I can’t fix your brokenness
or heal those cracks in your
heart left behind from someone
who came before me.

I will not promise you stars,
or diamonds or forever.
These are things that
I simply cannot do.

Instead, I will write you
bad love poems on bar
napkins and sneak
them into your purse.

I will give you the first
lick of my ice cream and
the last of my fries when
yours are already gone.

And when it is two
in the morning  I
will read you children
stories in different voices.

I cannot promise you much
but I will love you the
only way I know how:
with every piece of my soul.

I want a home like that
of my childhood before
the world swallowed me home.

I want to be free like
a leaf that has fell into
a stream yet does not drown.

I want to love like a consuming
fire and I want to
be consumed in return.

I want to run away
and never look back,
yet still I want to return.

I want to feel whole
no longer filled with holes
that fill the empty with dark.

I want most of all
to no longer want,
to be at peace.

What is depression?
I hear them ask as if they
are a simple congregation
replying on replay to the pastor.

Depression is not sadness,
it is important to understand this now.
It is not a cloudy Sunday or
the earthquake that knocks you down
after your first heartbreak.

She does not just visit on the
weekend or on the bad days.
No, when she comes she makes
a home inside of you.

Together you go to every meal,
every classes, and every party
like the most beautiful couple
and she is a jealous lover.
How could she not be?

Now remember back that
depression is not sadness,
rather an endless empty.
a numbing vacuum.

And after awhile you
no longer fight her loving
embrace and start to hug back.
It is now time to make things serious,
to go to the next level.

You leave the others behind,
it is best if is only just the two of you
for how can they understand
when you stop talking for days.

They will call you distant,
wondering why you chose
to sit alone at meals
and no longer call back.

But above all as much
as you hate her you
will also lover her
because if she leaves too,
only the empty will remain.

The other day someone asked me
why I never asked that pretty girl out.

And I wish there was a simple answer
that could rest my soul,
but the reality is I don’t know how
to do this love thing anymore.

The truth is there is an empty
inside of me that some days
can swallow me whole and
how could anyone love that?

She is so beautiful and pure
everything one could possible
want, yet I am twisted and
broken in the most unholy ways.

So I never asked her out,
not for the fear of the
sting rejection may bring
but for the fear of loving.

We are nothing but lovers
of the night and her soft kisses.
The burning in our throat
is nothing but an ode to stars.
It is easy to forget
the empty when you
fill it with temporary burdens
that are borrowed from the day.
It would seem that one
can fall in love with a certain
kind of pain which reminds
that we too are human.
How could we not
when her kisses are softer
then any long forgotten
lover that once held our name.
Still day comes again
for the empty to return the burdens
and our lover to go away
waiting for night once again.

They asked me what
my heaven would look like.
At first I hesitated in
a fear of being blasphemous.

Then I said that heaven
would be a thousand
Sunday mornings with
fresh sheets and a pretty girl.

It would be that summer hit
on an endless loop
from the year we thought
would never cease to end.

Perhaps it would be
back on Lombard Street
back before my heart got heavy
and souls got dark.

Heaven will bring back
the innocents that was
lost, the same we thought
could never be returned.

Best of all heaven will be
you in a sundress;
young and smiling,
and completely free.

I have always been accused
of being a quiet man,
but within I am always
the loudest in the room.

The masses name me loner
or the shy boy in the corner,
he who prefers to stay alone.

But alone is a pleasure
I have never known.
Instead I sit with my
one and only lover.

She who awakes me
in the morning and
places me to bed at night.

When you see me sitting alone
know I am not alone
and know the quiet man
is not always what he seems.