BUT HOW CAN I EVER SETTLE FOR BEING LESS THAN I AM? I AM LONELY, SURELY, BUT I THINK IT WOULD ONLY BE MORE ISOLATING TO KNOW THE PERSON NEXT TO ME AND KNOW THAT THEY WILL NEVER TRULY COMPREHEND ME IN TURN.

THAT IS OKAY, THOUGH. I WOULD NOT WANT THEM TO TRIP ON THE VINES OF PAST AND PAIN AND COMPOUNDING DEPRECATION THAT WEAVE THEMSELVES THROUGH THE SLIGHTEST GAPS IN MY PSYCHE WHENEVER THE OPPORTUNITY PRESENTS ITSELF. NO ONE DESERVES THAT. IT IS BETTER THAT I AM ALONE.

ALONE WITH MY THOUGHTS.

h.f.m.

i.
i carry my battles on my sleeve like the heart everyone tells me i hold too bare to keep in one piece as if it is my choice to let everyone see my thoughts and gut-wrenching knowing as if i am some book for them to skim and speak of as if they understand even if they did not read the beginning. do i look like the kind of person who can be anything less than bursting at the seams with knowing and asking and hurting and feeling and wanting and wonder?

ii.
i have a paper due in four hours but instead i’m writing poetry as if that can stem my thoughts and pin my writhing mind down long enough to form something similar to coherence because i can hardly use i was having a bad day as an excuse to hand in fifteen percent of my grade late now can i?

iii.
there are people perched on the rail of my balcony who are snorting stardust as they try to convince me that their backs are ****** because they used to hold wings. they tell me that god loves me and i accept it, but when they tell me i can help save the world i can’t help but look for the lie.

iv.
i would like to believe that someday i could be brave that someday i could be more than scattered thoughts that don’t come out right unless they’re written down and shaking hands that sometimes can hardly hold a pen to paper.

h.f.m.

i.
i look at you and how you look away out the window as if hoping for some change in the scenery outside of this land-bound valley town. the heat of the sun pounds us into the ground like nails, where our limbs refashion themselves into tree roots searching towards deep desert springs. wine runs like blood from the hilltop vineyards, seeping into the ground with the expectation that bacchus’s approval flows behind in the form of celebratory madness. outsiders travel minutes, hours, days to claim these dark rivers running towards the gemstone lake that is the central attraction (though the haunted legends of beasts and spirits and gods are twisted into cheap gimmicks to attract the gullible and the unrepentant as well).

ii.
your distaste is a palpable thing, tucked behind your pleasant smile like a second-rate bicycle behind a sign warning against trespassers. you say, the sun may be burning, like these old forests we swore up and down to protect, but we’re all cold and distant as those stars above that are smothered by smog in the night sky. i watch you and how you watch the city around you sew their suits out of dollar bills and paint their skin red with the vineyards’ glory that spills from their lips. i see you and how you see the world, and we both watch this city drown itself in desert sands.

iii.
the wine creeps up the grass stalks and laps at our ankles, singing in silent temptation of a more classy form of intoxication and pleasant (if temporary) forgetting. i tell you as much and you tell me that you would rather swim out to meet the serpent of the lake before you submit to this city’s games, would rather start walking and keep walking, barefoot across the tarmac until it turns to gravel and then to dirt at the city limits, and out into the forests and fields of the land that has nourished and raised us (with only our spite and fire in return). you call people a disease, concentrated like ****-filled sores of plague in cities and towns, and bitterly acknowledge your part in the problem. i ask what you think the solution is and in return you  ask if i think the revolution will be silent or if it will take the whole of humanity down with it into the burning pitfalls of history and time.

iv.
you couldn’t care less if the world burns around you. your eyes, still staring out the window, tell a tale of a soul already so far from this world as to be beyond human comprehension. turning to me for the first time today, immediate in a way you haven’t been since i first met you in that empty grade-school classroom during those years of our innocence, you ask me what i would do if you woke me in the night to say goodbye. i told you that there was only ever one option, when it comes to leaving this dead-end town of lowercase gods and nomadic wanderers. when you leave (and i know it’s a ‘when,’ not an ‘if’) i will not hesitate to pack my own bags. the streets of this city pulse with power and legends and riches like the blood of some great creature sleeping under the mountain, but i will willingly leave that mystery buried when you reach the end of your rope and decide impermanence it better than staying.

v.
when you leave, i will follow you, watching as you blaze a trail ahead of me, to the end of the world (the end of our respective lives), and ever onward, beyond even the end of time. i will always choose you.

sometimes the end of suffering is just choosing not to live in the place of the pain

h.f.m.

i.
the sparrow fits neatly in the palm of your hand, its tiny heartbeat pulse fluttering against your fingers. its life can be as short as closing your fist, as long as your mercy.

there are many small things like the sparrow, you know, many small things in the palm of your hand. do you choose mercy? do you choose a swift end?

ii.
the sun is dying.

you know, the one hiding in your concave chest? the one crying over the waxy feathers scattered across your bathroom floor?

the sun sinks into the horizon-sea and you wish you could follow, but your feet catch on brambles and the waves pull away away away...

you are cold. you do not know how one can feel such cold and survive. yet, here you are, alive.

iii.
sometimes when you look at me i wonder why you can smile with eyes so sad. sometimes i wonder why your lips can stretch over your teeth in a ****** snarl when all your eyes seem to scream is your desire to run.

sometimes i wonder if you know i love you. sometimes i wonder if you think it matters.

iv.
god brushes away your tears with just the tips of their fingers, holding you gently as if you are something precious. but then, maybe you are. what do you know?

but your dog doesn’t know why you are sad, only that your wet face tastes of salt and the sounds wrenching themselves from between your teeth are wounds. his tongue is like sandpaper on your cheek, smoothing out your harsh edges and softening you into something worn and warm.

your mother stands in your doorway, an old pain wearing cracks into her indifferent mask of freckled skin like yours, an ancestral grief painting fine red lines on the whites of her gunmetal eyes like yours. children of your line have always been tender warriors, but bullet casings are tangy on your tongue and angels’ song hums just within the shell of your ears.

your mother watches you, with god's hand in your hair and their gentle whispers in your ear and your dog’s nose pressed into the crook of your neck. her smile is tentative, tremulous, but then again, she always has been, even with knives in her hands and razors between her teeth.

v.
it is okay to cry when celestials make their nests behind your eyes. at least now your mind is one with the stars you have always strived to reach. at least now even with your thoughts you are never alone.

even if you are an old soul, the universe has existed for so long, your hundredth reincarnation is still a child against it.

vi.
when you dream, do you dream of the many-eyed creature twisted between the tree roots in your front yard, the being of bright eyes and ****** teeth and ocean-deep sorrow? do you lay in the grass and wonder what a tragedy that beast is, to be monstrous in form but as soft and small as the sparrow at heart?

it is one thing to polish your misfortune until it is a gleaming weapon. it is another thing entirely to let your cracked-stone heart crumble into the dust and dirt you’d use to sustain the flowers you’d weave into crowns when you were younger.

vii.
the butterfly knife in your pocket is cold. you haven’t touched it in a while.

viii.
it is raining. each drop falls, soaks your clothes, clings to your skin. it anchors you to the ground, and you breathe. the air is damp and electric and you are alive.

you will die someday, of course, but for now you sit as high in your tree as you can climb, face tilted up to the cloud-obscured stars. maybe one day you’ll join them. maybe one day your heart will burn in your chest again, a reignited fire.

ix.
you trip up the staircase after being away for so long, high on the realization that living is as simple as breathing and as difficult as touching the core of another human being, of what they are.

you don’t know who you are anymore, but that’s okay. there’s no such thing as a permanent state of self anyway.

x.
‘the end’ doesn’t always mean ‘game over.’ sometimes it means ‘it’s time to write yourself a new story, to begin anew.’


—just remember: i’m glad you exist

h.f.m.

i.
heavy-layered blankets when i wake up as something sharp trying to remember how to breathe, and the darkness of the night to hide how i’m not a safe thing anymore, and how the stars watching me through the window anchors me more to my humanity than anything else i can remember in this lifetime

ii.
burnt-gold rust-stained leaves crackling beneath my boots like a campfire, like warmth in darkness among blurred faces and laughter settling around my shoulders like an embrace even in the crisp cold miles and years away from memories that still serve to comfort in the absence of company

iii.
stories of wild animals searching out humans for help as if we are some sort of fae willing to assist only as it amuses us or as whim guides us (but in the end only serving to remind us that we are no better than beasts looking up to the universe in hope that there is an equal equivalent somewhere, the timid-quivering desperate belief that we aren’t alone)

iv.
milkshakes at five am held high to toast the rising sun as we sit on your iced-over roof in our t-shirts with barbed-wire words misting in the air before us as a cacophony of dissent rising with the morning fog from between our teeth

v.
this burning terror in my chest akin to the winter sunset consuming the western sky because it tells me i’m afraid but that means i’m alive

h.f.m.

i.
when I speak sometimes I wish I could catch the words in the air and hold their fluttering-stabbing-twisting in my cupped hands and reshape them into what I meant to say, into something that would brush the shell of your ear softly instead of slip through your fourth and fifth ribs.

ii.
I hope it isn’t too forward of me to say that I don’t think that things can be broken. that is to say, that I don’t think broken things cannot be their own whole. everything is pieces of other things, fitting together like a child first learning how to put a puzzle together and forcing the pieces to go where they want and be whatever they choose.

I don’t know if that metaphor makes any sense to you, but I hope you can understand what I’m getting at anyway.

hurt doesn’t define you. your past isn’t a rope around your neck. my love is not conditional upon some arbitrary state of “wholeness.”

there is such a thing as wellness, yes, and I want that for you, for us, but that does not always mean returning to the state of self you inhabited before your pain. the human being is an ephemeral, ever-changing creature, and I will not love you less if I have to meet you again.

if I have to rediscover you as you heal, then I will. if I have to show you how I have refused my splintered pieces into a new shape myself, then I will.

I will love you gladly, unconditionally, vulnerably.

iii.
do you understand me? I have a scar on the inside of my thigh, but I don’t remember where it’s from. I have tiny, scattered patches along the underside of my jaw from when I’d pick at uneven skin. I have accumulated all sorts of scratch-thin, white lines across the backs of my hands and my forearms. stretch marks dash in lightning patterns under my clothes. do you think less of me for them?

iv.
I can be harsh like a blunt-force weapon when my attention slips, my shoulders a bastion of defensive tension, all sharp lines and a diamond-hard glint in storm-grey eyes. do you think this makes me ungentle? do you think I cannot form myself into a shelter if I so desired?

despite my rough-hewn edges and whip-like tongue, I’d like to think I can provide some sort of comfort, some level of reliability.

you don’t have to be soft, my love, but I find that sometimes it pays to be kind.

v.
once I saw you sitting in the park, fingers buried so deep in the tangled grass it looked like you were trying to take root.

it takes a certain kind of perspective, I think, to listen to things like trees. individual pillars, yes, but connected at the roots. isn’t that like what we are supposed to be? bound at the core with enough self-governance to reach for the sky, the wind and sunlight tangled within our reach.

vi.
you don’t need to worry about being enough for me. you will always be enough.

h.f.m.

i.
there is a boy who visits my dreams sometimes, colt-like and all of seven years old. his eyes, pale blue as shadowed snow-fall, are unsettlingly, peacefully unfocused and half-lidded, peering through long lashes of ink that brush his baby cheeks with each slow blink. pale pink and gold flowers, five-petaled and sweet, are woven through his dark, ever-dripping hair like pin-point stars of gentle flame. his edges are blurred, softened, and he silently guides me through the pitfalls and the white-water’s undertow in my sleeping mind.

ii.
the human is a thousand half-truths framed as gospel. an example: the dead all smile, grinning at the setting sun as the wind whistles through their ribs in a mimicry of breath. the dead smile and smile, and are alive as our memories of them, as alive as they are in our dreams. (and oh, in that sleep of death, what dreams may come?)

iii.
do you want truth from me? look who you’re asking. were you expecting me to tell you anything you don’t already know? i am just as real as you, just as human as you, just as much of a fallacy. sometime, somewhere, an old, lonely god dreamed us up for company. dreamed us up and watched us grow and learn and stumble and fail and pick ourselves back up with band-aid wrapped hands and scratched knees and feral grins as we start climbing the same hill will fell down with renewed determination. we want to know what’s on the other side, can only imagine it, and so we try again. (our angel cousins watch with a thousand eyes and shield us with a thousand wings and a thousand rings of fire from the infinity we are not yet enlightened enough to understand).

iv.
he has never been alive, this snow-soft not-ghost, this ink-stained child, this dreamed-up boy of mine. never breathed, never spoken, never slept. (do dreams sleep?) but he is as real as anyone i have ever imagined, or remembered, or thought of. the world is in the mind, we all know this. and the mind, truly, is and can only ever be, a place of dreams.

h.f.m.

i.
it is so much easier to write rage to write anger to write agony than all of those fluff-feelings of joy-love-peace-hope and i have a truth for you and pain is not sweet and we always want to turn blood into paint for a masterpiece as if our suffering is fair trade for our passion and and and—

ii.
my mouth is a wolf’s maw full of sharp and bone and hunger and i wonder what satisfied means and i wonder how you dare speak to me like you know me like you know anything about me like fact and truth are equals like absolute power is anything but the most concentrated form of weakness like—

iii.
9-year-old me listens with such innocence, such naivety, such sickening hope as i tell her a tale of redemption and happy endings but now the world is burning and people are dying and i am being ****** into a stagnant role under the title maturity and civil responsibility and if this is growing up then give me back the youthful fury of my teenage years where i believed that my voice meant something and my actions made a difference and that i deserved my righteous indignation at the world trying to condition me into using my will and my desire and my skill and my love for the sake of everything and everyone but myself while i try to beat my quivering into the shape of something of use.

iv.
my hands are shaking but i will take the fire itself into my hands if that is what it takes for you to listen.

h.f.m.

PART THE FIRST
our words are painted in the blood that coats our hands from our self-vivisection a harsh introspection gently brushing crimson paint over our mouths like too-red lipstick in the shade of the sunset before a storm and self-deprecation becomes an artform akin to the irony of smiles in the faces of skulls and surviving without really living.

PART THE SECOND
who was it that so thoroughly convinced us that gentleness is weakness that vulnerability is to be avoided at all costs that emotions are distractions that showing fear is a sign of defeat? when we accept our broken pieces not as failure but as experience and do not beat ourselves up for the cracks that remain that is when we will truly know who we are.

PART THE THIRD
we are afraid of the things we want the most because striving for something we cannot reach hurts less that achieving all we could have ever hoped for and having it slip through shaking hands like smoke in the winds of change and if that is not the hallmark of self-sabotage than i dont know what is.

PART THE FOURTH
like all things time is a construct merely a patchwork of cogs and stone circles and the small pieces of autonomy we carve out of our day to paste on clock faces like our painted-on smiles and ready acceptance of having our days dictated by our ancestors’ need to define-contain-control.

PART THE FIFTH
the hallways of academia are perfumed by anxious fear-sweat and existential rage mixing as a noxious fog of violet and violent movement in absence and the eddying swirls of determination’s backdrafts.

PART THE SIXTH
we loved legends with prophecies when we were young because we wanted purpose and direction and meaning and now we devour stories about rebellion and fist-fighting with fate because now we think we know that being told to only set our feet in orchestrated patterns is little more than accepting our role as puppets to the cosmos but really what do we know about anything? there is joy in clear directions and there is joy in carving our own path but either way life is a jungle and we are just as likely to be devoured by graceful creatures of earth and sky and beauty on the path as off of it.

PART THE SEVENTH
they say that youth is pain and that growing up is exhaustion but who are they and why do they get to dictate the trials of life by binding us into cliché who are they to speak sorrow into our very breath who are they to tell us they have taken the measure of human existence and found it wanting?

PARTH THE EIGHTH
peace is the name of a friend ive never met who might as well be imaginary and relegated to the dimmed halls and dusty attics of my early years.

PART THE NINTH
sometimes i wonder if i donated my breath to charity and the remaining hollow shell of myself to science would my gift be considered a sacrifice would my story be considered a tragedy would my life have meant anything would i have made my ancestors proud?

PART THE TENTH
and we learn that words are alive alive alive as we drown in eloquence not meant to be spoken in high places not meant for voices of thunder or gods but for the fragile invincibility of children.

h.f.m.

i.
graduation feels a little like tripping, a little like falling, a little like flying. for thirteen years our only job was to do what our teachers told us, learn what they taught us, shut up and sit still and listen when they were talking. we wrote pages and pages and pages on historical significance and environmental responsibility and socio-economic balances, all the while thinking to ourselves what does any of this have to do with me? and now the future whispers across our shoulders while we sit in parallel rows wearing identical black gowns it has everything to do with you.

ii.
half of us dont know what we are doing or what it is going to be like where we are going, or if we are even going to make it, but each of us are filled with a new fire that ripples under our skin like power, like a song, like the secrets of the universe murmuring come find me, children of hope, children of madness. because we have to be mad to believe we can change anything, we have to have a little bit of crazy to make a change. lucky for us, we are plenty insane, ready to shape the world under hands of benevolence and tolerance and innovation and freedom and hope.

iii.
they tell us we are the future, but theyre not entirely correct. what they tend to forget is that we are also the present, and we are already picking up their pieces to make a new mosaic in the shape of humanity’s rebirth.

h.f.m.

i.
this is a song called fear and it consists of late nights crying silently in the bathroom and the sound of falling without hitting the ground.

ii.
you always used to run your fingers through my hair, a guardian angel from the next room over, whenever i startled awake at night, struggling to remember how to expel the air from my lungs. you were too soft on me, murmuring heartbreaking words of encouragement and wonder. if only you knew that my dreams were not loss of fire but loosing of rage, and you were the only casualty (casualty of my own internal conflict, acidic self-loathing attacking this peculiar kind of love).

iii.
i will not leave you, a whisper in what sounds like your voice, but this cold heart of mine cannot hope to believe it. i have been left too many times to count, by all but the demons dancing around the bonfire of my mind. you may love me as you say, brother, but i will only cause you pain.

iv.
i am always running, running, running, the soles of my shoes melting into the tarmac with heat rising in waves to blur the air (or it could just be my tired eyes playing their old tricks). the monsters are nipping at my heels, and i would not be able to live with myself if i led them to you.

v.
please forgive me for what i must do to protect my family (to protect you).

h.f.m.

i.
your prose ache for company, a set of romantic ideals long bound in a strongbox labeled socially discouraged. you dont understand why they want you to treat her like some flower when she is one of those old-growth firs who has a soul older than you have ever lived and who will still be standing long after you are gone. you do not see the sense in treating her like glass when she is a steel-forged blade.

ii.
even still, you suppose you are a hopeless romantic, only you wish the roles could be reversed. you are weaker than her by far, and the both of you know it, so why must the prince save the princess from the dragon? (my thoughts are dragons, you write in black, erasable ink. dragons and fire.) you think that if you were to face down a dragon, whether or not there is a princess to save, it would swallow you whole.

iii.
flowers and chocolate and love poems are all part of the stereotypical romantic cliche, but youve never received any yourself. you wonder if you even deserve any

iv.
but listen, listen, little whiteboard poet. she may be strong and she may be sharp and she may have depths you could never hope to search, but just like you trace temporary words when no one is around, ive seen the way she looks at you when you arent paying attention. worry not, scholarly prince, your warrior princess is coming.

h.f.m.

Where will you go when the music ends?
When the time comes to make amends
Or be bound to earth by chains of vice
Far below the sky’s burning ice?
Breath be the warden of this madhouse
Guarding against the eternal spouse
Of fear, descendant of night.
Only after you sleep can all be made right.

He shadows me when the sun filters through the clouds,
******* my steps and treading on my heels,
dragging at my leaden-limbs, wearying and bothersome,
though only ever at the edge of being noticed.
He reaches into my head and stirs up my thoughts like tea,
fogging up my mind and my sight.

At night, though, he leads me easily to bed,
and this time I am the one following,
and this time he teases, hovering only at the edge of awareness.
He who chased me so ruthlessly through the sunlight,
now watches silently as I struggle to find him under the moon.
Though, in all honesty, sleep has always been a scornful lover.

h.f.m.

Today the magpie cried 'salvation'
As I woke to tangled sheets
Binding bare, shaking legs.
My bed released me hesitantly,
Reluctant to entrust me to the day's devices.
Stormclouds buzz behind grey eyes
That vacantly watch steam rise in wisps
From a cup clutched in trembling hands.
Marshal the troupes,
Pen, paper, caffeine fix in hand,
An orderly retreat into the inner sanctum.
Today the magpie cried in dawn light.
I rolled over and went back to sleep.

h.f.m.

I keep seeing echoes of my lost friends
In new faces, in strangers' fair eyes;
A tilt of the head and soft laughter lends
Particular cadence to mem'ries cries.
A melancholy stalks into my chest
And I wonder what this feeling might mean
Since 'tis not sent by my dear friends who rest.
I'm missing someone I've not even seen.
From the future or from another life?
Are they friend, foe, or on the grey border?
My doubting brings me unnecessary strife.
Maybe I'll find out when I am older.
Though eyes of strangers and some sort of kin...
Gaze turned to my soul and looks sharp within.

h.f.m.

An endless library the mind might be,
Limetless knowledge well may it posses,
Not so a place of such tranquility,
Never even once a place of true rest.
A nest of demons reside in the stacks,
Sharpening their claws on the wooden shelves,
Skill'd in subterfuge, with ease hide their tracks
Below consciousness, where surface thought delves.
Tattered pages flutter through quiet aisles,
Air pregnant with waiting and dark intent,
Then sudden hostility and sharp smiles
Where wishes and hopefullness make no dent.
I am lost in the halls of my own mind
And don't want to know what's here to find.

h.f.m.

Though inexperienc'd I am, I think,
From what mine own ears have heard oft' express'd,
Love, an o'erwrought and tempestuous drink,
Fallen in and out of leaves one sore stress'd.
Like looking upon the bright, burning sun,
Such a beauty that leaves one blind,
Love brings sweet pain that cannot be undone,
And leaving one to stumble, left behind.
Call me cynic if my words offend thee,
Call me a villain, destroyer of dreams,
But do you not wish to roam, to be free?
I do not wish to be bound, by no means.
Though if my mind were so soften'd to love
'Twould be by someone I've not yet heard of.

h.f.m.

You roll the words around on your tongue.
They dance a feather-light staccato
against the back of your clenched teeth.
Motes of dust gather on your still lips.
Silence is a story you tell yourself before bed
and when you hear birdsong banishing the night.
A bonfire rages in the back of your throat.
The smoke stings your eyes.
You do not speak.
You do not cry.

h.f.m.

The sun rises and sets
yet it stays still;
the revolution of celestial stars
is motion in appearance only.
I go about my business but
day by day I stay the same,
perfectly still and unchanged.
The illusion of influence
is just as effective as the
effect itself.

h.f.m.

my staccato heartbeat drowns out your voice
but i trace the words on your lips all the same
as i strive to decode the message held
in your gentle eyes.

this language of joy i see
is a foreign one
that my tongue trembles with,
stumbling over simple phrases.

my breathing stutters under your adoring gaze,
and suddenly the air is gone from my lungs.
how can such fear, and such warmth,
coexist, side by side?

i'm burning up from the inside,
my stomach sitting like molten lead in my gut.
words sear my throat,
though i don't know what i am saying.

i am posed on the edge of a blade
with your soft hands on my shoulders,
balancing me, as you speak
words of encouragement and peace.

i would die a thousand times for this feeling.

h.f.m.

i.
you are older than the stones beneath
your calloused feet,
but somehow you feel young,
still childlike in your naivety
despite the fact that the world
has conspired
to throw you to the rocks below.
the waves crash over your broken form,
but you are still gazing up
at the diving birds.

ii.
give this beach a washed up body,
these waves a soul to caress.
give these fish some bones to nibble,
these seagulls some remains to harass.
broken and battered,
bloated and blue,
they'd find you
on the stones with the surf
soaking your skin.
a gift to the sea
and whatever deity of death
that would come to claim
the spirit left behind.

iii.
alas,
if only oblivion were such
an easy acquisition.
you crawl from the sea-foam,
reborn anew in your silver-skinned glory.
they are distraught
by your survival,
but they should've known
that you will not die
until your time.
you cannot.
there are still things you must do
before you are granted your end.

h.f.m.

the aftermath is a song
breathed through broken lips

hallelujah, hallelujah
let my lifesong sing to you...

a hoarse voice lifted
in defiance

she listens to his voice
finds humor in this resistance

she twines his hair around her finger
smiling like war

he is crumpled, broken
supported by a wall of rubble

and her arms are around him
possessive, waiting

his lungs rattle
willpower is all that sustains him

her fingers linger at the corner of his mouth
tracing the words on his lips

i want to sign your name
to the end of this day

Lord led my heart was true
let my lifesong sing to you

hallelujah, hallelujah
let my lifesong sing to you...

his voice trails off
his eyes drift closed

she lifts his frail form
victorious

the ground where he had lain
is stained crimson

her hands are dark
with his blood

his spirit, though
is finally at peace

h.f.m.

i.
i wonder why i write anymore
why i agonize over a few lines of ink
on a piece of paper
what am i even trying to say?
i keep contradicting myself:
in one poem i decry my pain,
and plead for anyone to
heed what i hide
in the next

ii.
these words have no rhythm
no measure no
plan
they are
as senseless and chaotic
as
my desire for
rest and my
aversion
from sleep

iii.
do these thoughts even
mean anything?
are these thoughts
even real?
am i
real?

iv.
time is running
but i'm not going to chase it
there's no reason to
when it ends, it ends
and i don't particularly want to extend it

v.
i don't know what i want anymore

vi.
i don't know what i am

vii.
why am i here?

h.f.m.

there are three things you know

i.
you reach into your incorporeal chest
and cradle the bird behind your ribs.
forming a gentle cage of your hands.

you bring the red-chested red-breast to your lips
and tuck the fearful creature under your tongue.

ii.
blood-crimson feathers are spilling
from between your teeth like
cherry blossoms that carpet the corridors
of your weary mind and
scar-crossed thoughts.

iii.
your fingers are wine-dark with wanting
and an unnamed, silent thing
akin to fear tears tightening paths
through your skin,
hidden by the cold
and half-formed excuses.



the official story is that you
fell.

you didn't, not in the way they thought you meant.



you'll spit out the truth one day,
choking on summer-scented feathers
and small, pink flowers that you'll
crush between thumb and forefinger
in denial of this fear.

h.f.m.

Throw your gold-plaited, gold-painted
copper saints into the sea—
more salt than water, the Dead Sea.
What is it, this Dead Sea? Why,
it's that place that unfaithful lovers go
in body bags.
Full of concrete blocks, that Dead Sea.
Who am I, to talk so free? Well,
I'm dead, you see.
My bones are in a bag at the bottom,
at the bed of the Dead Sea.

h.f.m.

if a wish were a hood it could keep off the rain
it could hide my face, hide my shame

if a wish were a ring it could bind my heart
it could bind my soul, a vital part

if a wish were glue it could keep me together
i could feel more grounded, or light as a feather

if a wish were more than a thought...
but no, it is all for naught

h.f.m.

take a baseball bat to
your brother's car.
strike out and
light your matchstick bones,
burning a high fever that
scorches your torn-paper skin,
branding your shattered limbs with the
ink-black, swirling lightning of
your childhood's summer storms.
a tattooed promise along
taut shoulders, bearing,
like atlas, the sky,
with the north star
guiding you towards
peaceful slumber, and
home.

h.f.m.

I dreamed about dying last night.
I was in a plane over icy tundra,
hurtling towards the ground,
but it wasn't the crash that killed me.

I dreamed about dying last night.
The wreckage was quickly surrounded,
wild animals pawing through the ruins,
but it wasn't the teeth and claws that killed me.

I dreamed about dying last night.
I wandered the snow wastes,
lost and frostbitten,
but it wasn't the cold that killed me.

I dreamed about dying last night.
I wasn't done in by the trauma or hungry animals or cold.
I was finally killed by myself.
I gave in and fell asleep.

I woke with a start,
in my bed,
afraid and forgetting.

I dreamed about dying last night.
Still not sure if it meant anything.

h.f.m.

inner compass, guide me home
i'm lost in the dark, all alone
moral compass, calm my fears
make good choices, dry my tears
compass, compass, lead me forth
marching towards my heart's true north

h.f.m.

They douse themselves in gasoline
Light a match and watch you scream
Fatal protest of worldly injustice
Is life really all that precious?

Picket signs and flooded streets
Hide your head under the sheets
Block out the passionate shouts
No way in hell you're going out!

Hiding away from all this strife
Happiness is not worth your life
At least, that is your thought
But wait until the cruel get caught

Red-handed in word and deed
Ignoring your country's need
It is increasingly self-evident
You really need a new president

h.f.m.

'who are you?'
no one
i have no name
a label for strangers
deriving their preconceptions

to name is to define
is to put in a little package
and wrap up tight
to refuse change
remain the same

words are names
aren't they?
for concepts, ideas
for the perceived, the perceiving
hypocritical of me to use them

even absence has a name
specifying, narrowing, splicing
'silence' and 'abandonment'
'hunger' and 'fear'
if this is the case...

maybe i do have a name after all

h.f.m.

I'm reading this book,
"Last Night I Sang To The Monster"
And it hit me. Hard.
Here were the words I couldn't find.
This kid was feeling exactly the way I do.
But that's ridiculous,
since he has a reason for it,
a story behind it.
Me? I'm just miserable
for no reason at all.
It's not rational, this unexplained pain.
I don't even know where it hurts,
just that it does.
The kid in the story, Zach,
he loved people so **** much
but he was afraid of feeling like that
because he kept getting hurt:
by the people he loved,
or the people he loved got hurt
and not all of them got a chance to heal.
He loved broken people,
and people who broke,
and he was both of those
and it was tearing him apart.
And it feels like me,
but it can't be, can it?
His childhood was ******* up,
but mine wasn't, mine was perfect.
His family was ******* up,
but mine isn't, mine's fantastic.
So why do I feel like this?
And too afraid to share it.
I tried, once.
It didn't work out so well.
And of course I can write it here,
because who on here will confront me with it?
Who on here can and make me answer for it?
I am aware my emotions, my pain, are completely irrational.
But I can't convince myself that they're not real.

h.f.m.

ambassador to the land of my soul, please let me know.
how is my fair land progressing?
this exile's heart aches for news
and longs to see those familiar fields once again.

ambassador of my spirit, oh, let me hear it!
what is happening in the country named youth?
these weary pariah's hands clasped before you
wish to tend to their old gardens once more.

ambassador of the nation of my mind, why keep me blind?
why keep your silence sternly as i weep?
every scintilla of my being screams with desire
to even set foot in my own form one last time.

ambassador, please.
this yearning tears me in two.

h.f.m.

my fair infant-highness,
thine ebony skin of dusky twilight,
thy gold-flecked smoke-shrouded eyes,
bring me such joy as cannot be described

my sweet young prince,
dost thou comprehend the lengths of my care?
is thy failing health truly the last of thee i will see?
wouldst thou allow thy alluring laugh to fade as thy breath?

my serene little princeling,
what shall i do to return thee to my arms?
three days and an hour thou hast survived this cursed health,
what is even another minute that i might see thee again?

my beloved royal
the mere thought of thine own existence brings me peace
but following on its heels is the fear of thy passing
how hast thine eyes already gripped my soul so?

my tranquil blood-kin,
thou didst not cry once, not even at thy birth
thine eyes rested on mine sedately
thy smile, charmingly dimpled, was tender

light of my heart
why must my spirit cry out to thee
even as thy pulse stills
and thy tiny chest cease rising?

h.f.m