My dearest, you are my saving grace
and owe to you all that I am today,
all my heart, and soul, and my pretty face
you are the one who made me this way

Thank you for everything that you do
for giving up your life for mine,
always putting me ahead of you
for ensuring I turned out just fine

You've always done better than you could
even though the responsibility was left to you alone,
thank you for doing even more than anyone would
and for making our lives perfect at home!

I've walked around your world
like walking on thin ice
I've tasted your words on my tongue
hot and sweet, like sugar and spice
I felt your touch on my skin
soft, cool and electric
I've watched my life devolve
to plain, when once eccentric
I've spent my days with you
picking egg shells off my feet
I've spent my days without you
hiding from a pain that runs too deep

Girl, you're just too young
to see the mess you're making
of this life of yours, you've only got one
better make the best and stop stringing yourself along
Boy, you're old enough now
to know you should do better
by the one who lays beside you, greeting the day
don't pretend you don't see you're tearing her down

perhaps it was because she was too nice,
too willing to give you the world if asked
but she'd be better off with a backbone
for her you'll never thaw out your heart
just drop your weapons destroying her, boy
that's a start

I used to worry
that they'd send you away
to a life of imprisonment
because they hated you so
for no reasons they could explain
I used to worry
because their tread marks
were in our driveway anytime
they needed someone to try and pin things on
though you were never less than honorable
polite, personable, my genuinely good brother
I never used to worry
that they'd one up my worries
and send you somewhere further away than prison
I never used to worry that the forces
meant to uphold law and justice
to serve and protect
would walk blindly past the line
of no return, to botch their expected standards
while watching you slip away
I never used to worry
that there was an evil force within some people
that could destroy the glue holding our family
together, then again I was so young
so naive, to think that people were instinctively good
that people, having families of their own
would never purposefully tear apart another's
but I don't suppose they ever thought of me
and your kin, or beyond that need to bring you down
I never used to worry that the system would fail
allowing guilty parties to walk free,
to have families of their own; to not even recognize the fault and
to protect the ones who took you away
I used to worry that they'd try to send you
to a life of imprisonment, and in the end
they did send you away,
but it is a place where I cannot visit
and instead it is us, who love you so,
imprisoned in what we call life, where the fences are
the breaths I take, the steps I walk, the beats of my heart
the walls that confine me and separate me from the world
are the memories and lost time, and of only knowing you
through my childhood eyes
and the guards and wardens are the haze which clouds
my thoughts, unable to still hear your voice or see your face
in my mind
and my day of release will only come
when I walk through the gate, past the fences
to the afterlife, where my life will finally begin again.

there are things
that I find impossibly hard to describe
that make my day
that much more intolerable
like the first crack
that was made in my strong,
once thought invincible, heart
sustained from realization
you are too far away to come back
the second
when I knew I would have to learn
new things without you here to share it with
cracked
when I wish you'd have been around
to back me up, no matter what
cracked again
from seeing your classmates
living their lives
moving away, by choice
cracked
knowing that those other new families
started by your peers
will never include yours
cracked
my children will never know
what an amazing uncle they had
cracked
when my mind searches
and recalls only vague recollections
of your face, and smile
cracked
when I can no longer
hear your voice as it once sounded
cracked
every time I mess up
knowing I owe it to you, to do better
cracked
on the day you'd have been a year older
or the days you loved in the winter, on the snow
cracked
till there's nothing left to be cracked
and my heart breaks

dear subconscious self
what the hell are you doing?
you are starting to make it rather tricky
to hide you behind this veiled confidence
you've been spreading rumors again,
haven't you?
telling the lungs,
they cannot breathe without him
and the legs, to run when it gets tough
and the mouth to babble nonsense
and the mind, to shut reason out
Well, dear little girl inside
you're story telling has started
to affect the parts of my soul
that I lose when your rumors
are thought true
so please, stop chipping away
with your constant,
unfounded self hatred
for eventually if it keeps on this way
there will be nothing left on the outside
to hide yourself behind
and you'll have no one to blame but yourself

he is just an atom
and I am just the
rearranging electrons
I always got the negative parts
when I only wanted
the positive charge
of his nucleus
and his unattainable
concentration
strikes me down
that would make me try
so hard
to comprehend
the impossibility
of bonding with me
and laughed in the face
of his allure
as I swallowed the knives
of my pride
every time I let him
soft shoe dance through my mind
and let it hypnotize me
his mathematical ways
and my nano scale place
in his heart
how could a love so big
barely exist at all
in his eleventh dimension
too far out of reach
for my merely human
unintelligible
unquestionable
unrequited
love
there is no
binding energy
here