i have not felt good in a long time
so i would like to rest, if that's alright
just rest until i feel better
and i want to rest alone,
because if i don't
i may be distracted or self-conscious
and i know i'm just asking
to be cold
but i thought perhaps
every few days
you could open the window
and kiss my forehead
to remind me what
warmth feels like
and that this is not
an eternal slumber.

Your words are scarlet
Like the lips of a harlot

Your breath stings
Severing my wings

Your eyes are blazing
Leaving my soul dazing

Your pain and suffering
Has become my everything

You were all that she wanted
Her everything
Her reason to keep going

But then you decided
To throw away that façade
To show true

You knew you had her
You knew it all too well
She wouldn't leave
She'd never tell

You're her mountain
That never ending climb
Her anguish

There are some days when “us” falls out of my mouth,
heavy and hearty, throat opened fully
to expel an airy hope for the future,
instead of “I”, which begins similarly
and ends with the back of my tongue surging upwards
to stop the air flowing outwards,
closing my throat off to widen the sound.

“Us”, with guttural UH,
rooted firmly in my chest, its silky S
finishing off strong, hissing
like sea foam
washed up on the sand
shortly after softened waves slink back
from the shore.

“I”, with its AH like a sigh of
relief at the freedom of singularity,
its ending EE like the creak in the floorboards
when I’m home alone,
like the squeaky back door
that no longer calls out to me
as a precursor to your footsteps
on the kitchen floor.

I correct myself. “I”.

Look, another kid,
hungry for a metaphor;
taste of what its like
to make a point,
but it’s stuck on the
tip of her tongue.
Lack of inspiration,
from Walmarts to broken hearts;
world in black and white,
not even gray
enough to be sung.
Oh, how great the world
would be, if rainbows weren’t
only tricks of light.
If promises
meant something more than
give and take.
If words were said
with a sense of conviction.
Teach us what it’s like
to make a point,
if there was ever
any point to make.

Writing in prose
Does not make you a poet

Telling of times
Of a crimson stream
Caused by your denial
Does not make you a poet

Just because you starve yourself
In a fruitless pursuit of perfection
Does not make you a poet

What makes you a poet
Is when seeing her eyes
Makes you want to stop the world
And detail how they twinkled
When the light came in
At just the right angle
From the glass pane windows

What makes you a poet
Is when you think that her hair
Even when she wears it in that messy bun
On the top of her head
Looks like the gold
Of that ring you found
That you would love to put on her finger
Someday

What makes you a poet
Is not knowing just the right words
To describe her
So you just say nothing
And make her become these words
That you obsesse over
Every
Single
Day