we are children treated as adults
(or it could be vice versa)
with no direction,
no hopscotch grid leading to the next stage,
shaking hands in place of patty-cake,
our no longer sticky fingers
cling to paper bills and grasp at plastic and cloth and metal and stones,
almost believing they are what identifies us.
like new toys, we indulge
in touch and feel and romance,
and other drugs too,
to numb our collective fear of the future.
our first day jitters have transitioned to a paralyzing fear of our last days,
and our tricycles have lost their training wheels,
and we take responsibility,
we learn to care more,
to care less,
we find jobs and alcohol and credit cards but never ourselves,
and we grow up.

I thought I'd found it
In your laugh like wind chimes,
And in your eyes that always found mine.
It wasn't mine to hold.

I used to believe it continued
In late nights in,
4 am,
Coffee and green tea.
And I grew so tired.

At one point I thought
It could be fabricated,
Manufactured by somethings that meant nothing.
I have yet to find it.

I believe, through fault of my own
I must have missed it.
It must have lay in every new beginning,
And in what I passed
While in its pursuit.

today is sunday. today is godless.
you know what they say: out of sight, out of mind, and lately i always seem to be hidden. under my own tongue, behind my own eyes.  i am three feet outside of myself, screaming again. i am six seconds behind, struggling to keep up with what i have already done. losing. i have forgotten how to occupy my own body.

today is sunday, and i’ve been drowning for weeks now.
i’m at the bottom of the pool, watching bubbles rise from my mouth. when will they come pull me out. my lungs are flooding, my vision is narrowing. i keep biting the hands that break the surface. rescue me. i keep pulling them under. don’t leave me here alone.

today is sunday. it’s always sunday.
i’ve been godless for weeks now. i am three feet outside of myself, watching bubbles rise from my mouth. i keep biting hands that have forgotten how to occupy my body. my lungs are struggling to keep up with what i have already done. flooding, losing.  you know what they say: don’t leave me here alone.
i’m at the bottom of the pool, screaming again.

dear god, please come pull me out.

on the night my uncle died, i prayed for the wrong person.

between the tears and the telephone static, his name was muffled, and i spent all night trying to save somebody who wasn't in danger.
and if god is real and a properly placed prayer can save a life,
then i am a murderer.
i was twelve. this poem isn't about me.
every poem i write is about me
(introspection is a nice term for narcissism),
but not this.

my uncle was fifty. he was a good man, gone too soon. it always seems like everybody is gone too soon,
i think when people die, everything that was bad about them is forgotten.
it eases the guilt of the living, i guess.
this poem is not about my uncle.

this poem is about my cousin.
my cousin found his father that night,
in a heap on the floor, convulsing.
he was 8, and he was bringing his father upstairs to tuck him in.
this poem is for matthew, who has difficulty speaking for himself,
because he screamed enough that night to last the rest of his life,
and maybe it's hard to dig up words without digging up memories.

this poem is for abandonment issues that will never have a chance for closure, and for the nightmares, and for two years of sleeping in his mom's bed to make sure she wasn't leaving too.
this is for too-young-to-understand, for every he's-just-gone-to-sleep.

young does not mean oblivious.

this is for every guilty thought that he will ever have. this is a poem to say that you couldn't have done anything. to say that you couldn't have known, that you couldn't have found him earlier and that it wouldn't have helped.
it broke my heart when you asked me to teach you CPR.
how you knew once you discovered the body he no longer occupied.
matt, i remember you saying that his eyes looked empty.
please don't remember them like that.
you were only eight.
he was only fifty.

i hope that you dont see his ghost everywhere,
i know you might.

on the night my uncle died, i prayed for the wrong person.

There is nothing below us that has not once been on level ground.
At some point or another, we will be below, and the things on top will just look down and think about
the Underneath,
just as we do;
just as we are.

And maybe the Underneath is not just dirt and grime and lost socks and extra buttons,
but the voices living Under your skin and the words that are sitting in the pit of your stomach right now. Maybe the Underneath is the butterfly that you accidentally stepped on and the tears you shed for it.

Or maybe, the Underneath is the only thing that is holding your surface in place.
Buildings are just cement over metal.
Humans are just flesh over bones; sinew over joints and glue.

But more than that, people are swirling nebulas of ideas, and sticky notes on lunchboxes, and of things that always seem to be just
On the tip of your tongue.
(Underneath it I suppose, if the mouth is to be blamed for a lack of noise.)

So, if skeletons are integral to our construction, and bodies but a tarp over a cage holding being, why are we so hesitant to peel our shells back and reveal our
Underneaths?

Under my bed, I have letters that I have written to you, bundled in twine and tape,
and I leave them under my bed so that the monsters there may have something new to read.
Who needs a magazine when you have blue ink from veins, spilling on page after page of i-love-yous,
spelling out promises and bribes and the worst bits of myself and of you.

these are the things that sit just

Underneath.

please do not publicize my spiral:
my dying wish, the epitaph i've tattooed on my chest.
please be quiet. i do not want to be a cautionary tale- a naked body on the edge of a highway; caked blood and stilettos
i don't want a story
let me fade. please, let me fade.
something to be exhumed later,
renamed after someone i'll never meet.
i want found-in-the-forest-please-come-and-identify
remains. a shell, a corpse,
but not a body
not something that held a person.

i want to distance myself from myself.

who are you really?

who are you once you are stripped naked,
beaten and hung in front of everyone you have ever had an idea of loving?

who are you when your name sticks in your throat like hot tar,  makes you choke and drown in dry air?

who do you think you are after every descriptor has been smashed at your feet
on the barbs of yourself you never wanted to uncover?

what would you have been if you had never seen a mirror?
would you love yourself more;
would you see yourself better?

what will happen to you when the world ends, but still keeps spinning, and all you have is blood and ***** spilling from your mouth?

who would you be without the walls of words that you have built to keep your soul from splitting out the seams of your body?

if nothing in your life had ever mattered, would you be what stands before you now?