When I was growing up in South Carolina, I had this friend who had immigrated from Ecuador when he was young. He was a pretty great kid, funny, large personality, intuitive. We use to play under the sun, and make bugs out of gummy candies, with that machine you'd seen in commercials. It was green, and blue, to help distinguish that it was for boys.  A few years later, I moved away. Same old story, parents got divorced, etc, etc.

In our next town in North Carolina, I had met this girl named Taylor. She was friendly, and I was impressionable. I was the new kid at school and she was friendly. Obviously we bonded. Taylor and I never hung out after school. Something about how my mom's boyfriend smelled like cigarettes and his van looked unsafe. I liked it because the only seat was the front seat. I never paid attention to the fact that other kids were laughing behind me when Taylor talked to me. We were friends. I was playing on the playground one day,  when she got my attention. From behind me, a tennis ball smacked my spine, sent me crippling. Everyone laughed. Including Taylor. I never understood why she high-fived the guy for doing it, or why we never spoke after that. I also picked up a nickname. "F*ggot"

2006, we moved to Maine. Windham, specifically. Another new kid. I actually fit in this time. The nickname stayed in the rear-view with the south. I met two guys that I got kind of close with. Nate, and Tyler. we did a lot together during the day. I never ended up seeing them much after school, but I didn't see the value in that. We were so cool together. I saw them the other day, and there was no attempt in their brain to recognize me. I was forgotten.

I moved again, this time to Naples. We'd move again to Bridgton, yet staying in the school system for my sister. She didn't want to start over again. It's easy to start over, so I dismissed her worries. Until the nickname came back. For two years I wore a imaginary sticker on my chest, that most every other male older than myself called me by. It had something to do with the fact that I liked to write, and use a microphone. I didn't get it.

The friends I made here, I thought we'd be together until we died. We still talk. We laugh. Tag each other on Facebook, and send dumb selfies on Snapchat, but I've lost every one that I can talk to.

I use to be able to stay up late, look at the stars, talk to someone. Like a scene from some teen drama. Drinking whatever we could get our hands on, and laughing about how dumb we were.

The drinking never stopped. There's no more laughing. It's mostly a game I play with myself to help me sleep. There's something to be said for being alone. I've become wiser. Less selfish, yet more self fulfilling. I know what I like, which is also my greatest downfall. I've pushed away most everyone that I've been close to since.

There is no moral to the story. There is no story. There is only a dim  lamp with a broken ***, a bottle cap on the floor, and silence looming in the air so heavy.

With a knife in his heart
He looks into the mirror to reflect on his own pain
His palm heavy
Grasping the handle
Twists it with the force of a thousand goodbyes
He leaves behind the person who gave him the blade
Wanting nothing more than to remember how it all went wrong

Inhale

Try to remember what you were doing before you had to remind yourself to breathe

Try to remember why you had to remind yourself to breathe

Remind yourself to breathe again

Tell yourself that the reason you breathe is to replace the carbon dioxide in your blood with fresh oxygen, allowing for your heart to pump it through your body

Remember that time you felt your breathing slow when it was a good idea to replace fresh oxygen with her carbon dioxide

Realize that the Prefix Di- in Dioxide means two

Begin cracking your first smile in days because you think that a broken heart may consider pumping carbon monoxide

Check the batteries in your monoxide detector

Move your pillow closer to the window where the plant she called "ours" still resides, giving breathing a purpose again

Fall asleep wondering if your snoring bothers your dog like it did her

Wake up to your dog snoring louder than you

Consider buying a C-PAP, without knowing who it's better suited for

Catch yourself relating the C-PAP to the band-aid you're placing over your heart, since all it really does is help you pretend that your breathing isn't a problem

Question if breathing is a problem

Google encouraging posters with puppies on them

Find yourself on her instagram again at 3 am, a faux-down comforter the coldest place in a while outside of your own mind

Chuckle at the time you did an instagram series of her stuffing her face

Wonder what your next step should be

Ask yourself if everything is going be okay

Convince yourself everything is going to be okay, while goosebumps cover your chest

Fall back asleep, slowly, dreaming about whether or not you should change your computer wallpaper at work

Discover in your deepest sleep, that breathing shouldn't be difficult. It should be something we don't notice, but remind ourselves of from time to time, whether it's heavy laughter or heavy hearted deep breathes, hitting speed bumps on its way in

You're going to be okay

Exhale

I finally unblocked you on Facebook
Sounds childish to say at 22, but it was a big step
The only line of communication we've had
Dammed up like the hoover
Time, hard at work with his Pick Axe, finally broke through
And the raging warm water flushed my finger tips
Excited
Nervous
Angry
There he is
Unblock
Click
Scroll
Last Post: Dec 30, 2014
3 years ago
My Birthday, 3 years ago
The 3rd one he missed
He did manage to share a sports post
For a team I am positive he doesn't even like
I'm less than a sports team he doesn't even like

It's not so bad, really
I owe him a lot
Without him, I wouldn't be who I am today
Growing up without a father teaches you to wear shoulder-pads, and to check your gloves for holes
I know where to find the best prices on cleats specifically crafted to keep a heart from slipping when it goes through ****

I've become the epitome of masculinity
Numb without Novocain
Tear ducts run as dry at the Nile will, Circa 2095
Your impact to my ecosystem as devastating as throwaway plastic

Am I your throw away plastic?

If you take a stethoscope to a patch of dirt in a trailer park hidden somewhere in South Carolina, you will hear the arguments of a young couple, and the muffled sobs of a young boy as he cries himself to sleep in his pillow

In Maine there is a second story apartment where a mother who struggles to pay the rent, still finds the extra dollars to cover the cracks on the walls with paintings and photography to teach her daughter how rugged beauty can be

They teach you in Oklahoma that if you cover yourself in dirt and calluses, the gunpowder under your fingernails will taste like determination

Texas is the sole beneficiary to the piece of a 19 year olds heart that he himself carved out of his chest to wrap in a green reflective belt and give to a woman he thought he'd never find. Only to think he may never see her again.

Couple airplane windows with loneliness and you will be taught that country sides become galaxies after sunset, each star screaming to implode with the energy of rebellious eyeliner and Invader Zim sweatshirts

In Las Vegas there is 22 year old who belongs to her own army, her thighs and wrists covered in permanent war paint to show the battles she has fought in

Somewhere in America there is a homeless man who travels from town to town asking for nickels to feed the demon in his liver, yet still finds the time to tell teenagers with sunken heads and knives in their hearts during thunderstorms that everything will be okay

In the abandoned underground rap scenes of Detroit, the chipped paint on the walls still hold the words of a drug using man with grace tattooed on his neck, who since has long recovered to turn around and inspire the youth to use their words as amplified band-aids

This is my America
She is broken and battered
She writes in the back a green oxidized copper book the words that she hopes no will ever see
No one takes the time to look for the emotional damage behind the crack in a bell that's supposed to stand for liberty, but screams to the mothers of teenagers that it needs to see a therapist

Doctors and Psychologists funded by cigar smoking politicians can take scalpels to each teenager who has committed suicide, only to find nothing because the feeling of being an outcast cannot be found in the left upper quadrant of the abdomen, it's hidden in the part of the brain that is permanently bruised by the kids whose parents never taught them that it's okay if someone else can't choose to like the opposite ***

Those politicians won't listen to the kid sobbing into his pillow
Their walls aren't cracked and their kids don't die in deserts
They don't define love by green reflection, but by green paper
The concept of war paint is dressed in negative ad campaigns
I have yet to meet a suit and tie who will try to put a man with a ***** beard and a winter Carrhartt in an ****** apartment
They do ******* because they can afford to get away with it, not to hide the pains that they want to forget

This is my America
She shakes her fist at foreign passerby cruise ships while eagles perch on her shoulders with screeches of liberty
She is broken
She is ignored
On her island alone during thunderstorms you can see her crying
There is no drunken optimistic homeless man to tell her that she too will be okay
The claps of thunder radiating from her island are those of her sobs
She has no pillow to muffle her loneliness
I will ask her to read me what’s in the back of her oxidized copper book because I’ll be dammed if I have to watch another woman cry as these passerby’s do nothing about it
I will find that it reads but one word
"Help"

Yellow bricks breaking my back
I can't walk my way to the golden gate
Tic tac toe in the way of the consciousness I hold
Got to find a way around all of this unholy mess
Wander out past a camp site or two
Hearing some giggles these tents are full of scary clowns
Hacksaws for teeth and arms made of aluminum
Sneak to a forest filled with mixed messages to make neck hairs stand on end
There lies two paths
An emerald green like the eyes of a golden serpent
A red that blazes a fire by which the depths of hell have painted
They lead to two serenities
By the flip of a coin you may decide
Or return to the broken back by which a yellow brick has delivered you

I am an IV bag set up for too long
Drained of everything I am
I am nothing left but air
I am a straight line of air flowing through a tube in my veins
It's giving me
Chest Pains
They say it takes more than a few bubbles of air to **** you
I'll sit in a bubble bath with a block of cement chained to my foot
Hoping to god that the bottom will clam shell open to the ocean
I'll sink to the bottom of a trench am
I am an IV bag set up for too long
Drained of everything I am
I am nothing left but air
I am a straight line of air flowing through a tube in my veins
It's giving me
Chest Pains
They say it takes more than a few bubbles of air to **** you
All I have left are a few bubbles of air
As I watch them float away towards light above the water
I've lost everything I've ever held close to keep me alive
I am empty of air
I am empty