To tell someone you love them,
You must first gather the words.
You must search through the weeds in your brain,
Until you find just a few flowers,
That are the right colors to fit your sentiments.
Once you have plucked the love stained roses,
You must shave off the thorns that remain attached,
Standing as barriers between your words,
And the soft flesh of their ears.
By the time you have arranged this bouquet of a phrase,
Into and order that is lovely enough to give,
You will be forced to notice that you are bleeding.
And now, you might turn around to search for a bandage,
Realizing that you have given yourself all the care that you can.
Now, you will fear that the blood on your flowers has poisoned them,
And made them unworthy of offering.
But before you have time to realize,
Your heart has taken control in an attempt to keep pumping,
And spatter the floral crime scene into midair.
You will sit and stare at the evidence of your frailty,
When you see a garden blossoming before you.
And the petals will fall from their lips, as they open their mouths
To swallow the words you have bestowed upon them.
And the next time their mouth opens,
Out will pour violets that are colored with bruises.
You will taste the richness of purple as the scent of springtime shows you
The seeds of your words growing into a world
That was well worth the Briar ******.
Somehow, you will find in your garden,
Lilies and Sunflowers,
Tulips and Hydrangeas,
And some you had no way of knowing.
And then you will realize,
That you alone could make Roses,
And they alone, Violets,
But as your stems intertwined,
You made something that goes beyond
Gardens
Or Forests.
You created a season that
Goes beyond Springtime.
Your meager rosebloods
Have flowered into
A New world,
The only world,
Where the harvest is fuller with every kiss,
And sweeter with every caress.
This world will call for care,
And be in need of upkeep,
But you will always find more seeds to plant,
And more room to grow.
Because although this world has
Been watered with Blood
and Planted with bruises,
It will grow far beyond damage,
and fill you with the spirit of the very first rose,
And remind you,
What each petal meant.

Thank you for validating
the debilitating fear
I had of losing you.

At least I know I'm not crazy.

Or at least I know I wasn't.

Yesterday was your birthday

All day, my hands weighed me down

With the itch to text you to wish you a good day
With the need to grip a steering wheel, navigating me to your house
With the idleness feeling sinful as I wasn’t baking you confetti cake
With the feeling of being misplaced against anything that wasn’t your skin

To keep my hands busy I piled memory into a grinder
And
Ground
Ground
Ground

Turned the parts as if I was winding up a music box
Because this sound was full
In comparison to
The pit of my stomach that was still waiting to
Share your birthday cupcakes with you

When the flashbacks filtered into my brain
The high was pulled lower still
By the weight of my hands
So that all I could do was cross them
And pray a prayer worth all of the birthday gifts I’ve ever given

“Please, God, on this day make him forget himself.

Please, God, let him find a sweet tooth for things other than the melancholic poison he puts in his coffee

Please, God, let him not remember the time when he broke open too wide and let me slip out of him

Please, God, allow him to feel something, on this birthday, even if it’s just his birthday candle blisters

Please, God, give him his heart back, as it is buried in the past that I was never gifted to know

Please, God, let me not weigh him down with a guilt seed that would root him to a chapter in his life that he wishes he could rewrite

Please, God, let me stop dreaming of him.
I know what it means when I dream of someone.
I know it’s your way of wordlessly telling me I’m being thought of.
Do not let him think of me.


Please, God, fill the parts of him that his worker’s hands have carved out of himself so cleanly.

Visit the wounds that sit in his posture
Will his veins to carry his soul back to his heart

Remind him that his sadness is his own special brew
That he continues to sip at his leisure

Help him understand that feeling lonely
Comes from his own brain that remembers isolation better than love

Please, God, give him
A better year.
A good year.
A year when his time won’t be stolen by someone so insignificant
That he has to translate her words into the language of gibberish,
Until they mean nothing at all anymore.

Please, let him find someone.
Please, let that person captivate him.
Please, let that person know him.
Please, let that person sit in bed with him and feel their good fortune in their bones.
Please, let that person see the moon in his fingertips and realize that they can control the tides, if he wants them too.
Please, let him smile at this person, in ways that would be ugly in pictures, but beautiful in my memory.

Please, God, let that person be HIM.

Please, God, if you won’t cut the ribbon to the start of his new life, at least give him the scissors.

He will say “No, Thank you.”
He will say he does not need your help, because he knows the power of his paint brush,
and that he is too busy washing color out of his brushes to take hold of the harsh metal,
And then he will make confetti of your offer.
He will shred every pleasant thought that comes his way.
He will cut himself open and gaze at every beautiful thing, insisting he sees the wonder.
He will not see the wonder.
He will say he understands the things that live inside himself.
But he will turn their volume down
And tune deeply into the metallic music of sorrowful hollowness
He will go to extreme efforts to ignore the starting line that sits just outside of his comfort zone.

But, God, Please,
Send the trees to trip him
Make the animals chase him
Let him
Throw tantrums that are disguised as the silent treatment

But wrap him up in his ribbon, so that the only way he can move
Is forward.
Remind him that the scissors are always in his hand,
And he needs to learn that
They need not destroy.

Make the clouds rain on his new life,
And remind him that he has a knack for watercolors.

Lure him with oils
Guide him with spraypaint

This Year, show him the paint that
Will reteach color to him.

This year, let him understand that colors are bright,
But not the enemy.

Let him not fear red from the times that he bled,
Let him not cast away yellow, because the sun got in his eyes,
Let him not hate blue, because he almost drowned.

Build in him a reservoir for happiness, that could sustain him through this life that has already been too tragic.

God, on his birthday, please indulge these heavy hands so that they may not cross the fingers for his return,

Because God, it was not I who was born today,
And it was not me who was stiffed on birthday cake.

And though this prayer is selfish,
It is the only thing I can give him,
That he cannot refuse.”

And as I looked down to see my clasped hands, I couldn’t help remember
When one of them was yours.

And for my final birthday wish to you ,
I hoped that only your sleep
Could be relieved of the white knuckle tensions of restlessness

So that you may sleep, and know the peace that I felt,
When I slept next to you.



Happy Birthday,
I miss you.
Happy Birthday,
I’m sorry.
Happy Birthday,
This is selfish,
But Happy Birthday,
So were you.

Don't worry about making excuses,
I've already done it for you.

I hate the taste of American Spirits
But my lips crave the taste of you.

I started smoking when you left me
Swore I would stop when it stopped hurting
2 Years Later,
I inhale
as I realize the only thing that stopped hurting
is the burn in my lungs.

I know you loved me because
You taught me the solace in solitude
Acting as a protector from
The parts of you that were
Waiting under your skin
To leave me broken