free
/frē/

adjective

1. when this house stops feeling like a brick covered coffin and your words stop clawing at your throat as you are riddled with epiphanies that blister your tongue and make your throat burn because of the awful truth in them. when you can learn how to make the planets move and break the shackles of the glow in the dark stars that don’t even resemble constellations

2. how it feels to have a vine curl around your finger as you lay in a garden of orange carnations and know you have time for it to grow around you. You don’t have to listen for your father’s pickup truck or wait for your mother’s calloused hands and cheap perfume smile

3. the broken glass of your bedroom window as your hand bleeds copper bright enough to attract the neon birds that will take you home. you say that you will always be afraid but your bruised knuckles show that you are willing to be brave despite that fear. God was afraid to make the cosmos too.

you know in early spring
when leopard frogs coat the road
their carcasses making it slick

i wonder if they know that they are going to die
when the rubber tire of their demise comes barreling forward
do they even try to jump away?

i think they do
because i once saw one leap out of death's embrace
when i bike almost squashed it flat

so that means
that they try and survive
their legs strain but they can't move

they're just too cold

i find it an odd analogy for love

read a love story without a happy ending
2. drown yourself in her lavender perfume until you hate the scent
3. play her favorite song on repeat enough times that you change the station when it comes on the radio
4. learn the stars you once danced under and realize that some were dead
5. understand only you can walk away
6. scroll through your camera roll and delete the photos of her you didn't take
7. then delete those too
8. fight against every instinct
9. don't look back
10. say 'i love you' for the last time
11. then say 'i hate you' for the first
12. realize both are true

reasons to let her go:
1.) holding on with break you both until you are nothing but dust on the wind of youth
2.) you can't help her piece herself back together. you are all battered knuckles and cigarettes, answering wrongdoings with screams and blood. you will never have what it takes to make her whole
3.) this love is wrong. keeping is alive will only fuel the fire of her destruction
4.) if you were to jump she might catch you, but then you will have to watch her tumble too
5.) she isn't good. she isn't delicate daisy petals and spun sugar. she is tear stained and nightmare filled. two sinners never made a saint
6.) she can't save you. you can't save her. you will just have to watch the other crumble
7.) you cant build her up. you are proficient in destruction not healing
8.) she has hurt you. left you again and again. answers is cryptic statement and ducks questions
9.) we are children. this will never last. why die chasing a pipe dream?
10.) loving is a foreign concept for your chipped hearts. your warpaint and scars could never be hold the other like they deserve
reasons to hold on:
1.) she thaws your jagged ice and despite yourself you love her. love her despite her sins and you've been told that good things are worth it

There was once a child who believed that heaven would save him
That God would reach out with shining hands and place him in his lap like his own son
That he would love him unconditionally and eternally
Blissfully unaware that heaven has raised him for sacrifice
Cultivated his pain until he was the perfect martyr
Only to become cared about when he's six feet under

There was once a child who believed that heaven could talk to them
That they could hear the whispers of angels in the oak trees and the will of worlds in flower petals
They spoke of sweet kindness and golden gates
Led along with the world to believe in glory and God
Sculpted into a prophet of lies
Only to learn after death the seemingly merciful had deceived them all

There was once a child who believed that heaven owed her
That it had to answer for the target it painted on her back and the weight it had shoved onto her shoulders
They said it was a necessary evil and she was their only hope
She never believed it for a moment
But she still allowed herself to be the messiah for the unworthy
Only if she had ever been qualified for sainthood in the first place

There was once a child who believed that heaven abandoned them
That it had shunned and shoved them away until they was forever an outcast
They left them isolated and alone, latching onto paper promises and prayers
They had burned their crosses and rosary beads
Already the pariah he wanted to leave someone else for once
Only there had never had been a heaven to leave

There was once a child who believed that heaven crashed with the citadels
Holiness shattering like the stained glass windows
They had never listened to heaven
They had seen heaven's plan for them and had opted out
Branded a sinner and a cheat
Only if they didn't already know that hell suited their bloodied knuckles and cigarettes more than heaven ever did

My hands are scarred from knife blades
Knuckles bloodied and bruised
Cigarette smoke clogs my lungs
Indifference coats my heart and I stare at the carnage I've created and smile
Because I met evil when I was only a child
I found it residing in my twisted soul and loved it more than I ever loved you