Hey dad.
I love you 3000.
But you’ll never get the reference.

I internally write down my love, compassion and such
stuff it all into a bottle, and unknowingly push in the cork— no, shove
Later, it washes up on a beach but without the message I put in
but rather angry words, scarring words I had always meant to keep in
The words reach everyone that was never intended to hear them
In fact, I never even intended to breath them
But now that all my anger has been expressed
Saltwater tears are all that’s left.

If time heals all wounds,
why does each day without you
hurt worse than the last?

I hate past tense.
It means that it’s already happened, it’s done, and most of the time it won’t happen again.
Most of all I hate that I’m going to have to learn how to use past tense to describe you.
You deserve to be in present tense.
You deserve to be funny, to be smart, to be passionate.
Instead,
You were funny, you were smart, you were passionate.
So I’m going to keep using present tense to describe the things you did until I can come to terms with past tense.
I do know one thing, though:
You never past-tense ‘loved’ me,
You present-tense ‘love’ me.
And that will never change.

There is a place
Where a man resides
Early to everything
Because early is on time
He may have left soon
But he’s waiting at the gate
At the front of the line
Because on time is late

The gates swing open
And he is admitted
They let him in because
They knew all he did

His passion unmatched,
Rivaled by everyone
He stood up for what he wanted
Never backed down for anyone

He had much pride
For his wife and two daughters
A triathlete, an artist,
And a student with honors

He never ceased to give
Back to his community
Would help a neighbor out
At literally any opportunity

Talk about the funniest guy
You’ve ever met—
I keep thinking the jokes
Can’t get better, yet
In my head he’ll walk right through that door, do his victory dance, laughing, rolling on the floor.
And I know he won’t, but if you think that the last you’ve seen of him was on January 9th, 2019 at 6:18pm then you are sadly mistaken.
If you think he’s done with all of you then you underestimate him.
Because he will be there through thick and thin,
To see all of us lose and win,
To see us fall but still keep kicking.
My father was an orderly man who enjoyed having a schedule and this little set back did not set him back at all.
His New Years resolution was to spend more time with his family and he plans to do just that with all this time on his hands.

There is a place
Where a man resides
Ready to listen to
All our goodbyes
But his trick is
He’s got plans to drop by
Early to the gate
So he’ll be on time.

Waking up with a hangover is said to be one of the worst feelings in the world.
But waking up with a broken heart from the night before is much worse.
Drinking a warm cup of black coffee does not get rid of heartache like it does a headache.

Stop trying to make other people like you.
Because the only people that deserve to be around you are those who liked you before you started trying.
They like you for your raw self, when you weren’t pretending or acting like someone you aren’t.
If you have to pretend for someone, they’re going to fall for the part you’re playing, and not really you.
You can’t keep up your act forever.

When I was 13, I learned what manipulation felt like.
I may not have noticed it,
because I was in too much middle-school-love to see that he loved seeing my jealousy,
loved to trick me,
loved to trip me down the rabbit hole over and over again,
with no end within my scope.
I didn’t even know how to cope,
because it didn’t seem like I was supposed to.
Taking a step back and analyzing is the first step of taking your life back.

If we lived in a world
Where you didn’t age a day until you met your soulmate
I would have gotten my first grey hair
When I met you

I see you
a preview
of a perfect blight
summer nights
with windows down
and I try not to drown
in acid rain
again