I looked at your name in my phone,
the picture and last post
from your Facebook account
sent to and from space
on transmissions and airwaves.

I have a hard time remembering
the last time I saw you - at a bar,
the Blackhawks and the Bruins
making history on some LED screen,
while we sipped on cheap beer
and reminded each other
that our jobs aren't that bad.

A wise man said friendship
needs constant repair,
like your old red Jeep,
always rattling and clanking
for one reason or another.

And I realized tonight how things have changed:
that we're not growing apart, just growing up,
or maybe it's both, and maybe it's okay.

I found your flaws first:
your thin, wispy hair,
the arch in your back,
that slightly crooked nose.

And you found mine:
following a girl who took my heart
and the air right from my lungs.
She'd wring me dry
till my veins were scarred purple,
caked with pale red dust.

While you and I laid on the floor
in the dark, planning
our escape to California
as we had always done,
I realized the mistake I made
by not loving you first.

I look at the legs of older men
Aged, with their imperfections
showing more visibly every day.
Clustered veins bulging
like roots from a tree
climbing from under the dirt.

I look at the bodies of women
who have lost their youth
from passing years and cigarette butts.
Their faces sagging and folding over
pressing lines into the skin,
a new flaw every year.

And I'm haunted that one day
my body will be decrepit and tattered
like the rags of a skeleton's suit,
and I wonder who will love me
when I have nothing left to show.

I opened up a Men's Health
as awkwardly as I was sitting
in that cold, dry room
filled with cheap leather chairs.

"7 Steps to Being Confident,"
Only seven, he says.
The first read, "Love Yourself."
Not a moment, I whispered Nope,
frightened by my instinct.

I'd like to see you try
I threatened, tossed back
into a memory of a failing roof.

Divorce is a landmine
that twists and tears off your leg.
You'll stand after a year,
but you'll never walk again.

It’s an endless photo album
that you can't keep closed up,
locked away in a dusty attic.

All my wars raged in a single year.
One-legged and trying to run away,
I couldn't dare love someone like that.

I learned to hate when I was 10
and studied my flaws first:
frayed and wispy hair,
weak and bony shoulders,
and a smile more crooked
than old, crumbling floorboards,
(a calloused thumb to blame).

When my only few took to rushing out,
like blood from an open vein,
I wasn't surprised: Everybody leaves,
and why wouldn't you?
Soon my house would have
one less body, leaving alone
to sleep in another empty bed.

When I was 16 I tore myself apart
on the bathroom floor at 4AM.
I knew it was my fault
that she didn't love me.
I saw every reason in the mirror.
I chewed my lips to blood and scars
and tore my brittle hair from its roots.

I studied my flaws like a science,
measuring the chips and stains
on my teeth, still crooked
like an uprooted house.

In the halls of my first school
I passed bulletin boards
trapped in locked glass cases.
They reflected my bony shoulders
and awkward overbite.

I passed those mirrors every day
to judge the way I walked
and carried my books
about Heaven and Hell.

I wondered how to make myself perfect:
Maybe if I changed, they would have stayed.

They teach you Hell is a fire
and the endless roar of burning souls.
We'll be surrounded by murderers and thieves
all suffering the same eternal anguish.

But that's not what I see:
Hell's flames are full of company,
countless charred bodies that say,
"We're all here, don't be afraid,"
compassion you'd only find in Heaven.

But there's no Hell that burns.
It isn't climbing flames
or smoke-filled lungs.

It's exile and solitude:
It's family and friends
fading from your reach,
rushing out like the house
is burning to the ground.