A father looks deeply
  into the eyes of his son,
He speaks soft and sweetly:
  "Child, my days are done."

"I've loved every moment
  From the day that we met.
The day of your birth,
  And I'll never forget,
You told me you loved me
  Without using words,
I gave you my heart
  And you gave me the earth.

"And though my life's ending,
   I want you to know,
This is the beginning,
  Of life on your own.
So hear me right now,
   With these final breaths,
And I'll tell you how,
   Your life shall be blessed:

Sing with the water,
  Dance with the bees;
Travel the world,
  And sail on the seas.
Learn to enjoy
  The moments you have;
For now is eternal,
  Yet time moves so fast.

"Learn to love,
  And love to learn;
Light your passion,
  And let it burn.
Reach someone,
  Touch longing lives;
We are all one,
  Together we fight.

"Let go of hurt,
  Learn to forgive,
Understand others,
  We're all new at this.
One day you'll see,
  You'll blink and wake up;
And then you will teach
  Your son to grow up.

You never stop running;
Never slow down.
You’ve learned that silence
Is the screeching of sound.
The days keep changing,
But it all bleeds to one,
As you’ve found that sleep
Only wastes time.
The stress you feel
Just means your alive.
That shortness of breath
Helps you survive.
So you move through the world
Blind to it’s beauty,
For you’ve learned things are worthless
Unless they are moving.

Unclasp your fingers
Your clenched fists
And know the release of
Giving in

Let him drift away
Let the ocean stand between you
As a testament
To the vast expanse
That exists there now.

Stop fighting the waves.
Stop braving the icy waters
Arm over arm
To reach him on the other side.

The water will always win.
And you never were much of a swimmer.
He's just a distant island now
Shrouded in fog
Somewhere over the horizon.

Rest now,
The fight is over.
Your mangled, frantic heart
Can slow
And begin another tempo
When it's no longer bleeding over
An unreachable coastline.

I hope you never reach
The day
Where you are lost for words
Because they're tangled up in
Agony.

I hope you never reach
The point
Where your innocence of
The world is
Robbed.

I hope you choose
Your friends and
Lovers wisely
So that you never have to
Discover what it feels like
To see those who you believed
Would take a bullet for you
Dance behind the
Trigger.

Opia. Noun. The ambiguous intensity of looking into someone's eyes, which can fell simultaneously invasive and vulnerable.

As you lie in my arms, watching the television, you don't notice that my undivided attention is focused on you. Something I've been dreaming of for weeks, and it's finally come true. Even better, from your angle, you can't see me staring into your eyes, so I don't feel the nervous compulsion to turn away. Whether directly or not, I could drink in your eyes with mine, for hours, and they would be among the best hours of my life.
Then there's the other hand, held tightly by trepidation. I love the prospect of your eyes staring into mine, but it's not without its fears. I'm afraid you'll see all the pain and fears that I've spent the past seven years working to overcome. I'm afraid you'll see all the insecurity and doubts I have about myself. I'm afraid you'll see all the words that I long to whisper in your ear, but can't, because I'm terrified of scaring you away. I'm afraid you won't like the fact that, behind these eyes lies only pictures and thoughts of you. But most of all, I'm afraid that, unlike me, who loves every detail, and lives for moments like these, you won't love the things you see. I long for the day when you stare happily into my eyes, but I'm frightened that you won't enjoy the secrets they reveal.

Saying goodbye
To someone you love
Is like reading the final page
Of an amazing book.

As the last chapter ends
You begin to notice
Just how beautiful
And perfect
The plot always was.  

You appreciate the joy
And even the pain
As you read and thumb
Through every page.

Finally understanding
The moral of the story,
You realize you've reached
The end of this journey.

Although the last sentence  
Is the most difficult to read
Another great book awaits
Once you turn the final page.

Eventually you may stumble
Upon yet another great find.
Or maybe you'll return
To the book you left behind.

You may just discover
Once all is said and done
That this particular book  
Was your favorite story
All along.

I called him daddy in bed,
but I didn't think he would leave me
the same way my father did.
Now I'm lying here
holding myself at 3 AM
because God knows
neither of them will do it.

She might laugh if she read this
at the flat little version of her
that lives in my mind.
She may laugh
at my comparison of her
to a hideous sea spider
but hear me out
it could be touching.

David Foster Wallace wrote:
“Since pain is a totally subjective mental experience
we do not have direct access
to anyone or anything’s pain but our own;
and even just the principles
by which we can infer that others experience pain
and have a legitimate interest in not feeling pain
involve hard-core philosophy—
metaphysics, epistemology, value theory, ethics.”

"[Lobsters] do have an exquisite tactile sense,
one facilitated by hundreds of thousands of tiny hairs
that protrude through their carapace.
Although encased
in what seems a solid, impenetrable armour,
the lobster can receive stimuli and impressions from without
as readily as if it possessed a soft and delicate skin.”

and so

“We lift lobsters out of the bag
or whatever retail container they came home in
…whereupon some uncomfortable things start to happen.
However stuporous the lobster is from the trip home, for instance,
it tends to come alarmingly to life when placed in boiling water."

As much as I cannot comprehend the pain
of the exquisitely tactile lobster
in a *** of boiling water,
I wonder if I could
walk a mile in a lobster’s 8 minuscule shoes
and I wonder
what it might mean or not mean to her
with her armoured yet acute exoskeleton
to be back at home with her father.

They might try to butter you up
or snap elastic bands
around your oversized claws
and use a wooden spoon
to try and nudge your thrashing, clinging arms
back into the ***,
but remember:
lobsters can live to be over 100 years old
and grow to over 20 pounds in size
which is very large for an aquatic insect
and remember that they are marine crustaceans of the family Homaridae, characterized by five pairs of jointed legs, the first pair terminating in large pincerish claws.

And DFW famously said,

“Everything I’ve ever let go of has claw marks on it.”

and he's not a lobster either

Isn't it funny
How when you're sick
You have two options:
Get better
Or die

When you're with someone
You can break up
Get married
Or die
(Before either of the other two can happen)

Isn't it funny
How death
Always
Seems to be an option
Somewhere in the list