I would call you a friend
but friends don't claw
at the back of your eyes
while you're asleep.
(b.r.o.)

I'm a book bound from all angles
I change with the moon
I've sold my soul to the sun
so when all is consumed
I will feel nothing
I will thrive in the aftershock
where I know only
stillness
at the hands of a clock
If you think you have won,
then you've already lost
when you're ready
to pay interest
on the borrowing cost
when you're forced to give back
what you never owned
when this figment called time
steals your hallowed out bones,

You will know where to find me.
I want nothing to do with this body.

(b.r.o.)

There is a you-shaped void in my stomach that I regularly fill with alcohol
and the last time I checked,
my veins still curled
in your handwriting.
(b.r.o.)

I found myself wanting to break everything in the gift shop with your name on it.
(b.r.o.)

That's what I feel like.

You stare me right in the eye
and instead of eluding you,
I freeze
so fast it sends a shiver
from my shoulders
to the base of my spine.

Although it feels wrong,
what could be right?

I just can't ******* move
for fear of losing you
if I do.
(b.r.o.)

It's torturous. It's pain.
It's the best and worst thing you've ever felt at the same time. Sometimes they separate and it's one or the other. It stings. Your callouses fall from your fingers the way I imagine hunted birds do from trees. It's being vulnerable and letting that other person know. Telling them they could destroy you if they chose to. Trusting that they won't. It's pure, unadulterated trust. It's being restless without them. It's cramming your hands in your pockets when they're gone because you don't know what to do without them anymore. Your extremities are foreign and new when without theirs. They no longer belong to you or to anything they do.
Each movement scatters the shrapnel of their words as you implode.
It's sacrifice. It's worth it. It's waking up at 2:30am reaching for them in your bed, whether they're there or not. It's sleeping more soundly with them than when you're alone. It's laughter. It's wanting to kiss the deepest crevices of their mind and blow the dust from the places you've only seen second hand. The black parts. The parts that haven't been without a shadow for days. It's wanting to memorize the feeling of their fingertips against your skin; to trace their fingerprints onto your lips in hopes that when speaking their name it will be yours again.
It's beautiful. It's hideous.
It rears its ugly head and charges at you, and you trust it not to hurt when you're sent flying backward. It's finding them in everything. It's having fun when you're lost in the rain and having the worst day. It's watching them reading, and feeling them take hold of you while only using their hands to turn a page. It's wanting to hold them so tightly to set all of their broken bones and maybe a few will fuse to yours. You crave nothing more than to be their surgeon. Their vaccination. The one to prevent what's to come and fix what is already done. It's knowing you would give anything for one more day of it. Just one more anything.

Love is being scared shitless and still not pulling the cord, because you trust them to catch you when your parachute fails to open.
If you fail to open, your parachute will follow suit.
I promise you.
(b.r.o.)

You don't have to love me
but I will not forgive you
because each and every morning's
another finger
in a bullet wound.
(b.r.o.)

Before I fall asleep, my chest burns
like I've swallowed a lit cigarette

and if you aren't there to smother it,
I wake up coughing smoke
into my hands.
(b.r.o.)

I learned more during a midnight spent being temporarily homeless than I have in four years filling in empty circles at the end of a rope.
The next time you take a step,
I urge you to look down.
You might be one of the people who only notices when they're the ones blending seamlessly with the cobblestone.
(b.r.o.)

This could be everything.
Can't you see it?
We could lock arms and swallow keys together.
We could plant our feet and seeds in the same place.
Isn't it right in front of you?
Couldn't you reach out and touch it?
(b.r.o.)

I'm lucky that you ruined me-
because everything important,
essentially means nothing.
(b.r.o.)

Catholics
Believe
They're characters in a book
God is writing

And that the ending
Is predetermined
And inherently pure
If they follow the script

What they don't realize
However
Is that God is a **** author
Smoking cigarettes
Over a blank page

That their book will end
Far before the plot
Thins
Because he can't finish
Anything
He started

Because you wasted
Everything He supposedly gave you
On your knees
For a piece of
Saltless
Bread

It can not fill
Your holiness

It can not fill
The space you've cleared
For Him

I do not need you
or your gross misunderstanding
of what it means to love
and be loved
because I have sat here before
and with a stranger
peering over my shoulder
I will describe in detail
my sheer adoration
for the consistency of the moon
and the tides loyal lapping
at my feet
and I will be able to compare
you
to neither
(b.r.o.)

When things start to hurt and the air hangs too heavy, think about how quickly the earth is spinning and how many things we don't know.
You are minuscule yet infinitely important.
You are the embodiment of possibility.
You matter more to the universe than you do yourself.
You matter.
(b.r.o.)

The grass is always greener
until you realize
through your infinite ignorance
you have spent years
watering the wrong
******* lawn
(b.r.o.)

This is the last poem I write about you
So I suggest you read it until you find it hard to breathe.

This is the last poem I write for you
in hopes that you'll read and use it to find your way back to me.

This is the last mark I make on a clean white page that on the other side
reads your name.

There is a photo of you in the back of this notebook that I haven't looked at in a month.

There is a burning in my stomach and it's leading me to believe that I am eating me alive.

Every word I've said alone in the dark
was uttered in hopes that you would somehow hear me.

It's over and I'm out.
This is the last time.
This is no longer for you.
You are no longer my muse.
(b.r.o.)

I believe in early morning honesty
and the excuses you make
for why you're never asleep
when the air feels suspended
in your bedroom
like cold,
damp clouds from the ceiling
I will be there
wiping it clean
for you.
(b.r.o.)

You can sleep in my bed tonight.
I'll light candles and we can talk about why all of the strangers stare at us.
They think we look funny
standing by ourselves
but so do they
because they board buses that haven't moved in who knows how many years.
We can laugh at them if they do
and we can follow them
if you want to
and even if the sun comes up before we've figured out where we're going,
I promise I'll kiss you goodnight when we have.
(b.r.o.)

I awoke in a cold sweat with blood in my mouth but not on my hands.

It was worth it.

I hope to god your tongue swells too,
before I cough up a scarlet apology on my knees
at your feet
and your favorite pair of shoes
about how you pushed me away,
and everything is a gradient of the same blue
I swear I have seen
somewhere before

What the **** do you want me to say for myself?
That it was my fault for not fighting the current you sent for me?

Regardless:
You know darling,
your eyes change when you cry.
That familiar sapphire
so painfully beautiful
and I carry the blame.
Your happiness is more important to me than mine.
(b.r.o.)

Any relationship is only as valuable as what it can teach you
and I have not learned my lesson.
(b.r.o.)

I don't understand why anyone would want to hear what they expect when they ask me what I want to do with my life.
I know what they want to hear.
"Go to college. Get a good job. Settle down. Have a family."
Why would I want to give that answer?
I would hate to draw a map and go a predetermined course.
I would hate to know what's coming.
Where is the adventure in that?
Humans created many of the problems that they seek solutions to.
What would I learn by preforming an experiment if I already know the outcome?
All I know is that I want to experience.
I want to fill myself with everything that I can, and I want to be.
(b.r.o.)

I'm not ashamed of the way that my tongue bleeds
When I am escaping from anything
Especially the words I can not say
For fear of breaking and entering
And I can't apologize unless I am sorry
That I've told you the truth about all my fears
And the way I'm running from everything
That's ever meant something or anything to me
And I'm not sorry for being so right brained
When I over analyze your dreams
But I'm not sorry for being so left behind
When everything's so far out of reach
Yet I'm sorry for not being able
To grasp it

When the time is right
And I'm only a poet when under
This broken exterior of a person
When I am vulnerable and weak
Or my foundation is cracking
And I'm left in the basement of it
So in the end,
I'm just sorry I don't speak so poetically.
(b.r.o.)

You are the light that has found me
And I don't care to grow
Unless I'm growing toward you.
(b.r.o.)

You winced when I kissed you
And said that it burned
That night
Alone
I remembered your eyes
Burning through me
Like I had hurt you
Worriedly
I touched my lips
To my wrist
But they'd gone cold
And calling you a liar
Would hurt more than your kind of truth
Because that same night
Without believing it
You told me you loved me
So I kissed you again
But it was selfish
And I never wanted to do harm
So I've been afraid to touch you
Since then
Even though
I'd love nothing more
Than to brand your neck
The shape of my mouth
And call you mine

Never get too comfortable
In what you're in.
Everything can change before you're ready.

So I guess,
For what it's worth,
I sleep on the floor.
(b.r.o.)

It seems like hypocrisy
the way the ones promising a heaven
grow old
and on their death beds cry
"life is far too short"
because they wasted theirs
humming hymns and cowering in a pew

I saw it on the news
that a church burnt to the ground
with a hundred or so people inside
and I have to ask you
did the lord hear their prayer?
(b.r.o.)

11:11

It was only until that time tonight that I realized

Sitting outside in the dark
Half-admiring the lack of visible stars

Staring somewhere into the middle distance
In the direction that I always imagined you would be

Letting the lights blur in and out of focus
I finally closed my eyes

And for the first time in three years
I wished for something that wasn't you.

I have no ill thoughts
Only lines drawn.
(b.r.o.)

Most conversations I have
are on a bench
at the train station nearest where I live
about the birds return
or you

and we all just want to go home
but I hear the train
and I'm not sure
if I should move

so I wait for the next one
and soon a stranger sits beside me
whose clothes smell of mildew
then the birds begin to sing again
and I think they know
they have always reminded me
of you
(b.r.o.)

There are people who crave intimacy
To be truly ****
And allow another person to glance inside their soul and judge the crude decor of every hour leading up to that moment
because they've a vacant space to rent

God knows they worry
They've arranged the room wrong
Take pride in that the dishes are never *****
The bed never slept in
With only one place to sit

Then there are people like me
Who crave emptiness
Because the room is far too crowded
Futons full of drunken lovers who put their Cigarettes out on the walls
Never asking if it's okay to stay
So I ******* hate them

I think I crave the empty people
Because they come inside
Never close the door
With a box of my old shoes under their arm
Wave to me
Never say thank you
And wipe their feet before they leave

(b.r.o.)

I know next to
nothing about myself

It's like I have
never even met me

If the day comes
and I still know
what they can do,

I would surely
not shake my hand.
(b.r.o.)

All the hope that I have left
is still ******* in you

(b.r.o.)

I lost my dad yesterday and every day for the rest of my life.
When you feel like your book is ending, I swear to you it isn’t. There is so much more. There is always another page, and another moment of sunlight to show you that it doesn’t have to be dark any more than half of the time. You have more to learn and more to teach than you could ever comprehend. You are a symphony composed of infinite possibilities. You are so ******* important. Don’t you dare cut it short. Live the hell out of it. Come to a screeching halt from full speed with no what ifs attached to your conscience. It’s already only a blip in the timeline of all that has been or will be. Make it count.

(b.r.o.)

I put on my dads coat
every time I leave to smoke
because between a long exhale
and his cologne
I remember in lucidity
one of the last times I saw him.

It was four in the morning
I was drunk on whiskey and alone
yet again,
not that he was surprised
or angered
by my antics.

As always
he was halfway
down the driveway
by the time
my phone rang.

"Do you have a cigarette on you?"

I was silent awhile
until I nodded,
shyly obliged,
and removed the last one from my pocket
which I gladly sacrificed.

He laughed and shook his head
his small fire illuminating the thick fog
around us
and his sunken eyes
exhausted from a day of work
that had drained us both.

My vision blurring
in and out of focus
fleeting street lights displayed
an abundance of nose marks
his favorite dog
left on the window.

I saw my fathers familiar hand
reach out
offering me a drag
which I silently accepted,
and I'm glad I did.

As the smoke cleared
I half-smiled to myself,
because if I could see us now
things would be different.

I unknowingly accepted
a share of the last gift
I would give.

I'm glad
I killed a piece of me
with him.

I'm glad
he still has it
wherever he is.

Fall in love with an artist
Allow yourself to become their medium
Because I can feel the winter through the humidity of summer

It falls all around me
(b.r.o.)

I am a blade of grass
and you are an entire garden
of orange and blue
and I want to be beautiful,
but there is nothing I could grow into
and become even half as beautiful
as you.
(b.r.o.)

I'll let you **** in my ribcage
if you promise to sing to me
while you stitch me back together.
(b.r.o.)

Everything that has ever been mine has come to an abrupt and screeching halt.
It has been loud,
It has been unwelcome,
And I have been scared,
But I refuse
to lick the wounds that come from putting my foot down
to keep from progressing
too quickly.
(b.r.o.)