The heart of a writer is frail, like that of a flower waiting to be plucked. Life itself, or love, could uproot it, for no rhyme or reason.

I hate to say that my heart has been salted by the woes of man.
This never-ending race has left me wanting for watering.
Hang my heart on your wall with the others to dry out, my love.
I'm tired and weary—I need rest.

Brother, we knew each other.
And then it was gone, like laughter on the wind.
It faded to a gentle breeze on my skin.

Brother, we knew each other.
Though, fathers we never knew, we did what we could to become what we wanted.
Things we didn't say, if time had been kinder, you'd have been a great uncle to my kids one day.

Brother, one day I'll find your smile etched in the grass.
The wind still carrying your laugh across those green fields.
I'll carry you with me wherever I've gone, till I'm gone.

I go to work in the same shoes I wore then, the waterstains haven't faded.
The smell of rain on the dirt of my soles, my soul with the colors of rain and soil.

If I cry, will you still smell the rain?

i don't get so sad anymore, you know.
and sometimes i wish i could go back and do things better,
do things right,
but something in me knows it was supposed to end when it did.

you've changed, anyway.

i don't want to say that you're not the person i once knew,
because i'm sure that deep down, somewhere in there, you are,
but i'm a tired person,
and i lack the energy required
to dig down so deep through skin and bone
trying to find the worn out shards of a memory;
the last pieces of the first person to make me feel so terribly alive.

//

i hope you're happy.
i have always hoped that you would be happy.

but i don't get so sad anymore,
and i don't want to linger on the past.

(still i write poems about you, simply for the sake of writing).

//

every now and again,
i'll think about you,
you and everything and everyone else who shaped me.

and it's hard to believe it's been two years.

and it's hard to believe that i have grown,
but i have,
and the truth is that i don't need you anymore.

//

i don't get so sad anymore, you know.
things have gotten better.
you're gone and you don't care and i sometimes wonder if you ever did, but i'm telling you anyway that things have gotten better because i want to prove to myself that it was right to let you go,
that i needed to let you go to finally be free.

you made me feel alive in a way that tugged at my heart with a surprising aggression,
but i deserve better than that.

(a.m.)