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A friend asked me
how to be a writer.
I wanted to say,
lock yourself in a room,
scream until you have
a poem and no voice.
Open your veins and bleed
until you know that your bones
are pure words and sorrow.
Act as if you slit your own throat
and all you can bleed
are your own regrets
and all of the darkness
you boxed up for inspiration.
Write your mom a letter,
tell her you're leaving
and you won't be back for awhile
Because being a writer is traveling
through all seven layers of Hell
and denying anything is wrong.
Forget loving yourself
when all you have is a pen and paper
fused to your wrist
and Jesus is tapping at your skull
saying turn back now.
Warn the neighbors that if they smell burning
It's just your soul
clawing at the front door trying to get in.
Learn how to be alone.
Learn how to lose everything you have
in order to feel release,
learn how to only feel deceased
from now on.
A friend asked me
how to be a writer.
All I said was
don't
On that dark road, I met you.
That pale green hill flowing upwards
Your awkward walk swaying back and forth
and that high interesting voice bursting through the silence.
While everything in this world might be dim, I saw color.
Our shared art and our life.
I remember those long walks home and the bike rides from there and back
Those hot summer days
when the water came off both of us from that deep pool in my apartment complex.
I remember fall leaves on your trampoline. The springy stage for our practice of theatre.
But now its all gone.

I never realized how much I needed you till then
The world didn't seem the same, it turned pale again.
It was gray and frightening
I felt alone
It hurt
it stung like a deep pain in my chest
No one helped, everyone noticed.
That's what killed me.

Only months later did I see color in the world again.
Other were around me as you sat with our shared "friends."
I was solitary and alone but then I had someone
Not just someone, now I had my closest friends
They were filled with color and love. Slowly they filled that hole.

This is an ode to you...for teaching me to move on.

— The End —