I hope it left a scar.
Like the metal gate on the farm to my left hand as I carelessly swung it open.
Like the hard dirt and rocks at my cabin to my knee as I came bellowing off a dirt bike when I was 9 years old.
Like the surgeon's knife to my upper lip in attempt to repair my birth-given defect,
no,
not that one,
that was to clean of a cut.
I hope it cut you deep,
and the wound was not properly cared for and got infected.
I hope you picked at it for weeks before you finally gave in and let it heal, and even then
I hope the scar of me will haunt you for the rest of your life.

East, they said,
and east we went.
Onward, upward,
to what they called "The Ruins" at the mouth of Emigration Canyon
A failed building project that left nothing but a few giant curved brick walls.
We parked our vehicles and trekked up to the top of the highest wall.
Cracked open a few brews, sparked a few smokes and gazed.
We gazed out upon the twinkling lights of the Salt Lake valley.
Our view extending to every point of every mountain top creating a giant bowl of glimmering city soup.
I took a sip of my beer, a drag of a Lucky Strike,
and leaned back, my focus slowly fading from the valley, and directing itself upward to the vast sky, obstructed only by a few purple clouds.
The stars were bright and visible that night.
Maybe it was the cigarette, but in that moment I felt remarkably lucky.
The small talk, and jokes made among friends,
The beauty of everything now in sight,
and knowing how it was once nothing.
The thought of every light we could see from the valley containing people, currently living their lives,
We pondered,
How many people are crying?
How many laughing?
How many dying?
How many being born?
Reborn?
Our lives are strikingly meaningless,
And how beautiful is that?
The coyotes howling in the distance reminded us that the land was not ours to keep,
only ours to visit.
We had taken in all we could, for the time being, of an illimitable world.
We ventured downward, west,
and back to our lives,
insignificant as all the rest,
and tried to hold on the the feeling of being above it all.
Being
Boundless

Whiskey to warm,
Menthol cigarettes to cool.
I don't ever want to leave my bed.
We are killing ourselves slowly.
We are already broken.

To anyone who has ever been lonely:
We are all the same.
Tell me,
Why are we unable to manipulate this to our advantage?

I'm slipping,
gripping for dear life,
what it is I hold so close.
I am almost
almost nothing,
almost something,
someone
somewhat stuck in your back molars.
I beg to be swallowed,
I've been chewed up enough.
It has come time to release this grip,
this grip that's been all I've known for seemingly millenniums.

I want my chance.
I wanted to bask in the sunlight with nothing but your company; I do not seek any more than your being.
I want you to see me shine, to thrive in my comfort zone, and soar outside of it; I want to quit the chit chat, I despise small talk.
I love long walks, and you would have never even known.
I don’t want to be looked right through, like my glasses reflect you and your choices and our voices fade into our own minds and neither one of us can conjure up a way to unwind and speak of our passions, our inspirations, our fears, and not just simple the weather.
Could it really hurt to test the waters? I am sick of questioning myself; am I trying to hard? Just give me a way to measure the depth of your interest, have we sparked a match, or do see me as this cesspool of unwarranted emotions and insecurities? Because I look at you and see so many purities, but I see the uncertainty as well. Yet, I still can’t get a read on what it is behind your shell.
Show me bits and pieces of yourself, and I swear I am willing to try and piece it together, but you’re giving me nothing but pieces of alternating puzzles - yeah, I have put together an entire cloud, but this, over here, looks like the ocean and this, this is definitely part of Mount Rushmore, and I’ve no ******* clue as to where any of those pieces connect.
I don’t know why I set myself up for such failure. I want to know you, but the mystery is your primary allure. I want to know what is beneath your trademarks, the dark parts of your eyes, your evident demise, but at the same time, I am terrified. I don’t think it could shock me, I can work with outrageous. But, I don’t think I could handle finding out you were mundane; a bourgeois creature.
Alas, I am stuck in this loop, of wanting all of you, but at the same time, none of you. Tell me, how does one keep a mysterious persona?