Dear God,

I don't understand how you can love me.
I know that you do but it's difficult to accept because I don't love me.
I see every flaw, fear, and thought of mine and I'm disgusted, and I know you see them too.
So how do you not feel the same?
I can't understand your love, I am incapable.
I try to grasp, but I can't, the fact that you sent your Son
Who was both wholly man and wholly God and holy.
To die for me, a wretch with nothing but self loathing and rebellion in his heart.
For me?
I am Hosea's wife and yet you love me.
For who I am.
How?
How can you?
I know your plan is perfect
Yet I lament when my plan doesn't align.
But you love me.
Regardless of my thoughts.
Regardless of my actions.
You love me.

All I can do is praise you.
Because I am not worth your trouble,
But you hold me,
Guide me.
I am not worth a lamb's life
Let alone your Lamb's life.
But still that's what was done.

So my praise,
Is that,
You love me and use me for who I am.
Seeing what I will be.
Like the tax collectors your Son used.
And not for what I am now.
This mess.
My praise is that you see my weaknesses
You know my weakness and yet use me.

Your love is inescapable and undefined.
It's limitless nature knew me in Psalms.
Saved me in the Gospel.
Helped me in Acts.
And will be revealed in Revelation.

I am Hosea's wife and yet your love for me is true.

Do your tears reach for the floor once they meet your gently sculpted bones,
Or do they trickle down your cheeks and follow the leader down the rustic road they call your neck?
Do they kiss your collarbones the way I one day dream to?
Do you wipe them from their origin with your weathered fingers,
Or do you wait until they are kidnapped by the clothing you've begged to keep your body warm?
Do they ever leave your eyes at all, or do they hide behind your perfect crystals
to share a space with that beautifully complicated mind of yours?
Will I ever get the chance to see you wholly,
Or get the chance to plant romance in your eyes.
Will I get to allow the tears of joy to fall with grace,
Or wipe the tears of sadness before they stain your skin?
Will lie awake until tomorrow passes away,
Or will I sleep through my hopeless romance just to see another day?
--Ourfirstfarewell

You just couldn't do it,
And it was unfair of me to ask.
You were never invested
The way I was.
Your free spirit floated
Between relationships,
Swiftly sweeping in shadows,
Like it was haunting hour.
I was locked to you.
And you,
You were looking only to be free.

But still I wanted you.
At that point my body and mind had confused the feeling with need,
But as I was fed heavy doses of maturity
over the years
It was clear that need was not what I had felt
It was desire.

But to you I was latched
I clung to my idea of you
As if I was grasping the side of a sheer cliff.
Fearful that my next movement would take me away
From your face,
Your eyes,
Those lips,
That
Smile.

See it was never devotion I had asked of you.
But still my confused semblance of feelings was,
Hopelessly so.
And, you knew.
In fact, you used it to your advantage.
When you needed a shoulder.
You called me.
When you needed to talk.
You called me
When you needed
Anything
You called
Me.

And so, after you last disaster in love,
As we sat sipping on whatever red wine
You had yet to pour down your throat.
We laughed, and in between chuckles
You told me you,
"loved me"
and asked why there weren't,
"more guys like me."
Misstepping what I believed to be an opening,
I asked why we couldn't...
Why it wouldn't workout...
Between us.
Instantly sobering you.
A feat in itself.

Between stutters, you managed to make your point.
And through a fog of
I love you, but I'm not in love with yous
And the serrated haze of,
I just need you to be my friend right nows.
I knew.
I knew that I would never be unchained.
I knew that things had changed
I knew that I'd always be,
Second place.

It's too late for me
So heed the warnings I share
When my love clouded mind
Was impaled upon her reality
Her choice was someone else but,
It was more than that
Her choice was to use me
I let myself get used
Still she stole my heart
Cardiac larceny enacted upon me.

This was my choice I say to anyone that will listen
She, the object of my affection, finally released me
Accompanied by the black eye her father gave her
After her mother slammed the door in my face
Instead of being broken together
We mended separately
We grew apart, but in truth
I learned a lesson that day.
I can't allow that pain again
I won't

Once the flood waters erased
What I thought we had
What I thought we were building
The aftermath brought clarity
She never cared like I thought she did
And I cared more for her than I did for myself
So, don't get lost in love
Sometimes it's hard to find your way back
To yourself, to protection
To naiveté

You laugh because of the jokes I tell, but
I laugh because if my thoughts linger I may never laugh again.
So this is how I hide

I hide in my humor
In every joke
In every chuckle
Every time I poke fun
I'm hiding
I'm hiding how I think
How I feel
How I can't stand myself
The way I look
The way I talk
I'm hiding
On Shakespeare's stage
I play the role of a clown
Hiding tears
Hiding my fears
My make up is camouflage
Hidden by white paint and a red nose
Convincing others I'm fine,
I laugh, I joke
I hide.

Commitment unanchored, floating unchanged
Love forever escaping, like I'm dutifully chained
Immersed in excuses, Emoting motives i motion
Bound by fears of thoughts From the depths of this ocean
No Tredding but sinking into self made regrets tied
And blindfolded To this mast of my lies
"No it doesn't matter"
"I'll find someone someday"
"Someone will love me I gather"
"I'm all right, the pain, it fades away"

They say before making rash decisions
One should count to three
Well once, I almost touched it
Twice it was within grasp
Third time the charm of my broken heart slipped out of sight
I am loves whirlpool

On the eve I die alone
Don't morn me
simply delete me from your phone
Remove my contact info erase all pics and tweets
Don't simply RIP me
Or shout me out on FaceBook statuses
When I'm gone ignore me
Go back to your regularly scheduled programming
Let me slide into oblivion
Where I resided in life let me rest in death
If it mattered that much surely I would have known
I would have sensed the emotional necessity that I placed in hearts
That I etched in minds and lives
So let me slip to slumber
Cast out blindly on the pyre
With backs turned don't mind the blaze
Embrace your loved ones and hold them tight
Remind them that to love and lose is to lose at best
And to be stolen from and assailed at worst
But still warn them of this plight
And when I lay down that eve
Don't wish this soul goodnight.

Life breathes
Taking breath from laughter smile and embrace
Exhaling sorrow loss and pain
Life shines through
Through overcast sky
Through shaded arbor canopy
Life grows
First by inches
Then by feet
Then after traveling miles
Life dies slowly
Gasping, reaching, bleeding
Life's tourniquet is love
I'm bleeding out

Perhaps love should have its own pronoun
With me being so unfamiliar with the feeling it seems that the pronoun would at least be more respectful.

Maybe it needs a more formal title
Like Mr. or Ms.?
So that I can convey my respect for it as an emotion
As well as our unfamiliarity with each other.

Should we agree on the gender as a whole?
Would it be confusing if I used them interchangeably? As in,
"Well I thought I was in Ms. Love once but it wound up only being infatuation."
Or
"I saw that she's in Mr. Love with the guy who is great at that one thing again."

Perhaps Ms. Love isn't for me to know,
It's been so long since we were introduced.
Maybe we'd hit it off next time though?
When Ms. Love and I meet face to face.
And maybe that next time we'd go for a coffee?
And then sensing her willingness perhaps a follow up meeting
Sans interview.
Where we could share stories
And utilize our first names
And then she would tell me of her dreams,
And I would interpret them for her.
Only to have her become super clingy
And ask for a ride home
And then force me to listen to hours upon hours of incessant babbling about everything and nothing at the same time.
And have her repeat the same stale story over and over and over again
Only for her to forget the ending to the only joke that she knows mid punchline.
Then again
Maybe I'll just stick to formalities,
Ms. Love.

I thought we'd see the sunrise.
I thought we'd weather the storm.
Does it matter what I thought,
Since now you're gone?
Lost in a sea of everyone
You, my message in a bottle,
Float aimlessly away.
The sea closes around me.
Still, perched on my island,
I hope for a glint from your rim,
More than the beauty of the next sunset.
And, as your gorgeous glint passes over the horizon.
I beg the tide to change.

On our walk today,
You told me you loved him
And I vomited,
In my mouth,
Just a little.
Forcing the putrid liquid back down,
I feign support.
"Really that's great?"
Are the words that escape.
Replacing the aftertaste--
Of the ones still stuck in my bile.
Ones tasting like,
"Why can't you see my love?"
and
"What does he have...
That I don't?"
My emotionally caused nausea
Goes, thankfully, unnoticed.
As you are still lost,
In thought or lust.
I can never tell.
As we continue walking,
My stomach calms.
We acknowledge life's beauty,
In trees, in birds, in clouds.
While I am forced
To disregarded its greatest,
You.

Yesterday I lost my pain
I lost my soul
I played the game
The game I played it wasn't fun
It had no challenge
It's name was "Numb"
It required nothing from anyone
The players played
We were never done
See the game we played it had no end
Because with feeling gone
We needed not attend
To emotions to others or disturbing events
Instead we just stared
Each inside our own fence.
The fences were high but none of us cared
Apathy encompassing
all we once dared
To laugh about to cry about To make our heart beat
We were numb to it all
Giving way to the bleak
But the fences did more than save us from ourselves
They separated us from each other
Which was something of a hell
Because protection is one thing and loneliness is another
The game we were playing made us
look and say "Why bother"
When really what it did was keep us from healing
Because without other souls
What's the point of coping or dealing
We lost interaction we lost hugs we lost smiles
Cursed by our own choice
Our fences kept us in our files.

If Chicken Little's scare tactics are true
I would do anything to catch the sky for you.
I would hold that sky just as long as I could
Whether you loved me or not I swear that I would
I would lift it until I could hold it no more
With arms and legs shaking because it's you I adore.

The sky couldn't crush my love for you dear.
As you escaped danger I'd tell you through tears
That "You were the one that I held in my heart,
My one and only a pure work of art.
You never knew this but that makes it okay,
Because if it's my life for yours, well that's one debt I'll pay."

My love wouldn't save me or at least I couldn't be sure.
Like the sky on my shoulders it's something I would endure.
Your love wasn't for me something I just couldn't own.
But now the sky is too heavy as I let out a moan.
"I'll see you again my love, maybe in a dream with a kiss."
As the sky falls down on me I'm glad it ended like this.