Everything changed for me in the spring.

It was 4 months of the most painful growth I've known. I lay in beds of clovers, and flowers, they embraced me warmly like new friends.

Then the summer came, it was hot and rainy and my sweat burned my eyes. The blood from my hands was a deep red, the proof I was still so alive.

Now we've entered the fall, the mornings are crisp and the skys are clear. It hasn't rained in weeks and my hair has grown so long.
My sleepy eyes are open wide,  ready to accept the beauty of winter.

Its a type of magic really,

The way your gaze could hold me like a straight jacket.

Those clever marbles,

The piercing, calm blue of a winter morning sky.

What have they seen?

Id sit and listen to you tell me till you decided you were done,

Id lap up every bit of your story you offered me,

And never have my fill.

The pile of black paper butterflies in the center of the table grew ever larger,

Seeming some sort of monument to the night.

By the end it was a wave, big enough to send me rolling,

But I'll find my footing and I'll keep moving forward.

I'm sure he'll treat her just as well,

in the end she'll leave him behind,

The way the ocean does a shell.

I hate you so much.

I hate you I swear I hate you.

I hate you for your double standards and your venomous outbursts,

I hate you for the way that you made me feel so whole,

I hate you for your dark curls and your subtle lisp,

I hate you for the days you made my life a movie,

For the days you made my life feel small and unimportant,

For the pedestal I drug around for you,

For your soft skin and loving eyes,

I hate you for the way everyone likes you effortlessly,

I hate you for how you left me,

I hate you.

I hate you so much it hurts me.

I hate you so much for making me hate you.

I hate you for the days I cried at the thought of us as old people, still by each others side,

I hate you for the days you made me feel so special,

I hate you for every beautiful second of those 7 years.

I hate you and I hope that you're living well, sleeping well, eating well. I hope you're loved. I know you are.

As another year has ticked by,

                       This one was especially a blur,

And For a long stretch of it,

      The days passed like breaths in an

anxiety attack,

  Quick and sharp,

          With little lasting impact,

I realized recently how much of my last year was spent toiling. Giving myself fully to something in the hope of being better again.

                     Carrying my candle,

                     Trusting the process.

   In the end I’ve not a lot to show for it but **** did it feel good to feel a fire for something again. In some sort of roundabout way I ~Feel~ as though I’ve ~Felt~ very little at ~All~ this year. Which is a statement that marks this year as standing in stark contrast to the previous one, and is only true romantically.

I had a dream about cutting my hair,

And hating the results,

I googled the meaning and supposedly it can mean taking control of your life,

Or

Supposedly, that you’re having a hard time with a decision and your subconscious is telling you to think twice about it.

Among other, assumably equally applicable interpretations.

I think it’s because I have been thinking about cutting my hair a lot.

I’m not sure what the next year will hold,

I still warm my hands over the wick of my candle,

Hopeful as ever to see another year tick bye.

It’s been a long time,

And by now I’m mostly numb,

But still,

Watching you bleach the canvas,

Watching you clean all the stains,

Like a thief hiding every scrap of evidence,

Ridding your legacy of all our transgressions,

My throat tightens,

My eyes water,

My nose burns,



It’s fine,

Pinky promise,


I’ll keep my pieces safe for us,



Pinky promise.

The hot days of summer drone on like the cicadas at dusk,
The cool nights trickle bye,
Each moment,
Sweet like honeysuckle nectar,
every minute we trudge through,
Good enough to die for.

How did it feel,
Your second wind,
Your heartfelt final effort?

I thought I'd been weathering this storm quietly, but my friends have been the support beams through it all.

Silently stepping in to hold me up on the days I've lost the heart to do it myself.

The summer heat bores forever on, the iced cream man is hard at work.

As a kid I couldn't contain my excitement enough to savor the treat, id haphazardly  discard the wrapper and let it melt all over my hands while I ate it.


These days I eat mine in the shade, and try to catch every runny drop as it melts away.

Its wild to think that, some years back, a large amount of days and hours ago, a version of me that understood even less about the world than he does now, left his house for the last time.

I barely remember that summer, there had a been a scary storm right before Katrina that we half assed evacuated for but it ended up missing us. I was starting 3rd grade and had just learned the word "mathematician". I don't remember what my classroom looked like but I do remember the agendas and journals they gave us that I only got to use for about 2 weeks. They were white with doodled children all over the top, and said "Westwego Elementary 3rd grade".
I remember feeling like I was finally a big kid at school. My classrooms were finally upstairs with the big kids and the world was so big and bright, and we were so curious all we wanted to do was see it all. Like there was a projector sat between us and the coolest thing we had ever seen and all we could do was try to see passed the light.
     I Don't remember leaving, I remember driving, I remember going back for the last time to get our stuff from the house. I remember starting over and joining a new school with 200 other kids from my city. I remember living at my aunts house with most of my family. I remember wondering about my old friends and how they were. I remember one time we were at Walmart and I was buying halo 2 and my neighbor/best friend from back home just happened to be there too, completely out of the blue. The first time I had seen them since the storm at all.

I haven't seen them since, and its been 16 years. I hope they're fine. I drive by that old house pretty often and I never cease to wonder if the kids living in it now are ok. If they live a life anything like my life was in that house. If they have a trampoline in the backyard or if they sometimes walk too far down the street alone and get in trouble.

Its crazy how life happens. There's no plotting the course. There's no hedging your bets. You can only weather the storm.

Healing has turned out to be such a long and painful process,

Like pulling out a hundred tiny splinters,

The immense relief you feel as they slide from your skin after a moment of struggle,

The occasional mark left behind,

The hundreds more you'll discover hiding in your hands,

As you drag them along the walls through your days.

It’s still such a conundrum,

The way it hurts to remember,

But to die at the the thought of forgetting

Its a toss up,
Its a potluck,

Its a wash out,
Its a cold shower,

An open wound,
And a clean bandage,

Its a great song,
Its a boring sermon,

Its a brand new day,
Its the same old ****,

Its a load of crap,
But its a beautiful thing.

I don't have to make her into a poem,

Without a need for assistance,

She carries herself like Poes finest work,

Like a pristine Brontë.

She might be the life art imitates,

She is the tip of the flame,

At the tip of the match.

Life was such a beautiful dream then.

I guess it still is really, quite a beautiful dream.

I try to do little things for myself,
Take a few liberties to try and break through the barrier between being alive and living my life.
I read books and take walks, I have beers and write poems.
    I enjoy those things but sometimes its not enough to break through that barrier. Sometimes I'm just here. My first weekend back home my brother took us tubing on the lake. Its kind of weird to think but sometimes that's what life feels like. Like everyone's on a boat and I'm behind it on a raft holding on for dear life. Mostly I'm good though, I always enjoyed tubing.

In 350 weeks I went through alot of pain, had an uncountable number of dream like days. Went through moving and losing my mom, being fired, losing my dog and many childhood friends.
  In so many ways the pain I've faced these passed 8 weeks hasn't been something totally unfamiliar, its not as though I've never met the anxieties im dealing with now. But for some reason they are so scary, they seem so big. It took me a second to realize that the reason why is because before I knew I didn't have to face those moments alone. I always had backup.
   Its not that I think I'll never have backup again, its not that at all. And I know ill be just fine without it for now. Its scary to feel so alone after 350 weeks of having each other's backs. 8 weeks from now I'll feel much differently im sure, and 8 weeks from then things will be much different, I can't imagine 350 weeks from now. With any luck, well see each other around by then, cheers.

I used to write such beautiful things,

About such beautiful things,

On and on would go my enamored rambling,

Like the longest winded songbird on the years first Snowy morning,

My head would spin as I turned to take it all in,

The blur in my eyes as they dart from side to side could lead a Pagan to consider a God,

Each microsecond my eyes could process could’ve been framed and hung in a gallery,

Each with its own placard listing important details, noting the set and setting of each shock across the meat inside my skull,



I used to write such beautiful things,
About such beautiful things,

But a beautiful thing about those beautiful things,

Is that even if you close your eyes and do your best to ignore them,

Or lie to yourself and try to see them as ugly,

They are still there, waiting for you to peel your eyes back open,

And remind you how beautiful,

This whole thing is

I tried to write about you,
And I couldn't.

As much as I thought of you,
No words came to mind.

I sat for a moment,
Mind as blank as the page before me.

I tried to force it,
Tried to reach and scrape for it.

In the end,
I was grasping at air.

The result,
Is Something im not proud of,

And a story,
With no hero, villain, or moral.

How you started so brightly,
With visions of delusional grandeur,

How the path seemed only to lead up,
Into the hills,

It seemed easy to get lost in those ups and downs,
The moon hung like a silver dollar at the end of the path,
Forever and always,

Before we knew it the coast had claimed us,

Swept from our foothold in the hills we clung to each other tightly,
As each tidal wave crested our mouths and our eyes stung with the anger of the ocean,


Our lungs burning to breathe,

You broke from my grasp,
At first I would scramble to regain it,

Soon to realize it was your will,
And it could not be undone,

I bobbed lonely and sunbaked on the open sea for countless days,

I had all the time I needed to think the thoughts I always pushed away,

As I lay baking,

How dark, and quietly you ended,
Not many to bear witness,

How long and cold your warm summers were,
To look back on after wiping the lenses clear.