Within each of us is all the places we have ever been to, except they are still, and empty, and always too cold, and for now, you pretend to believe them only when you feel exactly like they do.
You wake up again with the rain coloring your windows and you do everything you possibly can to be still and simply hear it.
I listen for you the exact same way.

Even in our slumber when we are too tired to see, the world is ever changing, showing us more and more as we look. In the sidewalk, and the dinners you had at a young age that were filled with people and beautiful china set before your hands (but always without sound) you found all of the ways to be lost and have been looking for a way back home in every person you meet.

Even the rain, the way the world forgives us, the way the world exists in its most innocent form, is only present long enough to remind us that all this place will ask of us is to seek the substance of its composition.
And it sits there falling on your window, as if there is always a place for things.

The world began slowly, step by step, like honey dripping off its comb.
The world began like it knew how it would end.
And on Sundays when your feet brush against the wood floor on your porch, and you sit there peeling oranges with the wind inbetween your fingers,
you find it.

a car u-turns
in an ill-lit street.
hemlines measured
in inches
or feet.
a door leaves cheek
bones
lilac-blue.
something ever-borrowed
it's nothing new.
a downy pillow
held over the face.
a secret
half-packed suitcase.

Despite what you have been told, God is more absence than feel, but who am I to tell you they are not the same things.
It's kind of like, no matter where you are, or who you turn in to, you are always the place that you come from.
And it took you awhile, but now you are here.
You are in the place that took you away by taking you anywhere at all, and this is why: everything that has ever been made was supposed to save you.
And if you believe this for even a moment, then it becomes truth.
That's all we have, all the things singing in their own ways.
Their voices following you wherever you go in hopes you will add to them.


A lot of people will tell you "life begins at conception" or "life begins after....." as if life is something that stirs in a sleep after a certain amount of time.
But you know that this can never be true.
Not the life that you understand easiest, because there is much to be said about it, but at its core, at the place where you lose the ability to break it down any further, we see that life reflects the fragments of the thing that consumed it most.
And that which consumes life the most, that which you have been able to call yours since the beginning is divided between two things : death, and everything singing in it's own ways.

There is so much blood
It fills in the cracks of the rubble that covers the city like cement mixture.
It takes three shots for him to die.
They ask if there is any rope to throw to him as if he is a child on a lilo who cannot swim.
They cannot bring him back to shore.

It is four thirty in the morning
I am praying.
Please,
Stop killing them.
**** the war that lies in the ink of printed money.
Do not let it resurface.
You have made worms meat of that man who was searching for his son.
The children cannot find a home in either of your houses.

Now, father and son are turning into statistics on the other side of television screens
And I wonder how anyone can expect me to sleep.
We live in different time zones
But I can feel the pain in the oxygen I breathe
It has settled in the air of every nation.
My lungs are red.
There is so much blood.

I wanted to ask whether you liked being found in
Back street alleys and empty beer bottles
But you were never conscious enough when I saw you
So I just went home and drank whisky and said a prayer
Hoping you’d get some decent sleep

I know you live in that crumbling house with those strange twins
Because your real home doesn’t hold much of a family anymore
I understand
You give me the sweetest, saddest vibe
So much so that when I touch you I don’t want to let go

I know I’m a cliché
You told me to never make you into a poem
You said you didn’t want to live forever through words
But I’m afraid I’ve written a novels’ worth about you

You wear a halo of dead dandelions
And t-shirts that are now far too big for you
You need to eat
You need to live

Go to Germany and drink beer
And take long train journeys in the sunshine
Soak up all the warmth you can find
Wear your sunglasses, smoke your cigarettes and take everything you can.

Away from her is when you feel her the most.
You do not know how this is true, but when we are confused, the only thing left to do is find a way to understand.
So you looked for her; in drainpipes, in places that shined too brightly from the insides, in quiet dinners, in all the street corners that smelled like the flowers sitting on her front porch, and in the end, you feel so much smaller compared to how heavy the world has always been, even from it's beginning.
How could anyone grow while living on a place that does not realize how vital change is?
From the moment you came to being, from the moment you experienced so much light and hands and whispers and beauty for the first time that all you could do was cry as hard as possible, the wind has been pushing against your feet, trying to sing in all the places that cannot hear.
We see the still surface of a lake, or the deep **** of the ocean, and we know it is ok to jump in, and we know we can not be in it forever, and I believe you to be my favorite body of water.
We know that all the things that had a beginning, no matter their importance, no matter their size, nor their texture, all have an ending.
If there was no ending, life would have nothing else to offer.
I am writing this to you with my Mother's favorite pen, I hope you can feel the gentleness in everything you read from now on.
The world is a constant apology, when we tried to learn about our nature, we confused giving and trusting, and we never realized it. A year later I'm learning about true forgiveness, the type that doesn't ask for anything, the type you had when you were still a child.
You were singing to me and I was peeling apples and I realized that the only thing we really end up missing the most is ourselves.

We built cathedrals on street corners
under heavy orange lights
cascading down our faces.

I loved your imperfections:
a narrow, twisted spine,
a long, indented nose
and a shrill voice slicing through
the midnight summer wind.

I'd love you forever
in the sagging bench
on your thin front porch,
where I'd spend eternity
tracing outlines of silhouetted trees
covering soft, flaring streetlights.

We burned through hours
recounting the wounds from our past.
Every kiss was a lightning bolt,
and cracked like raging thunder.
We felt a violent forgiveness
exploding like stars in the pits of our chest.

Sometimes I find Jesus in the left over sugar of coffee cups
As if he was waiting for my bitterness to go down fighting
Until I’m left in a kind of sweet serenity
But it doesn’t last long
I think God knows I’m ******* terrified
I tell him enough
My God
I’m scared of life
Of war
Of peace
All of the **** and beauty and pain in-between those
And since I’m in pieces I think he already knows
Now, I’m not catholic
But if that box can make me confess everything I’m scared of
And all the things I struggle to tell you,
Then throw me inside.
Lock the door.
Let my watery eyes do the talking.
Call it art.
Make an illusion out of my anxiety.
Call it magic.
I always wanted to be my own kind of magic
But now I’ve just got car crash eyes
A heart of fire on the m25
All going in parallel lines
to you.
I’ve been left with a bad sense of humour
Because the burn took all the fun out of me
I am a shell now
And someday
A child will pick me up next to the shore on a winter’s morning
And without warning
Will make a trinket of my bones
Of your bones
Of ours?
Maybe then God’ll throw me a sign
He could knock me out with it
I wouldn’t blame him
I wouldn’t mind
But I think you know, sweet boy, that
We will always be the ink stains on an artist’s palms
And a puzzle of rough bits the sculptor doesn’t need anymore
And I’m trying to find a way to feel like my disillusioned existence is ok
It’s going to be ok, I tell you
My God, I need to be ok