When I was young
I slipped out of the tub
stinking clean as
the moon and the suds
in the crack of my ***
slipping out the back window
with my pants and boots
buck naked and brave
and my Daddy’s daddy’s
daddy’s knife tucked between
my teeth, but lonely and sad
because it’s all that I had
except for the twenty
that I’d saved
for the ten hour ride
from the bus station
to the recruiter, but alive
hoping my Mother, when shaking
my quilt out that morning
after my last night
remembered my down
in the sunlight
because I didn’t sleep there
and I remember thinking
if I don’t alight here again
take all that is left
of my memory out
and work it loose
from the bone with a thumb
the way you taught me to
clean a fish until all that remains
is a fleeting thought and toss it
in one motion the sad dance of fire.

Her body pulls away, outlying

Ask the mountains
Question the clouds

What is rotation's logic?
Have we spun fallaciously all along?

Communicating with inexact words?
Kissing off-target?
*******, an imprecise expression?

She settles now on unapproachable horizon

Learn from the shore
Understand the sea

Neither dare, nor desire, to claim
For the indignity or cumber of a difficult collide

Start anew by holding hands
Discover the "we" in you and her

Ever so gently, allow her to orbit
The offered affection
On her own terms

The heart will again probe for
A returning circuit to attachment

Her body will move closer

The best of us comes out when the rest of us is gone.

At least,
I hope that's the case as I just want to save face and get away when my days face me with the longest ways around.

The depression sets as I attempt to find my faded song's wasted namesake.
Looking for a better view of the days whereupon my incessant sighs are drawn.

Drawn like a depressive sketch,
With the pencil marks parked along the secrets to peace's faded spark.

My fallacy, you see,
I'd rather breathe within the seas than have to see these things the way they've gone,
Strung me along the heartstrings stretched so thin as to nigh be my patience with this broken masterpiece.

And so,

The best of us are broken when the rest of us are gone.

But, the best in us comes out,
When the rest of us is wrong.