dear self,

if it ever gets too hard, i want you to cry. cry so hard that your tears will form seas. cry so hard that your wails will echo throughout the mountains. cry, not because you want to be heard but because you want to hear yourself. stop only when you feel empty enough. empty enough that when you look at the mirror, you no longer recognize the face blankly staring back at you. then wipe away the tears, smile and tell yourself, "i was once a painting that has been washed anew. i was painted in dark colors but those no longer matter because from now on, i will be colored in the brightest of the bright."

Hot Springs bubbles
Like acid melting my skin
Deep breathes dissolve away
Any memory of a physical being

I ponder this existence
Brought to a boil, in transience
Like magma, I am liqufied fire
Reaching out as far as I flow

Head first, nostrils flaring air
As it rushes up, I dive deep
The weightlessness of freedom
An expansion robbed in flesh

Narrow eyes surface at
The impending departure
To the land of the living
To the land of rotting

I stand frail as water drips
Down a tired composure
Only wishing to return
To the bed of lava beneath

it felt good to leave the tourists behind
---with their cast-iron grated stairs
and photo-flashing-falls,
question-comments cookie-cut---
embrace the woods:
soaking wet approach,
brinks of shivers in the dripping wind,
an old, broken filter
   slurping bubbles from a cardboard tired puddle;
whisperlite stove finally working,
the first cous-cous dinner warms our little white dog
   dreaming on my rising falling chest
   pressed by sleeping bag and snort and sigh;
we sleep our psoas sore--
unknowing we have just begun...
haven't yet begun!
yet bodied abject pain to shock our senseless raw
   with scoured glimmer-vasts of love beneath
a frozen fly on Frosty Mountain
zippered hail in midnight breath,
i *** in numbness gusts--
i bite my smile ice,
whoop the sleeting world for we are here at last.

I would wake in fright,
Screaming your name.
Daddy!?! Daddy!?!
Where are you?!?
But you never came...
As the years grew,
I called your name less.
Knew you didn't care,
You never did,
And never will.