I specifically remember being told that I can’t prosper without picking myself up after failure.
As a four year old incapable of coloring inside the lines I thought they had been talking about the array of scribbles and mismatched shades in my coloring book.
By the time I turned ten I began to think they had meant my first F on the homework assignment I couldn’t make sense of.
Then when I was thirteen and tripped in front of the cute boy in my Algebra class I thought the two could link together hoping I still had a chance,
but at fifteen and chewing on the eraser end of a mechanical pencil despite the orthodontist telling me I’d ruin my braces and the tutor across the desk thumbing through my failed fall exam trying to see where it had all went wrong, I concluded that education was the failure I were to bounce back from.
But I was eighteen and moving into the dorm of a college I had reluctantly listed as my “safe” school because my advisor told me to be safe and safe didn’t seem so bad with my GPA so I told myself I could succeed with a well-paying career.
Years later as a twenty five year old and employed with the third job I swore would work and living in the apartment with broken blinds and stained carpet along with the man that gave me a shiny ring promising forever I could still remember the F on that homework assignment fifteen years ago.
When we got married I was twenty seven and I broke a plate at our wedding when I felt suffocated by the lace white dress that I later decided to trash but not the plate for its “sentimental value” and ability to remind me when we had our first kid to whisper the words of defeat and inevitable glory even though I never fixed the plate nor did I try to and it just sat there and I’m not sure why it sat there but
I was forty one and divorced when I picked it out of a box mentally flashed with the expression on my tutor’s face figuring out where it all went wrong and why I couldn’t figure out where it all went wrong. It was an endless string of questions from “I wonder what wasteland my coloring book is rotting away in” to “what the hell was the cute boy from Algebra’s name” wandering to “why didn’t I ever glue that ******* plate together” and these tears fell that I swear were the shape of question marks.
Later my daughter was eighteen with a 3.9 GPA and at her graduation I saw the man that gave me the shiny ring ignorant to the meaning of forever and I couldn’t tell anyone I only had a year to live but I did tell my daughter I loved her everyday even if it were in my head as the year passed.
I was forty six the day I fainted in my kitchen and there was cheap superglue stuck in my nails and one more discarded piece that would have completed the broken plate that wasn’t so broken anymore even when I felt broken myself and my daughter wasn’t in her “safe” school and the one man I loved was remarried with a step son who tutored kids that failed their exams which made it seem like a beautiful day. It may not look like it, but I did prosper and I did pick myself up after my failures, to the sun I colored purple to my first F to the broken bracket in my braces to my sucky GPA.

However, I did remain unprosperous from this unfinished broken plate. That, itself, strangely remained my biggest failure.

-Mars S.

We cover our footsteps
with grapefruit and lye

forget me knots
anchor my wrists to rotted bedposts

there are purple streaks across your mirror

indecision couples with doubt in the dark and
you see me for the first time

(I wonder what I saw in you then)

lightening tangles through the trees
while your shadow engulfs the front porch

I can still feel your shoulder blades through the thin thread of your shirt

i am bare feet on the stairway landing, i am messy hair and high ceilings

you are a voice full of sleep and you are calling my name from the bedroom

Upon a birds feather,
in this stark weather,
he rises into the sky with wings.
He blocks out the sun,
I hear the silent hum,
and all the world sings.
As I feel his embrace,
I see his face,
and wipe a tear away with a sigh.
All I see is death,
there is nothing left,
and with that I finally die.

People tell me I can become whatever I want to be
So I did
I became a drug
So sweet on the lips
So soft to the touch
Taking the strongest of breaths away
One kiss and you're addicted
You will go through withdrawals
Because there will be days that my lips will no longer touch yours
There will be days my touch will not meet yours
You will fall to your knees when I cry
So let me tell you
I am nothing but trouble
Yet you think I'm so great
So riddle me this
Is the trouble worth the disaster that follows?

his mother told him to stay away from the heartbroken heartbreakers for they might have straight hair but they hide twisted grins

-Mars S.

I carry the world on my shoulders, my back about to break. Determined not to let it drop, as the ground will often shake.

Earth is angered by the way, I sit here always kneeling. Pressed between the land and sky, my mind is always reeling.

Wind is my best company, sweet caresses to my skin. Soothing away my sorrows, since calamity did me in.

Light radiates and fills me with warmth, my heart always aflame. But when darkness begins to set, the shadows say I'm to blame.

I carry the world strapped to me, a vow I cannot break. Sacrifices made for greater good, praying for souls that are at stake.

Every day people astound me and I don’t know why.
They’ll astound me util the day i die. Why?
Don’t get me wrong, but where are the important people,
I wouldn’t know one if I met one. I’ve never met one.
But they’d be all that much more special if one appears to me ever.
I thought I found one once, then twice, and a third time, but before long they fell to ruin under the weight of themselves, they were abnormal and reality was normal, always clashing, and crashing, and bashing heads with each other.
I cry, oh how I cry for them to come back to reality where I am trapped. I see their reality and they do not. I wish I was like them. I wish I couldn’t see their faults and mine. As I slip away and their eyes glazed with rose pedals, I let out a shout! “Take me!” but their grins grow wide with sweet eyes and they drink my tears while I cry for them. I am sunk like a forlorn ship in the storm long ago. Like the sorrow they write about, I am that reality without readers. Unbeautifully broken. My story is worth not their hearts.

My eyes still close dreaming of you.

I've spent my life in the river's ebb and flow
Some days spent fighting the current, others just floating along
But now my river has no current, and I no fight
I'm stuck in a lake now, with only my hope
Most days I hope I don't drown, others I wish I already had