Ahh but when I'm distraught
You comfort me well down
And when I'm careless to my health
You protect me from myself

We joke and shove and ****
Like children in schoolyards
Yet we massage and cook for the other
Like years-long dear lovers

If you had it in you
To be just a smidge less of a troll
I'd sing you sonnets
That would make a siren blush

I swear my kisses are innocent
But you take them in so deeply
My breath catches
Your hands tighten
And we are lost in each other

God cast out Lucifer
And neither dared apologize
Over fast centuries
God's anger yielded to pain
Which told him all the more
He could not see Luce again

They were too different
The God and now Devil
Family so close
Separation was cutting off
A gangrene limb
Even when no longer painful
It was harder to move in the world

Unable to do
Tasks that used to be simple
The inability flashed the memory of separation
They would silently watch each other
Having spys tell them
When the coast was clear to try

In rare times, they would have to meet
Duty forced it for both
Then, Lucifer would stare through God
To the blank wall behind
Past to oblivion he smoldered in
That's all God was to Luce now
A nothingness

When God felt that stare, he shivered
He escaped him as soon as he could
Anxious to leave his right hand again
Lucifer, in eternal age, would never apologize
And what could God apologize for?
He was no capable of sin
He would not apologize for his holiness

And so God merely wept

At the concert of an artist we've both listened to for years
The opener soothes us so that
I finally put my head on your shoulder
You breathe an audible sigh
And lay your head on mine
At the next song, you yawn exaggeratedly
To put your hand over my shoulders
I giggle, and relax into you

The next time I see you, a Saturday morning
We agree to make muffins
You find a recipe and lay out the ingredients
I direct the baking process
Our coordination is natural
As if done for years
I end up staying til after dinner

Soon after, we lay in bed
I ask you what you would like
Lay your cards down before I do
Partners?
Partners
Of course
Why would we call it anything else?

We are very different people
But on the same page
When it comes to who we are together
Hours spent together, talking and not
It is not eroutic, it is not platonic
It is companionship
It is our partnership

The luck of an easy love

My mother shook her head sadly
As she mourned my brother
The pain
And the anger
With which he's set himself aflame
A bonfire continuing
Since he came to first grade
He was sent to the principal
For a peeing contest with friends
Though the teacher'd let me be
When I'd cheated and lied on tests
I was the good child
The first child
The straight A
He was the ugly middle
The one who couldn't be saved
The more he misbehaved
The more they wrote him off
The more they wrote him off
The more he wrote off school
They told him,
'Why can't you be more like your sister?'
'I remember her still'
The more they asked him
The more he hated me
My mother tells me that
He used to adore me
I loved my teachers
I respected them greatly
I couldn't understand him
My mom coaxed him and fought with him
While saying it was fate
I'd always be the good one
He'd never get straight
The lazy one, the black sheep
He couldn't be helped
How more could she bother
A sad muscled whelp
In our distance, in time
We grew to hate one another
Every morning in high school
We would have to disturb the other
To have our father
Take us to the bus together
Every morning in high school
Became a battleground
'Why can't you wake up?'
'Why can't you leave me alone?'
'Please don't make me late again'
'Shut the fck up you btch'
He shot from his den
I left for college
He didn't get in
I came back for Christmas
The flame relit then
'You'll never become a musician
If you can't show up on time'
He told me never to speak
Hand across my windpipe
I left upstairs sobbing
Wanting punishment for his crime
When I mentioned police
My mom turned on a dime
'You've done this to each other'
What could I have done, Mother?
I was only always the good one
He was always the Devil
He's hurt each of us
He hates each of us, though me in special
I've seen him assault
Each of us but our father
His life is a trap
He trudges through wearily
I'm the only one
Who will go to therapy
My mom, shaking her head
Burdened so heavily
Though she has her part
In our play of tragedy
I ask her if she would
Seek mental help too
She says, 'Why?
I'm fine dear
There's nothing to do
I've got my friends
To talk about this sort of thing to'
Equating them to a doctor
Defending her innocence
Leaving me be
The sacrifice again
The focus of his hate
The good little lamb
Go save the world
Leave us
At home in bedlam.

Oh it's just that I'm ex-Mormon
Well I like to be in control
Ah, no thank you really
I'm not judging you
I'm judging me
I just don't drink
(or smoke or swallow or shoot)
because I see
My brother,
My uncles,
My grandfather,
The pain it's caused them and their families
My family
Has a history with addiction
I feel in my genes this predisposition
So I'll keep going to bars for
The setting which has been
For millenia in human civilization
I'll keep learning the compounds
Brewing my own mead
But I won't consume
The things that could consume me