A broken wreck
A blind rebel
So lost
So broken
Chasing rapids
Diving waterfalls
Only to end up in a
Vast murky
Ocean
And sink
                                                                                   Endlessly
To its cold, lonely depths

But He
Breaks the chains
That anchors me to sin
But He
Fishes me out
Of the dark abyss
And I
Rise
Rise beyond the surface
And I
Live
Live for the very first time

He waters down my briny filth---guilt
He wraps me in a thick blanket
With love in every stitch
He hands me a warm mug of cocoa
Overflowing with marshmallows
But He didn't even need to
How could He even want to

And then He welcomes me to His ship
Of formidable majesty and splendor,
Gives me a net,
And names me as a fisher of men
We sail
We fish
Through stormy seas
Vast oceans
Savage pirates
But all is well
All is great, in fact
For His ship is firmly established
A jewel made of iron
And He always knows the Way
Because He is,
He is the Captain of Captains
And I am His fisher of men

No, I am not a Christian, rather
I am a child adopted and chosen
I am a friend, He is my buddy
I am a follower, humbly obeying the Leader
I am a disciple, carrying my cross daily
I am an heir of the heavenly kingdom
I am a steward of the gifts that he gave me
I am a servant, loyal and faithful
I am a princess, set apart and of royalty
I am a citizen in but not of this world
I am an ally, no longer an enemy
I am a soldier constantly in battle
I am a conqueror, for He has won the victory
I am a slave, not to sin but to righteousness
I am an ambassador, representing peace
I am a new creation, gone is the old
I am a handiwork, a grand masterpiece
I am a branch yielding much fruit
I am a temple, the Spirit lives in me
I am a light and salt to all the nations
I am His possession, bought with a price too heavy

Kiss me into your favorite song
And watch me sing.
Dance with me maybe.
Let me fill your ears and pour over
Into your mouth so you can hum me out.

Kiss me into your coffee
And watch me melt.
Brew me in the morning,
Bitter and drowsy.
Feeling all the ways I swirl around your tongue
And soak into you.

Kiss me for each way I said I hate you
And watch me love.
Push me into myself
Then pull me back into you.

Kiss me all the shades of the rainbow
And watch me fall from your grace.
Beautifully dying and being dyed all the colors
That make me feel alive.

Kiss me into hands that shake
And watch me tremble.
Anxious ticks, fingers twitch,
Body quakes, nails rake.

Kiss me into eyes
And watch me dilate.
Swollen and crying
I see you

Kiss me as I am.
For I am many things.
And all of me
Is in love with you.

Her pale skins scabs over and grows back translucent.
She’s disappearing, but she glows like starlight.
It bursts from her pores, shining and silver and still.

Still, so still.

Inside she’s screaming, clawing at the nerves of her brain.
Spiders crawl across her arm.
She’s a prisoner in her own skeleton.
She breaks her skin, though she can’t break through.

Still, she cannot move.

Her body fades into transparency as the world looks on oblivious.
Look, class!
Look how she rattles at the cage of her bones.
Look how they shake and lock her in tight.
Look how still she sits, so still.
Look how beautiful she’d be if she smiled.
Let’s stitch one across her face and tell her she’s fine.    

Still, I watch her from a distance.

I can’t look away, but I can’t help.
God knows I’ve tried.
I kiss her lips, hold her wrists, try to tell her body it’s still alive.
I try to tell her that life is more than the bones which imprison her.
I try to see her, but she’s disappearing.
I try to hold her, but my hand passes through her like smoke.

Still, I try.

My counselor asked me once,
“What are your dreams for the future?”
A bakery in Seattle,
A book signing in New York,
Late night concerts in Philly.
But it starts with you.
In every dream you stand with me,
Hand on my back pushing me into my life.
When I see you, I see the next 60 years.
I kiss you and I ******* 30’s.
Waking up early to coffee and your lips,
My favorite combination.
I touch you and I feel my 50’s on your back.
I trace my hand over achy knees and wrinkles
Over our grandkids running through green grass
Past white picket fences.
And when I hear you say, I love you,
I hear my whole life in three words.
I look up and blink at my counselor.
Just like that,
You are my only dream.

I sat in my living room watching Modern Family with my dad and my mom mom
When my mom mom turns to my dad and says,
Todd I am so proud of you for not having any homosexual children.
Now I realize this could’ve been the moment I come out.
But instead of feeling like that was my open door,
I felt like someone had just pushed me back inside the closet
And slammed it shut.

When you think of a homophobic person,
You imagine someone who is mean and extremely religious.
But my mom mom is a kind and generous woman.  
Anyone can be homophobic.
I was homophobic.
Raised in a “Christian” household I grew up in a church.
My roots were in prayer and god was my sun.
I shamed gays and eventually
I shamed myself.

You always hear how people come out to their families,
but next time,
Ask them how they came out to themselves.
Because that is the hardest part.
Or at least it was for me.
I ripped up all my roots, blocked out the sun, and dug into myself
To change the parts of me I thought were law.
Things my dad had preached to my church
About gays being an abomination
And now here I am, the abomination he spoke so often of.

Once you start realizing your parents weren’t always right,
You have to start making your own judgments.
What do you believe in anymore if up to that point,
Every opinion you defended was one you took from your parents,
Passed down to you like character traits.

My dad and I are both stubborn
And we were both homophobic until
I started not just wanting to be certain pretty girls,
But I stared wanting to be on certain pretty girls.
I had to change every part of me that hated myself
And I found so much love in me that I never thought I had
And suddenly a lot of things made sense.

In a perfect world, my family would dig up their roots too.
Look to God and realize that
He is about love for everyone without the “no ****” before it.
God is not homophobic.
My family is.

Sometimes I stare into the night sky and I realize how small we are.
I look into infinity and
It doesn’t look back because
I am a spec amongst bigger things and smaller things
And life and death are everywhere
And what am I to a universe that
We, humans, the smartest life we know to exist,
Cannot even wrap our brains around?

And then I think about homework.
But how am I supposed to even think about homework
When the sky is always present above our heads
Filled with limitless possibilities that I can get lost in for decades.
I could waste perfect days lying in the grass day dreaming up anything,
But you want me to memorize math equations?

During the day all seems so hopeful and bright.
I think of the way your hair would move in the breeze and
I imagine your big eyes filled with wonder and curiosity
As you stare into the clouds.
Clouds made of the ideas people dream up during class
While their teacher tells them how to cite sources in MLA format.

And at night my fascination with the sky becomes
Less excited and more scared.
I think not of the way your hair would move in the breeze,
But of how your hair would move
While someone else tucked it behind your ear.
And the noise you’d make as they kissed your neck
Crimson lips, swollen with lust.

Somehow the stars don’t give me dreams,
They give me nightmares.
Of you behind my back,
On your back with other women,
Or worse men.
But you’re always there to calm my fears of betrayal
And kiss me back to reality.

This life is one that,
As far as I know, we only live once.
And we can’t waste it getting caught up in the what ifs of the past,
But we can waste it getting caught up in the wonder of what else lies outside of our grasp.
And we should ponder the unanswered questions of the universe

Because when we can’t sleep at night and
We can’t focus in class and
When we are drowning in the stress that comes with the human life,
We can look up at the sky, and remember
That we are all small.
Specs to the universe and

If the ocean can rise and fall with the moon in perfect harmony
And the birds can fly thousands of miles to warmth
And our dogs can always know when it’s time to eat
Without the ability to read clocks,
Then we can always find our way out of these messes we inevitably fall in to.

I never know any of the answers,
But this life is one worth living,
And I’ll spend it trying to figure it all out.
And I’ll never do my homework.

I stared down the street as your car gradually faded from my view,
You slowed almost completely to a stop,
And a tiny part of me hoped you’d stay.
But you kept going.

And that’s when I realized as fairytale like as this week had been,
Not everything in life can be a movie.
Even though an hour earlier we were lying in my bed crying,
And you kissed me really, like you were giving me a part of you to keep,
And you looked at me and said,
“I’m going to marry you someday,
And we’ll look back on tonight and it won’t matter.”

And we kept kissing like if we never stopped
Time would
To accommodate us.

And now the next morning I’m in my bed,
Wet face and puffy lips
Trying to forget you were ever here.
But my whole room is falling apart without you.

I woke up and there was puke on the floor next to me.
The lights on my Christmas tree blew out.
My body shook and I watched as the ceiling lights gave up too.

The hardest part was cleaning you up.
I sat in the middle of a ruin of you.
You left a lot here you know.
Four hair ties,
A cell phone cord,
A travel sized mouth wash,
An unfinished can of Coke Vanilla,
And me.

I felt like somehow if I picked up all your things and cleaned my room
It would be easier to forget you were ever here.
But I’m in bed writing this now and I can still see you next to me.
I can still feel your hands rub my neck.
And as I read this,
I can still feel your lips
And smell your perfume.

I took down all of our new year’s decorations.
I put away everything that reminded me of you and I still can’t stop thinking
Maybe if I had just begged a little bit harder,
Maybe if I had shown you how really desperate I was for you to stay,
You would have.

But you left me here in my little life
And my little problems came back
And your face suddenly appeared everywhere
In this little ******* town.
And I now know how perfect life can be with you,
And that makes living a little while longer,
Worth it.

The thing is
I’m not who you made me up to be
And I never claimed to be as good
As you think I am.
But you’re way better than you claimed to be.

And I, am the dirt under your perfectly manicured nails.
Like you taught me how to fly and I…
Fell.
You pushed me off a cliff and thought I would soar,
But I sunk.
Like you put me up so high and
Hey! I’m down here.
You’re jumping from mountain top to mountain top,
And I’m crawling through the valleys.

Like you love so deep and I,
Hate. Myself.
I hate myself.
I hate you,
For putting me on clouds with you and expecting me to float,
When we both know I only know how to fall.

Like you always seem so confused
When you look down at me,
But if you’re a bird then I’m,
Well. I’m not a bird.

And I’m not trying to bring you down,
But I can’t be brought up.
And I’m not saying you’re trying too hard,
But I am who I am.

You are smooth classical,
And I’m heavy beats.
You're brunch with the family
And I’m 10 o’clock microwave dinner.

Good and bad are relative.
Next to you, I’m a sketchy motel.
Next to the crazy guy on the train,
I could be a 5 star hotel

But the funny thing is how,
You can be so blinded by love
That you see diamonds
Where there is really dirt.

You see me as a sunny afternoon on the beach
But I’m just a cloudy day at work.
And I have grown to accept I'm just average

Now I need to ask you for a favor,
And I don’t think I’m asking for too much.
Will you please accept that I will never be
Your made-just-right afternoon tea.
But I would be happy to be
Your room temperature coffee after work.
But more importantly,
Your just below average girlfriend.

Here I draw semi colons on my wrist
Over scars that once were bleeding
To show I could have died,
But kept living despite my wishes,
And despite my best efforts.

Here I listen to people laugh
I tell them I’m scared of the pope,
Eating, the rapture, opening doors, and the apocalypse.
I don’t think my anxiety is funny.
Did I miss the joke,
Or is my life the punch line?

Here I fit into a mold of an artist.
While I laugh at the irony.
And I create my own mold of a person
With mental illness and poor drawing skills.

Here it all goes.
Life and love and my anxiety.
Seamlessly blurring around the lines on my wrist,
The lines of her body,
And the lines on this paper.

Here I am.
And here
I think I’ll stay.
Despite my wishes.