Sun beam, set upon your skin and balancing on the edge of your smile.

You're a sun beam. We've gone so many new places together, I've seen things I've always wanted to,
Held hands in moments I never thought I'd live.
Youve brought light to midnight walks in the stars. Made stars luminous.

You're courage, coursing through me.
You are lightning in my lungs when I need to be louder,
Thunder in my heart when my body can't move faster,
Each new adventure winds itself through mountain paths and forest trails,
Stepping over the limbs of giant oaks, lifting us up to the sun so that you might become radiance at the tree peaks.

Noni,
We may not spend every moment touching wingtips with cloud bursts.
We can't afford to take vacations every few months,
It'll be a long time before we get to start traveling the world together.

Yet somehow you've taken me so many places.
Let lips act as a full gas tank and taken me over the moon on just one breath.

You've made mountains crumble back into the molehills I made them out of.

I've seen the ridge above the clouds, the sun breaking down to reveal itself to the earth.
Ive seen lightning strike the mountain side and fire in the forest.
I've made runs down green flowing hills, grass moving like ocean waves with the cool rolling winds.

I've done all this from my bed, each trip a moment I'm stuck by your side
Giving kisses to the skin on your stomach,
Raising little hairs on your forearm as our hands slide past each other.

I've never known paradise, but I've known an oasis with you.

You're a Sunbeam, and in my tiny shriveled patch of dirt, you're the rain.

Here you've planted yourself and grown in me.
You're the new places I want to go, and the new places I'll never be.

Youve seen all the versions of me and somehow shine light on the best parts of each…

Sun beam, set upon my skin and the reason behind every one of my smiles.

Happy anniversary. It hasn't been the easiest 3 years...but the best part about you is that you didn't want easy. You wanted love. And you've taught me how stubborn you have to be to love someone with all your heart. To love someone so much that looking at them makes you feel brand new. Blessed. Lighter and faster and stronger and brave.

Happy anniversary. To my one and only. To the one I'll be stubborn for,
To the one I'll fall over for,
To the one I'll be here for.

I love you. My sun beam. My silly goose. My baby girl.

I love you, and there's no way I'll let another year pass without you by my side. Without you in my life.

For a long time I was very scared to write about my emotions. For even longer than that, I've been very scared of writing about emotional experiences. I mean, I wrote about them, but I put them in the context.

I let a metaphoric poem tell the world about molestation or depression. I danced around the fire as it burned me, hoping my wild movements might appease some higher god into letting me forget myself.

I'm not condemning anyone who finds strength in this form of poetry, I just wasnt doing it for that reason. For me, metaphor was an escape not a release. I looked around at the pages laid before me and found only stepping stones into memories I'd have rather forgotten. Playing hopscotch on the fingers of child molesters.

When I was very young, I was woken in the middle of the night by a stranger's hands down my pants. He whispered I'd be okay as I tried to push him away until I finally got up and left the room. My cousin sat on the couch to the side of me. As I walked away he proceeded to touch her too. It was probably around 3 in the morning. My family, or the ones who could stay awake, were drinking heavily and talking loudly about things I didn't understand. I sat in a stairwell hidden from them. Close enough for them to hear me breathing. And I couldn't muster the courage to tell them what had happened. What was happening just downstairs to my cousin of the same age.

For a long time I tried to make people laugh. Because I was too sad to know why and I didn't know how to show it. I moved my fingers across the fine lines on people's faces and scrunched my nose at them. I hated them for being what I wanted. For laughing like I wished I could.

I let laughter find me a path to peoples happiness hoping it would come to me. But it never did. I lost myself in being a person I never wanted to be and I did it because I thought contentment was in someone else.

When I was a little boy my mom was dating a man named Danny. I'm sure by now I've blocked out every memory of this man except the one that lives with me. A memory torn in two because I see my sister and my mom. My sister a mirror image of myself, wrapped in duct tape from head to toe like a mummy. Nose and mouth too. Danny's handiwork. Were both shouting through silver tape, and trying to let someone know that our air is finite and our lungs are small. My mom finally tells Danny to stop. Not concerned so much as annoyed.

For a long time I tried to **** myself. I walked a razor line tying together old bits of my skin and dragging them behind me. Sewing the solid chunks of plain happiness to the rotting vibrant gangrene of my depressed parts. Hoping I could heal all the decomposed skin with a little bit of happy motivation.

I let other people remind me of who I was. Forgetting all the time and being reminded again and again so I could try to be someone new. Someone only they could see.

When I was a teenager, my dad and stepmom came up with a system for helping me lose weight. At any chance they'd get, they would make small remarks or comments about how my weight affected me daily. From how far down the car drops when I step in it, to my girlfriend's must be cheating on me cause why me. I didn't realize this was supposed to be for help. So I began to see myself as who I was and to this day I can't see my girlfriend walking down the street near another person without wondering if they are together because I'm a fat slob. I can't get in a car without wondering if anyone's noticed how much its moved because I've stepped in. At this point, I'm just hoping for the heart attack.

For a long time. I was only the pieces of myself I let other people see. I was a mirror that caught every Whisper and disgusted glance and fell apart whenever I actually saw myself. I couldn't be me. But this mirror is broken and cracked, all the chips replaced with parts from different mirrors.

I let that mirror shatter recently. And it's scary trying to decide who I am. In a world full of people holding up mirrors.

I just want to be cut on the mouth

Color crimson my words as they slither from me

I only really want to go away

Every day the sun shines brighter as I open my eyes wider and start to breath deeper. The sun starts to rise and like Superman in the midst of death, raises his glass to the shimmer of the valiant sunlight and is invincible yet again.
I feel the death peeling itself from my body and I'm ready now to travel.

The bones shiver restless notes from xylophone keys that keep me running to an unheard harmony in the grace of the bluest wind. Something is carried on the feathers of the geese and its the blood of the wicked innocent. I don't run with them because of the migration. I don't run with them at all.

I've felt the blood drop like rain from their wings as they pass and they've left the trail wide and open. If destiny dripped dismal disappointment on you, would you follow it?  No. But it's destiny, and if it leaves in the hands of bandits and marauders then perhaps a bullet hole is my destiny.

A bullet hole big enough to stuff back the tyranny of a fallen harp and all the sorrow of its broken chords. Ill take it, Destiny.

Destiny like a cruel caw from the crow. I'm here,
Elate me with your dreary melody!

I'm not running from the satin blood red,
Not anymore.

I'm running towards the weeping needy,
I'm running towards the ***** and dead,

If destiny cried havoc,
Then I'm running to let slip the dogs of war.

I've lost time counting headlights and lamplights and streetlights and stars. I've literally lost time. Each day I wake up, and watch the evening drift by in a sunset, I fall asleep and watch the moonlight sail away on a sunrise.


It was an empty promise, these lights all around. It was an empty promise, that buzzed with the current a few thousand volts. Lights...pale and broken bulbs bleeding gasses and lies. But I guess in the dishonesty of some idea so pure, I found the dream that Teslas lightning tipped fingers yearned for,


A quest of solid gold that conducted an orchestra of thunder. And so lights couldn't be a lie anymore,


They could only be a dream, a dream never fully realized so long as the frozen dead fingers of liars past held their grip. Edisons overgrown yellow tinged finger nails, piercing through the veil of misty electric sparks,


Yet here i am


The light bulb is over MY head now! And my brainstorm is an F4 hurricane, my bolts like guillotines for your greedy fingers!


Because this is the generation of new light, of new thunder and new mayhem.
Of illumination!


A new generation carrying torches, casting out our light bulbs and our lamp posts. Forcing fire into Mason jars and using flames like they were new again.


No no no
…
Not Mason jars. Pull those ******* light bulbs from the headlights and lamplights and streetlights, fill those ******* with gunpowder and unstable explosive mixtures and make stars, *******!


Make flames that burn brighter than Edison's unholy lies, that tear down the dome and bring the skies falling!


Watch everything we've built, watch corruption and lies and racism and false superiority come hissing out of the cracks, trying to save themselves from the building pressure,


Trying to claw their red boney fingers from the fire but they can't. Because they are the fire,


And we will all watch as they burn like they always wanted to. Their voices shining past all of the glory their burning visage may grant, their bodies becoming one with the chaos that is our country.


And then we will have nothing left but ashes. No more eagles. Only the right and left wings of a Phoenix,


Risen from our ash and tears, flying into the sky to become the sun...To shine like nothing ever seen by our eyes so used to a false light.


Because it's time we became the sun. It's time we chose a real light to follow, not a halogen tube spewing gas over sickly bodies. No more light bulbs to only last a few weeks. Were tired of artificial light...Tired of breathing oxygen made in a lab…


Maybe it's because we've lost so much time under buzzing broken bulbs, under boot heels and tyrannical ideation. We've lost so much time staring into TV lights and camera flashes that we've only been able to wait for someone real to step into frame...


We've lost so much time counting headlights and lamplights and streetlights and stars. Counting the minutes till a new hero appears...I'm ready to be the light.