my bare feet and the nose-crinkling tickling of sand-
a contradictory image,
for I was taught to never run with scissors,
your image a rusted blade in my femoral.

my heartbeat and the blithe tide have flirted in a far less than parallel existence,
heels rotting, feet grinding down to the ankle-bones
in the softest fashion,
like a dying rose in vase
in a cubicle too small.

I've inhaled these beaches before.
white dresses have lit up the July wind like lavender candles,
sunsets and barking labs scalping distant couches,
turning my broken back into your expendable canvas.

your birthday has escaped me,
and the tattoo on the back of your sandpaper neck is a static television frequency.

the rip-tide is welcoming me for dinner, filling my lungs with my favorite dessert.

The dream sends the signal;
the battery applies the shocks.
Don't rest a weary head on blankets full of rocks,
like a pillowcase full of hard knocks.

It's consciousness;
it's metamorphosis,
but the backflip out of the cocoon
doesn't indicate an exit too soon,
but rather a kick
for bad shtick
on why I hear them
and my chemicals don't match
yours
or

(You think you have it bad?)

I've had a share of troubles
but nothing to compare to
stares or glares
of empty yesterdays
and broken sticks on snares:
I guess your most important thought
is
who the hell cares?

Orb sinks slow while
the numbness of routines exit
and nothing
becomes less
abstract and more of
your hollow, melting core.

This has a moral
This story ends at some point in time,
but I don't have an answer for when.

(You think you have it bad?)

Every story has an ending
and every cracked palm
deserves mending.

_

Wake up,
*you don't have it that bad.

yesterdays-
where there is no curtain,
there is no cloud.

(it's always a longer drive on the other side.)

the flight back won't accept a round trip;
we are never quite right in the mediums where we work too much to eat dinner with our families. the coffee *** is whiter than walls, unexplored, unadorned, stunted from existing morally well-rounded or mature.

the prison industry complex is my backyard with pesticides growing green grass and tides rise as my greatest fears of inadequacy hide like colorblind fireflies.

i'll do what i can to survive.

i'll eat so i cannot read but
rather
surmise
so I can't taste oxygen like
a velvet sunrise,
hiding my yesterdays by maksing the destination of my drive,
simply a dichotomy of blood and
first prize.

I am thankful for media chips,
and memories of lips;
of still mornings,
and warm warnings.

I am thankful for lightning,
for every bit of string,
a feeling of self-autonomy,
and the stars I see.

I am thankful for the hope,
college and all its dope;
for your hand there,
and the wear and tear.

I am thankful for this noose,
and my ability to tie it loose.

a crossroads-
my fingers are drooping like dampened socks,
as I am changing like a
kitchen table hardens over spills and
senseless childhood arguments.

i’ve forgotten how to breathe as my lungs strain more heavily,
as drains reject water in hypocrisy and your image haunts the table like an apparition with no social courtesy.

the mirror has been less and less friendly. my hair feels like styrofoam.

i felt my worn-down sneakers attract the wet leaves like magnets in another New England autumn. i wondered why they didn’t repel me like logic, purpose, or your daisy-shaped palms.

we fight and bleed to stick to the bottoms of sneakers but winter will come and lovers will pass,
as any breeze will tell you.

my cerebellum is ever changing,
but in my head there are always vases breaking like a drunken father in an angry fit so that my isolation is never vacant;
my thought patterns are shattered, blood-stained glass.

a furious saleswoman is grasping my hairline at the forehead and pulling the skin off of my scalp from behind,
her friends tying my hands behind my back with rope that is much too tight,
ensuring helplessness over my tumultuous oblivion.

you are but a single spec of dust
and yet you are
every particle that my eyelashes
have ever deflected
out of some
(probably false)
sense of defense
and mistrust.

the contrast
has never broken
the ice sheet that covers
my bones and organs
so sharply,
so warmly,
so comfortably

moving mountains
has become simple
with the oxygen and hope
you generously give me
in each blink
and
velvet
touch.

alone.
I have no semblance of home.

There is nothing in
thickets
that covers
my disfiguration of a disposition.

I will lie
against the grain
and fight
for feigned love.

Nothing loves me
and I love nothing.

I am filing cabinets
infinitely.

I am faking smiles
ardently.

When the end comes
there will be teeth
separated from lips
genuinely.

why can't you all stop lining your pockets with gold-studded fleece while every ounce of creativity in the lower rungs of the ladder is dubbed "crazy"?

i don't want it to slow.
my brain is my friend.
keep her alive.

keep her ALIVE.

halting d2 receptors is not a cure for shorter-cut sleeves-
it's a pharmacological disease disguised as a dreamer in heat,
as a simple lighthouse in a tree with no leaves.

i can't
let my name change
i am not broken
NOT
scarred and
only temporary because
it's all done behind a curtain,
anyway.

i've left no spare rooms for unrecognized pain-
the echoes of vacancy are reflective of my woeful naivety.

as i drift further into galaxies in my dreams, i
will soften like damp Styrofoam
until i
sink.

You are a bird flying near.
A simple graze of my arm
a feather kept, a loss of fear.
And this is not temporary.

You are a parade.
Your trumpets, your drums
reinventing the copyrighted charade.
It's not a trick-it's rudimentary.

You are fresh squeezed lemonade.
When the sweat cannot be quelled,
you forge trees for shade.
But speaking of you is just supplementary.

You are the long drive back.
Every worm in the miles of dirt
can hear this counterattack-
especially those four days of January.

You are my trustworthy veins,
our frivolously necessary games,
and the smell of relentless rains.

These senses, put blunt yet gently,
manifest nothing less than your infinite trajectory.

black ties
don't absorb sunlight
like their counterparts.
There are
instead
bullet holes.
and a man that can't breathe.

But this isn't simply
business casual.
It's a boost in morale
for hollow hearts
and the whipped counterparts.

My hands are free, my hands are free
Keep open eyes and remember me
And rage against this machine
that makes me seem
like I'm everything
they want me to be.

The seasons are finally changing,
and while I didn't expect your heart
to escape,
you fled,
just like you said you would.

Just like I knew you should.

I act like you had a choice;
there was never a word self-spoken
where my loathing manifested itself
as an audible voice.

Rejoice in free will
and affinity
and freedom of choice.

You forced winter to thrive,
but I hate you for thoughts
and an urge
and emotions
where self-hates and reality merge.

You forced winter to thrive,
but where green should arrive,
I am unheard.

You are blooming,
and I am unheard.

wax-coated tables
sealed with stains of
vinegar, cheese
and questions from my father

what is his story

Behind every story
there is struggle
betwixt highlighted glory.

snowy hills,
mountain peaks,
laughter.

there was a drain
******* it all away
as if today was always
a black and white yesterday.

and so I brought red into the equation.
a knife-
bringing dormant veins
to life.

silence is the loudest
silence is the saddest
alone and dragged
unwillingly
down one-way streets

chemicals misfiring.
They don't understand
development of false wiring.

The blueprints had shined-
there were smiles in between the notes.
The eights were serotonin,
the wholes were adrenaline.

Silence still screamed.
When nothing speaks for years,
the crust rusts eyes
like the underside
of the old Ford
in dad's shop.

Beats,
kisses,
*****.

The rust spread north
as my extremities
fell to the ocean floor.

I fear I cannot float on
any longer.

Somewhere between
pills,
plastic,
a princess,
and polycentric support
was the epicenter.

It tasted like fudge
on a warm winter evening
by the fireplace.

The silence still screams-
I doubt it will ever cease.
But the secret is always knowing
that the sun still shines during sleep.

this is where he lies;
this is his story-
betwixt his struggle
love,
art,
and
invisibly,
blinding glory

All the pieces are there.
For now, you say nowhere.
But
you're the everything that we need.
A benevolent benefactor,
an altruistic seed.

**** me?
No, *******.
All these words you hear are true.

A night with beer and no pants
defeats cologne,
a strict script for flirting,
and that god forsaken music
(They really make money off this, don't they?)

Your bed is warm,
but the frigid ground
will teach you to love the grass.
And when the soil thaws,
she'll smile at you,
and you'll realize-
The step outside
was worth freezing through.

There's nothing more soothing-
the oxymoronic headlights colliding with darkness.
Just us, burning haze, and the stereo.
And that's the best part-
these stories are the ones that no one will ever know.

I cannot continue,
for the lessons you've given are endless;
words could not possibly encapsulate all of this.
In a world where love can often run dry,
you embody the steadfast ambition
in beginning to try.

I am January.
But you're better than snow.

You have enough light
to right the wrongs
done by the evil men
from a lifeline
to my favorite
spider's web
sewn.

You lack the thickness
to right the wrongs I've
implicitly justified
as a nail to my fragile skin.

I'm heartless.

You are a pin
You may take my kin,
bleed, multiply,
amplify,
and remain.

Take my soul
and leave him
to do nothing
but be.

I know a girl or two.

There's the girl that will dance.
She will mend your withering bones,
and deduct the sticks from the stones
But the teal and black
will always bring memories back.

There's the girl that will lie.
Your adolescent hand
held tighter by a broken rubber band.
The queen of "would-be"
indifferently using your insecurity
as a blunt tool of jealousy.

There's a girl who will give you hope.
Indirectly teaching you everything
while transforming your dreams
into bits of meaningless string.
The apathy with every rainy night,
the cracked fingernails and
every hollowed-out fight.

There's a girl who will actually care.
She'll  waltz and she'll swing
and her open wounds will sing.
A hand to help open the cocoon-
the glowsticks that lit up
the unyielding light of the moon.

There's a girl that will tease.
Opening her scabby heart,
taking a hit,
and a forgetting the broken part.
She won't care if you're there;
she'll show her bruises anywhere.

But most importantly,
there's a girl you haven't met yet.
She's tethered in between
your adolescent regret
and everything unseen.
Your journey towards finding her light
is only slightly out of sight.

I know a girl or two.
But the one I haven't meant yet
is the one who will give my life
it's dormant, yet effervescent hue.

my brothers,
carried by storms,
aren't keeping it warm
anymore.

Your hat
in the wind
Your broken eyes, your freckled skin
Every chemical akin.

I just watched you
shining like a chipped diamond,
Breaking like a cliff in the hurricane.

We go here for you and our baby
A product of our intimacy, and you,
and your freckled skin.

But you broke beautifully
and you broke with me.
And us is all I'll ever be.

So let us together
never be apart.
A dandelion in weeds-
a brand new start,

and your freckled skin.
With every chemical akin.

red lights
are not near sights.

I am told for color
shows meaning-
blue gleaming,
magenta
beaming
and a hue of orange
reminding me that existence is
okay.
For now.

How do you see color?
Is it that which stops you,
or that which sets you apart?

Snowed in, and towed out.
Pitter patter of the all about.
I'm about to burst;
the seams told me first.

But I won't hesitate,
I won't take no for an answer.
If they freeze me in and tear me up,
I'll just write about her.

You must realize that your place
is wherever exists your pace.
There's a hope
wherever I do find this scope
that I'll be able to understand.
And when the thought of rebuilding
forces me into the cold,
just give me your hand.

For me to look apathetically
toward the cracks in your skin
would be nothing less than a sin.
Your bruises outweigh
the most benevolent aspects
of any sunny day.

Everything will always depart,
except what you want to leave.
And what stays
cannot bear to look you in the eye.
Because it knows it isn't welcome.

It just wants a home
to tear the walls down.
It just wants some flesh
to tear the soul out.

But who are you, friend?
Is your purpose to teach
something that earthly knowledge cannot fathom?
Or is your purpose motionless and hollow?
A boy sitting in the rain with a frozen gaze,
and no coat?

They say you must be a part of me,
not all of me.
But no matter how bright the days become,
no matter how many times you love me
(If anyone could actually loved me.),
you hold on with your bruised fingers
hopelessly interlocked.

The truth that I can't tell
and won't tell
(because I don't want to speak it
just as much as you don't want to hear it)
is that I actually hate me
more than I hate it.
Because while it flows through me
arbitrarily
like a black fog floating in the breeze,
I am sentient.
I have the power to stop it.
And I can't.

And so I must welcome it.
And once I do,
I still don't believe it will look me in the eye.
Because there's nothing to look at.

i'm losing myself in your hazel portal.

--------------------

fingernails, the endless target of fear, blunting the intensity of your golden-gate conscious,
bear enough of this weight to mortalize Atlas.

the pathetic, monotone static in my head is a train barreling towards an unfinished bridge,
my cynicism a pew destroyed by debris,
my outstretched hand a burning bible.

in my back-alley existence,
you are an ocean-wide coral reef of altruism and hope,
beaming with enough passionate hue to feed the starving.

i am twiddling my sprained, charcoal thumbs out of rhythm,
selfishly consuming your complexion like a leech

It's some sort of yearning-
***** of yarn,
stars that burn.

There is a path that never connects me to the center, nor does
the center define
an end goal;
it's something south of overlapping my dreams
of yearning and
knitting and
lighting fire to everything inside my head that tells me every single ******* day that I'm not good enough.

I ignite fires on days where
it is too cold to be
mindful
or be positive
because
I must.

i'm unmedicated,
but when you fell asleep between your glass of Merlot and the outside of my left leg,
I was sedated.

my bones never enjoyed saturation, or even understood how someone else could experience something similar; they just reflect raindrops like a two-way window pane.

now, it all hits me in brief, powerful bursts like a short-range shotgun blast and in long waves like electroconvulsive therapy that gives you painful memories instead of making them go away.

i hadn't felt anything in years but even brick walls have soft spots. Even spiders can abandon webs and become kings.* Even someone so full of nothing could feel like the new year wouldn't bring more pills and that love could fly without restricted access areas or delays due to what they claim is the weather but is really pain being drained in the wrong sink, one either too puke-stained or too leaky.

i finally realized that color television was a worthy investment. I can recognize how much brighter black and white seemed when you gave me what I perceived to be the inside of your arteries: red, black and blue humming along at a pace that felt synonymous with what I perceived to be equilibrium.

i am no longer sedated

i'm afraid there's nothing left in the tank but fumes and false hope.

aluminum is not a friend, it's a recyclable material that contains happiness when the world turns a blind eye to its ubiquitous pain and i am only a scarecrow in a field full of bodybuilders and terrifying childhood memories.

it's all too much. the emptiness is only invisible when the music bruises my ear-drums or when i think of how your lips and teeth felt on my bones. the band-aids will fall off but your words are branded like factory farms.

the worst part? i'm a sketch left on the easel in an abandoned schoolhouse. i'm a half-assed mannequin. i've translated the seasons into colorless cycles in cyclical misrepresentation. astute observation leads me to believe i'm the product of a meaningless procreation.

shutting off my eyes doesn't feed all of the starving souls who actually want all of this oxygen, and we have false hope that some of these fumes might turn into rice and beans and
the love we've always wanted

but never swallowed.

i remember how those jeans looked when you put them on one pant leg at a time, and then when both flickered glimmers of future false hope and came together, met with a zipper. you always told me that the mirror was a lot less friendly than reality, but now I'm not so sure that the reflection was an inaccurate piece of diction regarding the color you drain from the world, first in wavelengths smaller than your pinky toe, and then all at once, like a vacuum.

the skies have smiled and cried and wiped up old tears and crusted snot since you left. it seems like i've brought every single ******* cloud to this piece of paper, rain or shine. it's trite, it's boring, but it's the only sick and sad way of coping with losing every drop of precipitation that changed the dry cracks in the ground into sunflowers. i never cared if they were yellow or pink or black and white. they were real.

it's time to accept that cracked concrete is still concrete and can still grow flowers, even if they are black dahlias or dandelions that the people in my life that have told me that i'll never be good enough deem to just be common weeds. you can't drain my life anymore by draining the color from it. your presence is everywhere, but your presence is gone. i've had enough of fighting the validity of this doubt. i've had enough of enclosing the zipper from the hazel-stained, green dream scene on my lips to mute myself.

we survive by love, and today, there is so much love for every memory i've ever made. your departure is not my self worth. my departure with those who cared enough to stitch up my infected knees is my self worth. sitting in your Grand Prix before Elm talking about potential and wiping the blood off of blades. listening to Parachutes and smoking enough to forget everyone who ever hurt us. sunshine and werewolves. elevators and Aderall. Canada and Virginia. stone walls, long-distance calls, salvia that looked like fudge, dehydration in Williamsburg, the screen porch at Meadow, and choosing not to print out my suicide notes.

today we evolve because you do not define my evolution anymore. today we evolve because i have a voice that deserves to be heard. we all have stories that deserve to be heard. today we evolve because love will always be the stitches that any of our knees will require, infection or not. we will blossom, in darkness and in light, in color and in absence, in faith and in fear.

no matter how deep the planet decides to cave in, our hands will always be there to help pull you out.

and i'll never need you for me to be absolutely certain of that
ever again
.

I still wonder how to calm my thoughts.
They sprint the tightrope with closed eyes,
remind me of every note screamed,
and bring me back to size.

Her passive-aggressive nerve.
How did I never swerve
and fill the forest
with my blood and good intentions?

I'd come home with a red rose,
or maybe a few.
The only sentence she could compose
was how my hands smelt
of feta and bleach.
There was no closure,
but I had no composure.
The secret is that I still don't.

I have no regrets.
But I still wonder pensively
why I haven't wrapped myself
around that alluring oak tree.

It's around 2:30 now
and a few years have passed,
but I still reek of feta and bleach.

i'm warmly lost in the absence of that aspiring red light,
as your heartbeat is still a stabbing pain in the side of my gelatin femurs,
losing visions of the rigidity necessary to live this life of ambivalent autonomy.

--

steel strings and fibers of teeth eating this flesh like a false promise of love,
i am a windowsill covered by a nebulous, translucent shade,
clothespins existing simply to taper my eyes from the pain.

the stars take no mention of this cynical cycle of self-doubt,
for they're lighting our hearts long after they've burnt out.

and your hazel kitchen recipes are hanging over the paint-chipped railing,
giving meaning to this heart,
a blood-stained peach in constant mourning.

break this furtive glass,
there is no light pointing home,
**directionless map

every day the drywall grows in size and in impact,
reminding me of rooms that i haven't
lived
within,
like a candle swimming in the salt and
band-aids.

sleep,
ephemeral heat is
a dream where
the inside of my eyelids are not monsters,
where paint brushes bring color to garages,
where i don't drink until numbness,
and where your hands continue to guide my skull
from the ground into the clouds.

you all told me i had a place here but
why have you all left?

go back some steps and paint the rest the colors they were meant to be.
parasites preventing psychology-
absent sounds without answers, potential apart metamorphosis.
the mistakes were easy,
splitting monochrome apart of the omniscient wind.

and they never learned anything.

I couldn’t escape the quiescence of ontogeny
descending east or west in our
oblivion as nothing-
these spider webs bury dead
under my intuition
ashamed of my own decisions
refusing to light,
but the flicker always subtle in the night,
aggressive how I wanted to make it shine.

we’re butterflies with broken mirrors,
scintillatingly self-reflecting that our deepest fears will never resonate with
the man under the bridge or the
child in Idaho or the
part of my father i never want to see in myself,
but always will.
hand-crafted maps fade because we’re told to abandon
caterpillars
as if this growth was a virus and not a blessing disguised as
thousands of glass shards unlocking doors.
I wanted to know more.

I couldn't think where my mind begins
it shifts back hollow where I started
blonde curls lost frivolously among the pile of careful maple leaves
you should’ve tried to understand while you
blurred the sharpness of this image,
shades of fuschia indecisions  
evading a dream,
incomplete sets of glass menagerie fog when I fall asleep.
shuffling the shutter, parallel to the stress it put me under.
a life repeating its first day,
continuing cabarets
confusing caves in sheep
crystallize
an endless disease.

flowers don’t communicate in binary;
your daisies were fireworks,
mute mutilations of my morbidity,
simultaneously transforming
sheep from tangible reality.
as I felt every strand of indifference-

IT ALL COULD HAVE BEEN DIFFERENT.

but
our faces yield yellow hues in
both pines needles and piles of
orange maples.

ashamed of where I hadn't  been
because of the person I have yet to become
knowing what I will never be.
It was strange to see me as a human being
amorphous
feathers drifting incomplete
as crows without grief
circling aware
predicting what I could not escape
luminescent highways miles from fate
time spent
in the essence of these transgressions
pardon me gray.

what can i call colors i see,
branches of the trees from Polaroid memories,
or dreams of what the world should be?
where can i find these answers on this endless canvas,
this bruised, mountainous landscape,
constantly hammering away against our wars with self-abandonment?
what’s the spectrum where
trees and
everyone you’ve ever known that’s felt loss
can sing in harmony?

trapped in my mind,
hope is destiny when it's not in our plans

running out of time,
the colors will fade as limbs grow thicker

footsteps erase.

mirrors adapt.

Understand that where there is the tenebrific,
there is the lambent.
Their comorbidity is rampant.
But if you think luminosity is dead and gone,
we'll show you the love to go on.

I think sometimes the drugs wear off
too early.

Sometimes,
she gives me hope
and sometimes
she gives me enough
coffee to
keep me up for weeks
and miles.
But miles down the road
isn't really what matters yet.

Don't disguise this as
a call, a
morning song
of pain,
or anything
I've thrown away.

This is the same
shovel I'll dig
my own grave with
if you jump down
and play
in the dirt with me.

Don't leave it
to rust.

I can't say
my voice has been stolen.
Only frozen.

Somewhere between
the solidification
and the crystallization
was a frigid realization.

Sometimes the magic just doesn't happen.
at the 32 degrees.

Sometimes sciences takes a back seat
to  the once-broken, since mended knees.

The mind will fight
but the pen still scribbles a right,
or a wrong,
or something recyclable taken away yesterday.

Now-parallel incomprehensible darkness.
with a voice once frozen.

The light will relentlessly hide
as the rain will inevitably fall.
The frostbite will blacken,
but
you
will
stand
tall.

There was a beginning.

I was stringing.
There were threads,
but there was something simply dead.
I can't say I had any idea
of its permanent location.

What are we to say of any deceased?
Is there something to observe
about those whom have failed at living?

But it's the ultimate goal.
If a pearl exists within the oyster,
it breathes nonexistent
persistently.

The difference between fear and sadness
is some blurry line.

If happiness is there,
why do I not cognisize
what it takes to epitomize?

The oyster sits.
I will wait.
Life will hate
at altruistic bait.

your cave was a pasture-
far beyond rugs made of the softest fabric skin could feel,
far along field of comfort resting in my arms.
oxygen just never seemed to make sense,
in scarcity.
stairs were just never worth the effort,
labor always coinciding with
disparity
and
nothing was ever clear.
you were as clear as the looking glass we have either all seen or will see when reality becomes as transparent as our minds wish it not to be,
so that we can wish it to be so.

I hope what I see is a dream where I can be
me,
wearing all of my skin, including
shards that you
took.

If you asked me what I missed,
could I say anything at all?

Homework
and lost words.
Homeward.
and Route 12,
northbound.
Your smile poking its way through.
The tight black skirt,
more cleavage than tee shirt.
A walk or two,
and a view, straight through.
A meticulous routine to undress;
the wood-pellet stove keeping it hot.
The butterfly that was never caught.
Every box of Mike & Ikes bought.
An arbitrary laugh, a foreshadowing sunset-
a neck full of bruises and sweat.
The mocha-chip Thursday Nights at eight.
All the way back to a single Ferris wheel-
an ironically fatal first date.

If you asked me what I miss,
would I say anything at all?

I am but a slave to you.
Motionless.
You remain.
And I cannot fathom
Why I cannot fathom.
Why I cannot break free from these shackles
I've been unwillingly volunteered to wear.

You are my coffee date.
And why I'm always sleeping late.
You cast paleness into every inch of me,
And darkness upon any possible casualty.

I can't wrap my head around the fog.
Why have I been given so much,
Just to regard it all as gathering dust?
Is this a reminder of my fragility?
Or a framed portrait of my futility?

I am just so terribly afraid
Of what may happen if I drop.
Because the glue does not always repair
The arbitrary shattering
Of what I had hoped would be there.

in previously dining with sultry, elegant fire*,
i was a gazelle with its neck bit to the bone-
breathing,
but not alive-
a fractured coffee table melted into a morbid pool of cheap, liquidized steel,
decimated via hazel iris communication and spilled wine.

my skin,
ablaze,
took the shape of your hip-bones,
outlined with red lace and childhood scurry-
a grey ghost changing weightless piano symphonies into expired canned goods,
dented to the severity of hairline fracture.

--

band aids eventually peel like browned, dampened leaves in the sorrowful days of autumn;
scar-ridden skin does not dance into the fading sun to never return,
but rather sits on skin like
wet newspaper
and whiskey breath;
it creeks a screech of attrition in your throat like an unhinged screen door,
the splinters down-pouring into esophageal tissue like ash.

re-dressing the wounds must not be a death sentence,
as the gauze is the clock-tower,
perched in the center of town,
striking noon.

it took far too many rotations around the axis to realize that a wounded, passionately bursting ***** behind a protruded rib-cage was not an expiring hourglass,
but that third degree burns could be the infinite list of ambiguous maps i've yet to navigate.

--

with the passage of ambivalent and nebulous suns,
i can now unravel the bloodied, endlessly flawed fabric to the newly optimistic idea of
her favorite peppermint tea,
her January habits of leaning on the sizzling pellet stove with sweatpants slightly too thin,
her perseverance of the books like a Nobel Prize winner.

but so help me,
if your are one more to pour gasoline on my dinner plate,
i will light the match myself before i allow you to complete the unfinished canvas of my curious skin.

There's such a delicacy about all of it.
What to say. How to feel.
How do you feel?
As if the price of honesty was well worth the reward.

The weight of it all
will almost always pause us,
and freeze us in picture frames.
It will capture the shattering fragments of glass
before you have the slightest chance to react.

And how do we reflect on the past,
or predict the future,
when it just seems so out of our control?
It's as if we've been thrown into a violent gust
without any wings,
or at least ones we can trust.

But you are to my left,
and you are to my right.
And we are all around you.
So no matter how futile our attempts
to blow each other in the right direction are,
The love behind the action
will never steer you too far.

You.
Where can I possibly begin?
My perception of you
Between an innocent first day
And a battle-scarred, war-torn last,
Has indescribably transformed.
Just as a chameleon does
Under the same circumstances of fear and doubt.

You.
You were there, ready for work.
Smelling of popcorn and lip-gloss.
Ignorant of what was ready to walk through that door
And ruin your life.

You.
You were there for months.
Friendly and shy all at once.
Laughing at my jokes
While guarding your heart with a strict severity.
And that profound underlying insecurity.
Awaiting the fall.

You.
You were there on that Autumn evening.
In the passenger seat of mom's Ford Explorer.
Your hair blowing in the frigid breeze.
It was there-
It was that evening.
Under the stars and lights of the Ferris wheel.
That my lips met yours.
I was awkward, I was scared;
I was elated.
You were mine.

You.
You donned that blue dress for Homecoming.
My hand could have wrapped around your waist
Again and again and again.
This was eternity.
This was love, as I spoke to you that night.
My hand grazing against yours,
My body pushed upon yours,
My heart on his knees for yours.

You.
You lit up 2011.
It was a year of illumination.
The year of rhythm, harmony, and bliss.
Every meal
Every date
Every touch of your skin.
Lit up my life like I never could have imagined.

You.
You were so smart.
Westfield, Roger Williams, Bridgewater.
The former was your favorite.
And you were gone.
But we still remained.
The idea of separation seemed impossible.

You.
You struggled so desperately.
To fit in, to grow up, to grow strong.
But you leaned on me like a fencepost.
Because I was there.
And I loved you so profoundly
That the thought of your unhappiness
Made my very being collapse.

You.
You continued to isolate yourself.
You continued to drown yourself.
Again and again.
And I was there.
And suddenly,
my friends weren't.
Nor was my family,
nor were my hobbies,
nor was my identity.
And suddenly,
I was an empty container.
Serving to please you.
Every call.
Every game.
Every night spent alone.
Every tear.
Every wish for my life back.
For you.

You.
You demanded my presence.
Or, by your standards,
I did not regard you as anything more than a body.
By your standards,
I did not love you.
By your standards,
I did not care.

You.
You were there for my first day on campus.
Ready to criticize.
Ready to consume me.
Ready to tell me why I was not what you wanted anymore.
But
"I was in there"
God knows that I hoped I was.

You.
You dragged me through this year.
Time I could have spent connecting.
And laughing.
And making memories of the sun and moon.
But this was it.

You.
You begged me not to leave.
Because what would you be?
Without me attached to your sleeve?

You.
You always had a reason.
Why it always "made sense"
And so what did logic dictate?
My wings refused to lift me.
And I stayed.
Like a hopeless fool,
I stayed.
And we were on for year four.

You.
You took a room for two
And made it your own.
You took a passion,
a hobby,
a life,
And made it your own.
You ensured the final draining of my soul.

You.
You knew I was getting worse.
You knew I was no longer there.
You knew nothing lied behind the blank stare.
Nothing could prepare you
For a trainwreck of a partner.

You.
You turned my emotions into a background noise.
When I cried, the couch became my best friend.
When I could not feel, you made me do.
When I could not do, you made me do.
When I could not go on, you made me do.
Because you had felt so unfulfilled
For so ******* long
Because of the corpse lying next to you at night.

You.
You didn't know.
Just as ignorant as I was.
This was love.
This wasn't love.
This was what it was supposed to be.
So we thought.
And so one day,

I.
I knew.
I left.
Teary eyed, achy, and broken.
The last ounce of life drained out of me,
Feeling like an aging man.
Feeling like the **** under my shoe.
Feeling
Such an amazing relief.

I.
I now can say you are gone.
And I have moved on.
And my life is forever changed.
No matter how many souls I encounter,
No matter how many ghosts may haunt me,
No matter how much love I may receive,
You will be there.
Because I can never know if I was right.
Because I can never know why
I made the choices I did.
And I'm so sorry, my dear.
I'm so terribly sorry
That I could not separate
The love I wished to give
From the love I couldn't possibly feel.

a cracked slab of
concrete
knocked
on the front door.

"i ache of
tread and
winter
wind."

it shuttered,
turned a frigid purple
(by
winter
solstice),
and looked
at its watch.

(5:55 A.M.)

another repetition
of an engine revving.

another star
brilliantly,
silently,
waving
goodnight.

another coffee cup
becoming
hot
and then,
becoming
cold.

on top of a mountain, dressed
in purple and frozen in December air,
we were flying through western Oregon
with our shoes in New England and our
hearts in the forest.

you would shake when I saw your skin,
turner both softer and more rugged as I reached your bedrock,
eroding like sea glass when you showed me what
makes you tug tighter in the dark and
sob at sunrises.

your tears were velvet garden shears-
I don't remember how much blood there actually was,
just that it poured out of both of our bones
with a symmetry that my eyes never spoke of,
and that it still stains the skin of myself
and everyone I've talked to in the last eight months.

you are a ghost under lampshades,
like a florescent fairy in love with tying
the night sky into nooses.

you are libraries,
volumes filling viles with memories of moments when
the darkness left your bones,
only if for the flicker of a flashlight in the backyard or
of a match,
giving me minute fractions of eternity
to see your disposition light the sky larger than stars.

you are teethmarks in my skin,
scrubbing with salt and white
body wash and oatmeal without sugar,
warming our endlessly evanescent December.

******,
filling the ceiling with blue whales and
mountain ranges,
i am a stain on the map in your backseat,
buried under used napkins and neglect,
while your wings take you back
to Oregon.

Every day now feels like that Thursday.
When the rain just instigates for no reason.
Every day now feels like a sick day.
Except there's no home to rest.

I suppose you could be my medicine.
You could break into a million shreds
and release all of the chemicals
that give me such an ideal numbness.

Because the pills that hurt us most
are the ones that we try the hardest to swallow.
And the ones that heal us
are just too much follow.

Perhaps this is why I'll never have you.
You are the poison and the pain
that can make me smile on cue.
But I
I'm
Nothing.
Nothing but a smoke and a joke,
and a sub-par kisser.
A black hole of emotion and ambition.
Nothing.

If only she had any clue
how much life she contained in one breath.
If she only knew
how many storms she creates within me.

She is here.
And she knows nothing of the endless light within her.
The only one who does
is nothing.

We all have a purpose or two-
I just came without the instructions.
Mine is a flawed foundation-
an accidental procreation.
Listen-
I can't feel,
but that doesn't quell the urge
to touch every single inch of you.
It doesn't matter if her name sounds like yours,
her eyes have a different sparkle,
and you don't make me feel like ****.
So let me dance you into the dawn
and tie your noose for you.
It's either me or the chair,
because I'll never be there.
I don't know if this is too much to ask.
"We all deserve love,"
but what if that's not true?
The burning burden I ignite.
There's an empty cavity in my chest
and your heart can't fill it.
I'll keep climbing the pit
until I let go.
I'll keep letting go
until you reach for me.

march 9th, 2016
five dollars an hour,
copyrights are not ensured agoristically;
minimum wage is ensured by those who ignore the hazel in Yemeni eye sockets,
ribs barren.

October 22nd,
i cannot afford the heat anymore.
i only get drunk so that i may eat ***** without hearing your hymn,
screaming into my ear-plugs like evolutionary theory.

Northampton, Massachusetts-
i wore sheep under my eyes and grey on a heart-sick scalp;
we were all dying and my cerebellum was a private-eye detective, searching for color in a world so plastered in binary that orange and Green-Rainbow never sang emotion in G major.

I am dying, too.

reciprocity is the least common denominator of "I promise to think of your interests later."

August 2016,
my hair is silly putty and this couch has transformed my spinal column into haplessly frozen shoelaces,
tied together.

snowfall, 2016,
i love every single Yemeni and
the cold stings like index, middle, and thumb grazing lit firewood.

A horizon and a half to see-
he's putting mind over matter,
and I think it might matter.
But how is one to find out?

Does the Jellyfish not sting,
or the caged bird sing?

My answers are not confident,
despite some marvelous attempt.
I'm still held in contempt
over a crime drowned below the surface.

She raised the platform, fortunately.
And unfortunately,
she was only there hypothetically.

(She still has no idea

…

okay, I ate the last chocolate.
***** me.)

Next time,
I'll catch you if you fall.
And cage you if you sing.

what do you receive
when you trace my hand?

are there bones
sharpened by stones,
or
enough cushions
to take
something
poorly sewn
and wipe away skin
revealing doubt
that I'm not
meant for
the word
that I'm in?

is your vision rosily tainted,
or am I worthy of
finite
ink?

this sultry tease of summer,
skin peeling off of leather and cracked heels on the dashboard,
blisters on feet panicking like geysers,
this oxygen resembling cinder-blocks
slightly more carefree -

imprints of crinkled toes never left the passenger seat.
the bags in your eyes were unmined emeralds-
my bones shared strict resemblance to anvils,
and I was too ******* high to inject these sullen thrills.

the new car smell never comes back.

my stomach is no longer a carnival at the sight of freshly opened eyelids, only a dimly-lit, mold-infested dungeon.

may I begin the Spring cleaning by sweeping your eyelashes off of the leather?
or shall I leave your grace,
along dried crumbs off screaming green dopamine,
in the creases?

always,
always,
always
passionate visions of my chest smashing through the windshield like a steel-framed freight train,
fueled by every damning item on this laundry list of self-inadequacy.

salvage yards cannot simply exist as ubiquitous rows of lost souls
------
there must be hope for the hot season to melt away the rose-tinted skidmarks burning my irises.

I hear you had an affinity to ink.
As I did
to whatever laid below
the creaky kitchen sink.

The first words
filled with the highest crescendos,
the blurriest jokes,
and an indifference
that connected archipelagos.

Your open pastures came sooner than fit
and all the cows were shocked by it.
The foundations your tendons
helped meticulously construct
were but a marvelous crack
in his narrow-minded speck of dust.
(And how it pained me every day to see the rust.)

But there was always a chrome polish
waiting patiently where you least expected.
And the kindling revealed your shine.
And your sentences naturally rhymed.
Your shores,
full of plastic bags and
oil-stained rags
had found miles of red rubies.

I would freeze for her infinite summer,
but I stand here motionless-
oozing self-doubt
miles away from her.