i want to tell you that i hate you.
i want to say that you were a mistake,
that you were something i regret.
that i wish we had never met and
never talked in the first place.
i want to tell you that i
wish we were never anything,
if we were anything to start.

but you're done with hearing from me.
sick of hearing sad stories.
tired of hearing tired apologies.
and i know you almost want to fix it,
but you always decide against it.
you stop replying.
you hit "ignore."
you delete your inbox.

i guess the lesson i've learned
is that i can't change the past.
i can't always fix what's broken -
especially when i'm the broken thing.
and i think that i might be okay with this.
i just wish you weren't roadkill in the process.
it'd be so nice to have you among the living.

it doesn't quite make sense but
i liked what we had, when we had it.
i've always had an issue with rejection,
but this time, this time is different.
it hangs around my throat, tightening,
choking me out until my face turns blue.
["so wear me like a locket around your throat,
i'll weigh you down, i'll watch you choke.
you look so good in blue."]

i settled so comfortably into the routine
of hidden messages and even more clandestine meanings
that i guess i forgot how to operate the english language.
your fingers settled so comfortably into mine,
with your lips on the back of my hand and mine on your jaw,
that i guess i forgot how to use them to hold on.
["i love you so much that it hurts my head.
i said i don't mind you under my skin,
i let the bad parts in, the bad parts in."]

i guess this is just how it has to be.
i can't say i'm entirely surprised;
after all, we are soul mates. cut from the same cloth.
honestly i'm not sure what i miss,
because it was never mine to start with.
but i do miss you. i miss you. i do.
["and the saddest fear comes creeping in:
that you never loved me, or her, or anyone, or anything.
i knew you were trouble when you walked in."]

when i was born,
you cried to our grandmother
because you wanted a brother
and got stuck with me, instead.
and what a turn of events that became.

when i was a baby,
i busted the back of your teeth out
with a bottle of perfume,
most likely contributing to your
repetitive dreams of your teeth falling out.
sometimes i think of this when you say your "th"s.

when i was a child,
you would pick peppers with our dad
down the street and hold eating competitions
while i squashed berries in my little tyke car.
we played mouse trap on the floor.

when i completed my first decade of life,
you packed your bags, got on a bus,
got married, and were deployed for the first time.
i don't remember much of those days.
i only remember the first phone call,
"yours truly, from iraq."

when i was eleven,
you came home, war torn and ragged
and divorced from an army wife
who was never really a wife at all.
you moved on, in some ways
more than others.
you were different, changed.

when i became a preteen,
i met a girl, and looked at our mom
and i said, "he's going to marry that girl."
and marry her, you did,
and had your first child, too.

when i was a teenager,
you taught me important life lessons
like how i act when i'm drunk
and how to do sake bombs like i belong in asia.
you taught me to eat with chopsticks.
through babysitting, i learned to wait to have a child.

and now, at twenty years old, everything is different.
living down the street from me, then in the old house,
and finally in our mom's house with me,
the dynamics changed.

we became the best friends we'd
always tried to be, but were too distant
to maintain. we gained trust and inside jokes.
you finally gave approval of my boyfriend.
we wreaked havoc and stayed up way too late.

but then you moved five hundred miles away,
and every day my heart feels ripped into pieces.
i miss all the jokes, and you waking me up
to our favorite songs.
i miss my brother. i miss my bubby.
i hope one day one of us will go home.

I was sitting on my fence post,
Chewing some bubble gum.
Playing with my yo-yo.
When along came Hermy the Wormy,
And he was thiiiis big.
And I said,
“Hermy!? What’s up with you, man!?”
And he said,
“Duh, I just ate a bug.”

my first memories of you are from
when we lived together when we were
young. we would be power rangers
and pokemon and a number of other
things. that was the summer your sister
broke her leg on the trampoline -
scaring us from climbing on top.
we were afraid of sharks in the pool.
clear water to the bottom, but we
were scared of the monsters we couldn't see.
no matter how many times we looked,
we couldn't shake the idea that something
was out to get us. wanted to hurt us.

I was sitting on my fence post,
Chewing some bubble gum.
Playing with my yo-yo.
When along came Hermy the Wormy,
And he was thiiiiis big.
And I said,
“Hermy!? What’s up with you, man!?”
And he said,
"Duh, I just ate a cat.”

you moved away that year.
you left for florida and took your
sister with you. you were gone for years.
in that time, she came to visit me.
she told me you were fine.
i heard from your mother that you
were struggling in school -
her straight A student,
crumbling before her eyes.
i didn't know what happened.

I was sitting on my fence post,
Chewing some bubble gum.
Playing with my yo-yo.
When along came Hermy the Wormy,
And he was thiiiiiis big.
And I said,
“Hermy!? What’s up with you, man!?”
And he said,
“Duh, I just ate a dog.”

you graduated top of your class.
you left your house for reasons i
didn't find out about until months
later. you moved back here, back
into that old house, pretending to
be the innocent boy you were.
the boy that hated to smoke ****.
the boy that drank his summer away
and regretted it.
you were the boy that let his girl get away.

I was sitting on my fence post,
Chewing some bubble gum.
Playing with my yo-yo.
When along came Hermy the Wormy,
And he was thiiiiiiis big.
And I said,
“Hermy!? What’s up with you, man!?”
And he said,
“Duh, I just ate a car.”

but we both know that wasn't who you are.
not deep down, anyway.
that boy that cried to me on my couch
gave me half-truths and spun stories
until i didn't know which way was up.
i told you that i was ****** up now.
i told you exactly what i did, and you
told me you'd done the same.
but what i didn't know, was that one
of my worst nightmares, is what you'd
become for someone else.

I was sitting on my fence post,
Chewing some bubble gum.
Playing with my yo-yo.
When along came Hermy the Wormy,
And he was thiiiiiiiis big.
And I said,
"Hermy!? What’s up with you, man!?”
And he said,
“Duh, I just ate a whale!”

when everyone found out the truth,
you fled the country.
when everyone found out the truth,
you left us all behind to
deal with your messes.
when everyone found out the truth,
i was the only one left
seeing sharks spin circles in my swimming pool,
swim circles in my heart.

I was sitting on my fence post,
Chewing some bubble gum.
Playing with my yo-yo.
When along came Hermy the Wormy,
And he was thiiis big.
And I said,
“Hermy!? What’s up with you, man!?”
And he said,
"Duh, I just burped!”

i mentioned your name to your mom for the first time since it happened.
i know it made her sad,
but things need to be said.
she will never run from this.
not successfully.
she will always be left picking your brain off the walls,
off the ceiling, out of the carpet.
fragments of your skull left shattered in her hands,
like the rest of her life.
i think the amount of red in that room drained her life of color from then on.
she could move a thousand times and never leave that home.
i could say this a thousand times but you'd never hear it.
some things are pointless, especially after time.  
i hope you never realize what it's like to get a group of your family to clean up after your messes,
even after death.

they used to tell me that i try too hard to be grown up.
i'm always questioning, calculating, planning.
walking in shoes too big for my feet,
and then wondering why i trip.
sometimes i feel like i can't help it when i
fall
so
hard,
but then i remembered that i forgot to tie the laces.
i remember that i live in metaphors.
making excuses and avoiding the present.
i try so hard to prepare for the future
that i forget to fix what's happening now,
or even to be happy with it.
i don't remember to feed my cat because
i'm too stressed trying to figure out
how to pay for her next bag.
i forgot my "see you later"
because i'm choking on "goodbye."
i need you to help me grip onto
what's here and what's now.
i need you to hold my hand.
please don't forget that i need you,
even when i don't know how to say it.

i don't know what my father sounds like when he laughs,
laughs where his sides are splitting and tears are in his eyes.
i only know his grin, his slight chuckle.
honestly, i hardly remember his voice;
something about a southern drawl
gently dabbed on syllables
spit out between the touch of nicotine, wrapped
in paper, to his lips.
i know the clothes that i wear mimic
his choice in clothes, somehow.
i know he will not walk me down the aisle,
and this is my decision.
this is my decision, and it will break my heart.
it will break my heart only
because it will break his,
like genetics somehow link emotion
across generations.
i cannot let him run my life,
like pretending to own a car that
isn't in his name;
borrowed from the person who
washes it gently, details the inside,
maintains its running parts.

turning children into property,
it's like trying to take a house that
you used to live in, years and years ago,
but forgot you had the keys to.
you test the locks, and when the door welcomes you
in for the first steps across a threshold
you call it "home" again.
you forget that there is a family on the couches.
a mother cleaning the kitchen.
a brother fixing the shudders.
the house has moved on,
but cannot bear to close its door to you.

this is our relationship.
this is our dynamic.
it has taught me that it hurts to tell him no.
it is expected for him to not care what hurts.
it has taught me how to run from guilt and shame,
destroying past and future in fits of
self-destructive rage,
just to forget the things i've done
or are happening to me.
it's taught me how it feels for a heart to break
from forgetting pieces of someone it loves.

but this hasn't taught me how to fix it,
and i don't think he knows how to, either.