You are the black eye
I got in a fight when I was younger,
the empty space of a recently pulled tooth.
You are the almost empty soap bottle,
an itch I can’t quite reach.
You are the sound of church bells
on Sunday morning and the smell
of burnt bacon
after the cook got distracted.
You are the cliche of a poem,
the line people talk about.
You are the hum of a steady drumbeat
in the background of song.
You are broken,
and in pieces,
nearly a mosaic,
and you are everything an artist needs
to paint a masterpiece.

My garden is dying.
My flowers are wilting,
weeds are growing out of control.
There’s a few,
that are still holding on,
but they’ll probably be gone soon, too
because I keep watering the same flowers
that are already dead

the closest i've ever gotten to home
are the nights i stay up too late
trying to hack into the twilight zone
but only end up ******* fate
and maybe i play too much with death
but it's been three days since i last slept
and it seems like blowing my brains out is the only way i'll get any rest
because nights like these the rooms stare moving
and i swear to god the walls are talking to me
and they're screaming back everything i've ever told them
and spewing out the memories they hold
but what the ****, i trusted them so much, you know?
and this is what i get?
and oh my god the ceiling's bleeding
my hands are bleeding
there's blood everywhere
and i can't remember whose it is

Please remember,
that you are made
from the same thing
stars are made of.
And please remember,
that you are strong enough
to wipe out entire cities
of creatures smaller than yourself,
but that you are kind enough
not to.
Please remember to forgive yourself.
Remember your grandmother,
and how she believed in you,
much more than any boy ever did.
Remember picking dandelions
when you were little,
because you thought they were the prettiest flower,
even after your mother told you they were weeds,
but you kept picking them anyway.
Remember this moment,
right now, wherever you are,
and remember to treat people
like dandelions.

Brace for impact;
I feel you enter my bones
like a tidal wave
and I collapse under the pressure.
I feel you seeping through
the cracks of fragile minerals and tissues
and into my veins,
pumping through my body
like adrenaline.
And I can hear you,
pounding between my ears
like hands on a clock.
All you ever wanted
was a monument,
a skyscraper in your name,
something to be remembered by
once we both grow old and disappear.
I had anticipated
being many things to you,
but not once did I expect
to be your gravestone.
And it's been years
and everyone says you're gone,
but sometimes I can still hear you,
in the silence between each heartbeat,
"I'm alive."

Starting poems is hard.
Starting anything is hard, really.
I wish starting things
were as easy as nature makes it seem.
I wish it was a as easy
as the sun makes it seem
in the morning.
Also like the sun,
I wish I was the one
who gets to kiss your skin
and keep you warm.
I wish I was the bottle
that touched your lips
way too early.
I would have tasted better.
And I wish I was the gun,
and when you pulled the trigger,
I would have kissed your temple.
Ending poems is hard, too.

I swear humans are sponges
we're so fragile
and dry up so quickly
and I swear
we have enough holes in our souls
to plant flowers
But no matter how much we think we fill them
there's always one small hole
empty

and then we dry up