He's sandstone in the desert, I'm the blue sky wrapped tight around him.
I kiss him with raindrops and in return he makes flowers grow.
We are like a lion and a nightingale; nothing alike but our marriage is the truest union.

She smells the way my mothers hair smelled when I was a child; back when playing in my mother's hair brought me peace. She smells like the play house I made out of pine needles and hay bails. She feels like rain falling onto the deck my father fished from every evening. She sounds like his foot steps coming up behind me. When she holds my waist, her arms feel like the chains of the swing-set he built between the two pine trees in my back yard (firm and incapable of letting me fall). She tastes like blackberry and muscadine wine and jam and pie. She feels like sticky skin after hours of picking them from the woods behind the old shed. She reminds me of the beginning of fall and blooming lemons trees. She even smells like citrus. She's everything that's ever made me whole. She's what brings me peace. She reminds me what home is supposed to be. She's given me back everything I've loved and lost. She's everything to me and this is why.

Did you see them take the green fields
one by one, now line by line on hills in echelon?

Still, holding ground held holy by their sons;
no longer marching to the smoke and drum.

Where bugler called the day to final rest,
now silence grows like lichen on the stones.

For those who gave their all at our behest,
our memories alone will not atone.

Do you see the fires burning at a distance,
and more hallowed ground broken day by day?

Each new stone laid a fading reminiscence;
each new boquet soon fading into gray.

What better way to honor sacrifice
than to pause and speak their names aloud.

Until the gods of war are pacified;
until our flag no longer serves as shroud.

Its 11:30 at night. You, lovely you, talking about killing yourself while all I picture are your loose fitting shirts and dimples.

If dying was simple, everybody would have done it.

Nobody talks about the truth of overdosing. You'll be on the floor, puddle of ***** underneath your cheek, the last meal you ever ate stuck to your face, you'll never have felt so weak in your life, even when downing a bottle of downers. Hallucinate until you suffocate on bile. Or your heart stops beating. Or your lungs breathe themselves backwards, inside out. Your brain will be alive for 3 minutes, just enough time to regret it, 100 times, outside your own cold, twitching body. Mom will find you, fall to her knees, call dad from downstairs, and black out in grief.

It's not pretty. Your funeral will be messy. People you barely remember (a girl who had a crush on you in kindergarten, the person you told you were depressed that couldn't bring themselves to listen, didn't want to believe it, the girl who taught you to cut your wrists like that) will cry over your body like it was their own. They'll feel tears soak shirt, after shirt, after skin, after shirt. They'll feel your voice on the back of their neck in cold spells and hot flashes for years. Mom will wake up from nightmares, call dad, he's drinking.

And here you are, thinking it wouldn't matter.

I picture your loose shirts and dimples and how simple it would have been to say nothing, never let you brand my heart with anything but a weeks worth of deep regret in a month or two, maybe three, however much longer you can stand heartbreak. But it's not like that, I'm stronger than that. And you are too, you are too.

the rejects.
the uglies.
the fatties.*

slightly u n d e r
and to the left
                     of the mainstream

dug under a little,

|grooving at our own pace|

pulling at the roots.

You begged me to forget us
We are nothing more