The butterflies inside of me have something to say,
        But I can’t let them speak.

They’re strung up in
        Some tangled mess of mesh
And mutter muted melodies
        From behind some scratching,
               Screaming screen
        Knitted from my fibers of fear,
               Or maybe manifested void of muse
                       And licked with the salt of uncertainty.

The butterflies inside of me have something to say,
          But I cut off their wings.

They sputter and swirl and sweep up
         Dusty remnants of chipped paint
                Inside my chest,
         But because I’m empty,
                Barren and dull,
                Cloudy and cold
        And cracked and crazy,
        Their tiny shrillness
        Of struggling wings
                And straining strings
                        Of voice tainted with winter
                Hits me without impact,
                        No pressure in their phrase,
                        No sincerity in their praise,

The butterflies inside of me have something to say
        But their colors aren’t bright enough to read.

Recently, it seems,
I drive my little blue car,
With more miles on its transmission
Than it has left to safely travel,
And I turn my music up loud,

Loud enough to shake the frame
Of my little blue car,
Competing against the wind
That taps my door
In suppressed shivers,
Pushing and pushing,
Trying to run me off the road,

Loud enough to where it is solid,
A single mass of volume and sound
Slithering down my throat
With each raspy breath I pull in,
Like the One-A-Day vitamins
I keep "forgetting" to take,

Loud enough to remind the birds,
The ones that lagged behind
And forgot to fly south this winter
To shoot off the creaking pine branches
Drenched in the sweat of melting snow,

And it's those things,
The pine needles socializing with the whispering wind,
The shimmer of glossy hazard when my headlights reflect off the pavement,
The rust of chain-link fences scrapping into Spring,
These are the things that rationalize the beat of my music
In my little blue car
Speeding along without purpose.

Ernest Hemingway once said:
"Write hard and clear about what hurts",
And I have neither written hard
Nor clear
About the ache eating my heart
Or the ink in my throat,

Because you see,
It was so much more than losing you.

I lost the stars I drew on my ceiling
Above my bed,
Where we had laid in a sea of sheets
And a chasm of pillows,
Because it was both raining and noon
But you wanted to see the stars
So I made them for you.

I lost Gilbert Park,
Where we would sit in the dark of the night
Listening to songs we didn't understand
But ones that made us feel,
And your pale hand clasped mine
As though the rain would sweep our car away.

I lost the family dinners,
All the inside jokes
Between distant relatives
And your brother who always looked up to me
And your little cousin who never could say my name right
But it was so funny that eventually
The entire family began to say it wrong on purpose,
Even years later when he said it correctly.

And I lost the little things too,
Like knowing exactly which floor board
Would squeak in your house,
And how your dad would decorate
The entire lawn for every holiday,
Even for the ones people would forget about otherwise.

And I remember how when we'd walk
Hand in hand,
Our steps would maintain a perfect rhythm,
In sync the entire time

And I lost so much more than words could ever say
And I just want to slam my hands on my keyboard
And wish away the pain
And **** why don't the words pour like they used to,

It's all sticky and my veins feel clotted
With frustration and heat
And the sky has cracked
And my walls are crumbling
And everything is dizzy and it's hard to stand
Because I used you as my crutch
But now I have to remember how to walk alone
In a world where I have to pretend
You don't exist
Because time heals all wounds
But why can't time go any ******* faster?

The burnt out fibers
Of my stretched and stained heart
Have just become taut,

Like sparks behind my eyes
And electricity at my fingers,

The world flickers into place
Like a Polaroid winking into existence,

My breaths may be shallow
But I can breath again,
And though my lungs may be rusty,
The air is clean,
The leaves are crisp,
And Winter may have just begun

But I'm feeling warmer already.

Last week I told you
That I was drowning
Thinking that you'd jump in after me,

But to my surprise,
And by the way you cried, your surprise too,
You held my head under the water,
Just below the inky waves.

It was cold and muddy
And I choked on it too,
My eyes were burning
And my whole body shook
And I grasped for your hair
To try and pull myself up
But you cut it with a quick jagged slash,
And pushed me down deeper.

And soon my eyes began to hollow
And my lungs forgot to struggle
And I swear,
Through the water I saw your velvet lips part
And let out a final thought
Haphazardly tied to a sigh,

Because when I tried to tell you that I still loved you
You just let us drown.

The holes in my lungs,
They peer around like beady eyes
Searching for some glimmer of light,

The air that flowed through them
Used to whistle when I breathed,
But now all they do is creak,

Clotted and dead,
Black and rotting,
I'm drowning from the inside out

You lit a fire in me,
And I know,
That's a really stupid way of saying it,

But nothing compares
To the way that you've melted
The ice that's frozen my insides,

A mushy pink slushie,
Unsure of where I begin
And the frost ends,

And I used to hear it
Every
Single
*******
Day,
Slushing and slurping
And flowing between the bones of my ribcage

Like an ocean of organs
That wanted nothing more than be to warm again,

But now I'm on fire,
And I can feel everything dripping,
Solidifying back into place,

And I swear to god,
Today I felt my heart beat again.

Autumn,
Where the sky dulls
And the grass quivers,

Where the ground stiffens
And the birds abandon their treetop posts
That scratch the sky like brittle fingers,

Where the clouds huddle together
To soak up the distant sun
And the where wind whispers against my skin,

Where the world starts to die,
Life falls back into me,
And the char in my lungs chips away,

And the leaves on the ground
Pad the pavement
With a crunch that breaks the monotony of these dry days,

And I'm home,
In the wake of the color before the white,
The warmth before the decay,

Falling forwards again into a rhythm
Of something old,
But entirely brand new.

Here I am again;
The sky has opened
And I'm ready to see past these cloudy days,

I'm doing this for me,
Just me this time
Because if I don't my feet might get caught again,

And I don't think I can stand drowning anymore.

I just woke up
in the beginning of the evening

And suddenly became aware
that before this moment I was not aware.

And everything I did
and everything I said
I did without control,

And it feels as though today was lie,
this week was a sham,
this year has been false,
and my life is slipping away

Because I feel myself sinking in again
and I feel my fingers drifting away from my mind,
and it's starting again
and oh God please help me
I want to live
I want to live
I want to live


But here I go, down the muddy hole again.

For a moment so quick,
As I passed between the
Shimmer of silky moon
Cutting through the trees
Huddled above,

I felt my heart beat again,
And a wave of fresh blood,
Lively blood that remembered
How to live and how to move
And what it meant to coarse through veins
Flooded my being,

And at the moment in between this moment
That I glimpsed at the warmth of my skin
The shrill winter whisper
Shuffled back in
And told my heart to stop
And reminded it that beating means living
And with living comes death,
And that I have died too many times
To let it beat anymore.

What is good
When everything that seems so right
Feels like it's anything but?

I keep telling myself
I'm happy,

But I can't stop
Catching myself wishing
For something more than stability.

The day the magic goes away,
The day life dulls and
Your eyes forget to see
Vivid laughs of color
Is the day your childhood is over,

The moment you can no longer feel
Something you've never felt before,
Like a warmth inside your head
Or in your chest
Without some form of drug
Or film or book
That brushes off the dust
From things you thought were forgotten,
This is the moment your childhood ends.

But sometimes,
Like love for the first, first time
All over again,
Your soul remembers how to breath
And gasps for a split moment
The air of young
Before the waves of today
Flood into your chest once more,
Drowning,
Drowning,
Little bubbles dancing upward,

One last ray of sunlight
Peaking through the current's whisper,
Swimming softly enough
Just to graze the tip of your nose
Before the black takes over.

I'm a broken bottle,
And I'm holding all my pieces together
Without any glue.

Forest birds
Sing me to sleep
So I can escape this awful nightmare.

And now, it seems,
I'm only here for the stars
And the moon that I hope
Can defrost my aching heart.

I was looking at my fish today
And couldn't help but wonder
"Is he lonely?"

That's silly, of course,
Can fish even get lonely?
Sure, he's swimming in that huge tank,
Back and forth and back and forth
All hours of the day,
Entirely by himself,
His only company the algae hugging
The over sized and over-exaggerated rocks,
But can he be lonely?

Do fish have thoughts?
Does he swim back and forth
And back and forth
Wondering when the glass will tap
And flakes of food
Float down from some gleaming world above,
With nothing but fish-thoughts
Running through his fish brain,
Contemplating his existence:
Why is he here?
As a trophy?
As a center piece to give simple aesthetic to the room?
Is that all he is?
Aesthetic?

When he dies,
What will be remembered of him
Other than being flushed down into the sewers,
And replaced by yet another
Extremely unextraordinary fish?

But still, is he lonely?
Surely, as am I, he must be something,
Because maybe we are both here just for the aesthetic of being alive,
Swimming back and forth
And back and forth
With of fish thoughts
Waiting for nothing more than to be fed.

The frigid sigh of winter
Has all but passed,
But it is the rust behind my eyelids
And the slush in my head
That keeps my window open
And chills me so.

While my body bathed
In the awful waves of
Aching, numbing sand baths,
She reminded me that there's
A whole wide ocean out there,

And I need to worry nothing
When her velvet covered arms
Held my head,
Sang me to sleep,
And let me drift away
To some other day,
Perfectly in between
Never knowing
And knowing she'd make it all okay.

Does the moon look at
Oceans and wonder if they
Sigh at sight with love?

Her house was always
Cold, like someone had broken
A window, and left.

The war in my head
Rages, like: "De-Dun, De-Dun",
And I'm not winning

I can't stop finding
Her amber hair everywhere-
She's been gone years now.

So it's gotten to this point,
     Where I'm refreshing each page
And checking my phone
     Every
          Two
               Minutes
In hope
     Someone,
          Anyone,
Will find me interesting again.

If you were anything other
Than what I thought you were,
You’d be everything ugly.  

Because I looked to you
As if you woke up the sun each morning,
But you only ever blotted it out.

You took some frizzled brush
With its bristles cut ragged
And pointing in all directions

And you painted the sky
Some slimy, green-black shadow
Which reminded me of pond ****,

Or worse yet
It reminded me of the filtration
In my fish tank I never got around to cleaning,

Oozing yellow pus
And clearing any room with its stench,
It was so much like you.

For just like a soaking,
Disgustingly rotten fish tank filter,
You maintained the image of beauty,

You plucked the sickness
And flakes of half eaten food
From the sea of this world

And built it all up inside of you.
So now people gaze
With some sort of admiration in their eyes

At a tank housing a vibrancy
Of life and plants and healthy things
That only exist to brighten the day,

But little do they know
That if you undo this,
And unscrew that,

You’ll pop right open,
Your filthy inner workings exposed,
And taint all the good things around you,

You’ll leak out into the crystal clarity,
Make it hazy and cloudy and
You’ll blind all the fish,

You’ll **** all the fish
If we don’t keep you closed.

The tides of my time
Turned over themselves
Again and again
As the trees of thought
Rotted in the night of my mind,
And I was lost and without
The will to raise my wings,
Blind to the fact
That the sun might rise again,

Only she who wore
Those moonlight eyes
Washed with the blue of the sea
Could sharpen the horizon
And expose its potential
In her milky twilight glow,

For the moon hung lazily
By some rusted hook in the sky
Wavering with a subtle chill
From the quiet wisps of evening wind,

The moon was silent and seeing,
Overlooking the stillness of it all,
Perched atop some invisible stand
Cemented in the stars,
Untouchable by hands
Far from greatness,

Forever strung from the heavens
By some apparatus of fishing line,
The moon listened to my sorrows
And cradled them gently
So as not to damage them,
And let me cry away
The carvings of indecency
I had etched into the loose
Fibers of my being,

She was my moon,
Grandly lit in the ink of my mind,
So desperately trying to light her own,
And she called me her angel
Whose feathers were always ruffled,
Soaked wet with the weight of our dusks,
But it seemed to me
Her brilliance never flickered or dimmed,
Never blurred or shrugged
Until the day she sighed,
And rolled her eyes
And cut my wings away.

I'll sit here,
Encased in the night
Before the sun of my screen,
And look over my shoulder
Every now and again
Because I can't stop now,

I'll write another
******* love poem
Like it means something to me
Like these words spilling
Like broken glasses
Soaking this mangle of a poem
Can actually say anything about how I feel.

I could absolutely alliterate
And methodically metaphor
Like a truck stuck in mud
But you see
That's all I'll ever be,
Just stuck in this muddled mind of mine,

Grasping at the ghost of us
That does not exist in any
Tangible reality,
And so I'll write another
******* love poem,
And someone will swoon
And clap their hands together
And tell me how lucky you are
To have someone like me,

When in the scheme of things,
It's not how I feel.

It's not even close to how I feel
Because how I feel
Cannot be articulated through some
Random array of 26 letters,
26 effortless, meaningless symbols
Slapped together without caution,
Stitched together with some form
Of a string of tears I cannot cry
Because the real me is trapped inside you see,

He's trapped up there,
Locked in a rusty cage with
Nothing to read
And nothing to sing
And nothing lovely to smell
When that rotted core of a sun
Beams over whatever fleshy horizon
Exists up there,
You see I'm not sure how to say it
Without making this some
God forsaken love poem
That's just like all the others,

But I'm trapped up here,
And only you
Give me hope
That I'll ever get down in one thinking piece.

There is a man
I notice sometimes
From classroom windows
Across the school
Who rides a raging
Metallic beast
With a razor reach
And craving for cuts
Of grass that never stops growing,

He’s soaked in a midday sun
Peeking around a sea in the sky
Dotted with whispers of white,
And drenched in his thoughts
As the hum of the engine
Shrugs off the blurred haze
Of traffic close by,

And he ponders:
“Does this grass feel pain?”
As his blade sweeps away
The shagged green fingers,
For sometimes among
The clean straights he trims
And behind the static of
Mindless television too late at night
He imagines the grass
Sprung from the ground
To be himself,
Lost among a crowd,
Nothing more than a hint of color
In some dizzying hue,
A hair on the Earth
No one would care to lose,

And while he sighs
Once every week or so
And shifts into gear
The lawn to be turned slick
And shiny,
Well kept
By some unsung hero,
The subtle acknowledgements
Chime in hushed admiration
To his unhearing ears.

The lilac
Is the flower of first love,

And while you sleep in my arms
Someone else holds

My bouquet of lilacs.

A dash of dust
Unwilling to settle
Coats the pink insides
Of my lungs
As the butterflies
In my stomach
Scream,
They want to get out and I don't know how to let them out anymore
Because I threw away the key
Thinking it was tarnished and needed polishing
But really the only thing
That could polish a rusty key
Is to keep it in the door,
The door I so foolish locked
And slammed shut
Without so much as saying goodbye.

And now here I sit,
Dazed and confused
By the flash of my fingers
No longer taunted by inhibitions,
Trying to scream the butterflies cries,
For their wings so same
Are cutting me up on the inside
Like no butterflies before.

The whisper of autumn
Creeps beneath an open window,
Contrasting heavily to the warmth
Of a secluded soul taught
By willow tree fingers
Scraping against the mirror
Of a lake frozen over
And memories accidentally mixed
With too much desire
And not enough output
That the cold should not be feared,
For perhaps sometimes
The most distasteful sensations
Are the ones that remind us
That we are still breathing them in,
Alive and well enough
To reside in our own skin.

Unsettling thoughts
Raise and swim much like
Misappropriated sand with
An anchor running through it
That never quite catches,
Despite the various mounds
Of sand and rock
Chiseled into the Earth
Using all its good form
And time that couldn't have been
Wasted anywhere better.

The way she sat
Perfectly poised
Against the breeze
Of the world
And the tears of it
Melted my mind
And  made the hairs stand up
All over my arms.

While she may not be perfect,
She glows in all her attempts.

She had a glow
That illuminated the
Shadow of the sun
That was put out with
A misplaced scalpel
Across her beating neck,
And the gas that
Put her to sleep
Held her down,
Hugged her tight
As she choked,
And woke up
In a place so dark.

The girl whose hair
Hung strung from
The crooked inner workings
Of her geared mind
Dusty, rusted, and unkempt
Against her most eager desires,
Bathed in the waves
Of the oblivion that surrounds us
During this night she absorbed
Into the fibers that nestle
Into the strings of her shirt,
Singing against the gentle flow
Of an evening breeze
Much cooler than that
Of one plagued by the day's sun,
And while the fire
Has been extinguished
And its flames dancing in licks
Have laid to sleep,
The moon has kissed her,
And she portrays the wisdom
She locks away behind a steel box,
Chained and covered with padlocks,
A glow never dim seeping
From beneath the lid.

The truth is, I’m not really sure who I am.  She told us to draw ourselves and then to draw our souls; so I drew my face scratched and uneven, just as I’ve always seen it, and frowned at the result both in the mirror and on the paper.  The only soul I’ve ever really known was the one that shone through the strokes of the keys I punched, the scrawling of ink on paper in mismatched arrays of awkward thoughts, disorientated and unorganized, shaded different spews of emotion and rearranged through the lens of ever last viewer’s eye.  Even so, this soul that is composed of words that defined me painted a picture vivid in its contrast, though blurry from both afar and close enough to squint, no details able to be made out.  These words that have wrapped around my soul rubbed raw from the time my skin first flinched at the cool March air cannot be deciphered by their author, though I know somehow that their letters flowing into one another say more than any curve of my face ever could.  These words are black and white, two extremes crafted in the pallet of the Universe’s toolshed, and perhaps that’s exactly what I am.  Black or white.  I’m dark and lost and scrounging for some rusting wall or tree branch to cling to as to ensure the shimmering waves, onyx and charcoal in their nature with the flow of blood in its spine, do not flood into my mouth at a rate in which is too quick to balance myself upon them, or, I’m white, drifting snow from a cloud scraping the vast expanse of brilliant blue gazing as a sky above all the world, pure, innocent, unscathed with the potential for creation in vibrancies yet unknown, or to be ripped to bits, scattered amongst piles of cream and autumn leaves drained of their color beneath months of shivering frost.  And so, perhaps any physical representation of my being would be all wrong, because that’s not what I am.  Myself, my soul, it resides in the murky depths of heights I’ve yet to discover, tethered endlessly and uncertain among the caverns of my inners, pink and mushy, stirred and ******, untouched from the harsh light of a world encased in brevity.

She is a black spot
Much like ink on a white
Sofa, a mark of insanity,
A truth that smears

More and more at every glance.

She felt herself
Maudlin and a
A stitching that
Too often came
Undone,

But she what
She could not see
Beyond her angel wings
Was the light she made
While sunken in her grave

Surrounded by a ink
That spread through her
Veins and poisoned
Her brain and tinted
Whatever fluid
Sloshed about
In her eyes piercing green
On some days,
Hazel brown on others,

Enveloped in darkness,
Shaded by trees,
The leaves sung for her
And the grass danced,
But she felt wrong
In her own skin
And tried to cut it off.

I cannot help
But to cling
To the memories
Where I once was
Beautiful,

Reduced now
To cold food
In a cracking bowl,
Shivering
Without a blanket,

And typing
Into a text box
I secretly hope
Will delete
This awful thought.

All the while, as I stare up and think and attempt to make something of the thoughts swimming in my head like fish who cannot see, and the mouth of the everything full of so much nothing that surrounds me spews back not a single hint, you, the girl whose hair is licked a charred brown from the crackling fire of passion swirling from your inners, you, the love of my life, all that may have been past and all after ones too, you are the anchor of my imagination, the stone to hold down my wonder, and keep it from floating off into the vastness of the loneliness that consumes everything that is not here, in your arms, against the soft breeze of your touch, and then I know that everything is well, and all the unspoken beauties of the Universe only mean for me to wrap around you in way of mind and soul and body and laughs we share beside a city without lights, five stories above the world and soaring ever higher.

The fields were
Drenched in the
Silent static
That shimmered hesitantly
From a brew of clouds
Huddled up high.

A rope tied
Me to her
While everyone
Else pretended
To sway,
Connected with
Dotted lines.

The house was flat,
But filled with
Shivering candles
Licking away the dark
That lingered like
Broken lovers
Kicking dented cans
Down the foggy road
Beneath an October moon

So warm in its
Lovely illusion.

Amongst the stretches
Of chiseled sidewalk
Stuck with gum and bullet holes,

Waves of black water
Spilled over grass
Dangling in the pull
Of the moon's smirk.

Strung from strands
Of yarn not yet dyed
Hung a bench of sticks
And thorns and buds
With the potential to be
Pretty,

And with shoes cuffing
The ankles of skin
Pale as the shallow murk
Of the wavering sky,
Swinging with the steady
Beat of the croaks
And raspy whispers from
A hat covered head,

A splash of water,
Cool with the gentle peace
Of the final page
Of a book unwritten,
But open to any reader
Who dare choke on the waves themselves.

Maybe,
It’s not about finding
The light at the end of the tunnel,
Maybe,
The tunnel doesn’t even
End, and the light isn’t
The warm glow of a
Sun so high above,
But the dim illumination
From a floodlight, dusty,
And draped with cobwebs,
And maybe,
The floodlight isn’t there,
It’s shattered and its pieces
Bury into the skin of your
Bare feet as you step on them,
And continue to trek forward in
Darkness, towards the next light.
Maybe,
That’s a good thing.
You’re in a tunnel after all,
You can’t drown in blackness as
Easily as you can the sea.
Maybe,
The extra darkness
Makes the next floodlight
Brighter, and you’ll
Stop, and bathe in it a
While as your aching lings
Finally rest.
Maybe,
If you’re brave,
You’ll think you can
Live under the light,
Unaware that you’ll
Lose your knowledge
Of the darkness,
And when your light
Finally coughs,
And shudders
And dies,
You’ll get lost in the dark again,
Turned around,
Heading away from the new lights ahead.
Or maybe,
You prefer the shadows,
Carry a bat,
Or a golf club,
Or whatever blunt weapon
Catches your fancy,
And you smash each light
You pass,
Cutting the feet of all those
Behind.

Maybe,
There isn't a light at the end of the tunnel,
Just an endless string of floodlights,
Bright,
Shattered,
And lost.

And I sit here once more,
Sun beginning to fade over the makeshift
Horizon of wooden plank fences and shingle
Roofs, glued to the homes with tar whose
Invading smell has long since passed.
On the shore I sit, a shore made of
Overgrown weeds whose leaves look no different
From the eruption of water that juts out
Of the center of the lake,
The ripples seeming to roll over themselves,
As if they are trampling over each other to
Reach me, and looking away from the metallic
Distraction in the center of this pool of wonders,
It's as if a river is to be flowing in place of the lake,
Lapping across rocks and echoing splash of ducks and
Geese dismounting their current of air,
Swiftly gliding along the filmy surface,
Like a mirror smeared with lubricant,
For the reflections this lake cast cannot
Easily be told apart.
Dark beckons the lights' full departure,
And with it the warm is swept solemnly from
The land, and my bare hands burn like the
Approaching summer's heat.
I thankfully clutch my leather coat against
Myself, and I gaze upon the lake, wishing
Its limited stretch could  further.
As I trace my eyes across its
Waves, a young woman in a pink sweat
Coughs roughly and spits in the water,
As if it's beauty must be destroyed along
With that miserable soul of hers.
The willow tree I sit under,
Oh how massive it seems, its coarse bark
Digging through my jacket and on the verge
Of penitrating my skin, but, it is worth it.
Its vines hang down wearily,
Like an old man, reaching to grasp the
Water, leaning so close, its reflection can
Be seen from shore, and its desperate vines,
Swaying in the wind ask me to come closer.
I shall not, of course, for it needs to
Grow on its own, and needs to rid of
Its reluctance if it ever wishes to achieve
Its reward.

This, somewhat reminds me of myself,
But, this is only yet another wonder,
Collection of thoughts,

From under the willow tree.

Breath in,


Remind yourself that you are human.
You make mistakes.
You hurt people.
You will never be perfect.

Breath out,

Remember everyone is human.
We'll make mistakes.
We'll hurt each other.
We'll never be perfect.

11:11
He wished for her to be okay,
Her head buried in his shoulder,
Shaking them both with sobs that
Bounced off the walls and screamed
That he was doing it all wrong.

11:11
He wished for everyone to be okay,
His inbox filled with letters that
Formed words that told the stories
Of how no one was really ever okay, and
How he was doing it all wrong.

11:11
He wished for her to come back,
His eyes burning with the regret of
Not telling her how much he'd miss her, the sharp
Wind on this cheek as he stared at her grave
Reminded him on how he had done it all wrong.

11:11
He wished that he'd be okay,
Sudden realization that wishes are
Only that, the hollow hope like
The gorges in his skin to remind him
How he did everything wrong.

11:11
He hoped there wasn't nothing
After leaving this world of fake
Wishes, and lay his head in his pool of blood
On the bathroom floor, one last slit across his throat,
And he wished he didn't get this wrong.

I loved her
     In lots of little ways,

Like the way she paused
     A moment before looking up
When her name was called,

The way she could stare at you,
     Face as blank as a stone cold slate,
Until a hidden smirk creeped from nowhere.

Like the way her hair
Fell over her shoulders like
The Universe tossed a bit too much
     Eloquence into a creature with
Never enough awareness to realize it,

Like the way we bonded
Over rain and the night
     And concrete and gum
Stamped flat to busy sidewalks,

But she reminded me of flowers
And Christmas lights
     And bad hot chocolate tethered
To the memory of a withering town,

Because they were beautiful
     Just like her.