Maybe I will have a drink at a party with my friends,
And yeah, we’ll probably talk about how it was never going to work anyway.
We’ll laugh, and we’ll dance, pretending we’re fools,
And maybe someone asks to buy me a drink.

Time will freeze.
My smile will falter, just barely,
Feeling the ache before the butterflies,
Because moving on never really means forgetting,
                   Does it?

You say my grades don’t matter.
You say, “I love you no matter what.”
Then why am I invisible?
Why do they only see the red numbers on my sheet?

You ask me, “Is everything fine?”
What do you expect me to say —
that I’m f**d up?
That I dream about leaving?
That I keep a blade in my front pocket?

You say I don’t share,
but you don’t pay attention.
I play the piano till my fingers bleed,
I scream songs that reflect me,
I even talked to you.

Maybe it’s because you liked me,
never loved me.
Maybe I’m so flawed I can’t see,
or maybe it’s both.
Maybe we’re both flawed —
we’re only human.

a cat, they say
both dead and alive, in a sway
trapped in the box
become a metaphysical paradox

a flask of death, a trigger tick
a game of chance, so cold, so sick
they call me life, they call me death
but no one asks to hear my breath

a man, I say
become the halfway
let his atoms hum and twitch
become the theorist’s broken glitch

see how you like the in-between
will you then be so keen
maybe then you’ll see the cost,
see the life lost

seal the box, install the locks
put a man in that box

Lips together, pressed,
as if you were the one dead,
"Wake up"-your only prayer,
but death doesn't care.
Now you can only choke,
on words you never spoke.

I want to believe in steady things,
but even my own reflection changes
when I look too long.
Are you here?
Do you love me?
Will you stay?
I ask without asking,
watching for the answer
in the way your hands move,
the way your breath hesitates before a word.

I know I feel too much,
ask too much,
but the silence between us is louder
than anything I could say.
So I fill it.
With words, with fear, with love—
all spilling over,
all too much,
all at once.

And still, I wonder, if it’s enough.

I don't know what to call You.
"Father," which should denote familiarity,
seems a foreign word to me.

In the end, it can all
be explained, and none
of it can be explained.

Tomorrow will exist,
of course, but by
then it will be today.

Language becomes
a long gurgle and
a quick sputter, and

as expected, by those
still paying attention,
it is irrevocably broken.

Tomorrow is
nebulous at best.
A dream of one
who still sleeps.
You are alive now.
Awake in this fresh
green world.
In the planning, we
forget to live.

Ask the mice and men
how plans go.
There are traps and
trivialities that keep
you from carrying on.
Funny things happen on
the way to the bank.
My mom died while
grocery shopping.

Today, peers back at
you from the mirror.
Breath and heartbeat.
Desire and passion.
No one survives this
story.
You're the author and the
protagonist, write it
well.