The snow was blowing among the trees. In large wet flakes it tumbled down.
My captain turned, as if to speak, but from his lips there came no sound.
A red rose bloomed there on his chest -staining dark the Wehrmacht grey.
I looked in horror as he pitched face forward to the ground.
“******” I yelled and ducked for cover. The copse of trees echoed the sound.

Somewhere out there he awaits; the Devil’s son, the cunning foe.
He’s stalked our party for three days yet leaves no footprints in the snow.
I served in France in Forty –one; before   these Russians were our foes.
I shiver but it’s not from fear; it’s just that we lack winter clothes.
I motion briskly with my right hand, I think the shooter must be there
my corporal nods and starts to move; perhaps he can outflank this man.

My soul is black for I’ve done some things;
  for which I once would have been ashamed.
I saw the Jewess try to shield her babe
as I placed them in a common grave.

This man out there, a warrior; he risks his life upon command.
He is clever, this one, he waits his chance.
Either its him or me that’s dammed.
The drifting snowflakes hide his breath.
But He’s still out there this I know.

My Captain lies still upon the earth
and is slowly covered by the snow.

We are soldiers who risk our lives.
We sacrifice for the Fatherland.
We dream of a woman and a warm bed
Never of Death’s cold clammy hand

My men cry out, the fox is flushed
The ****** has at last been found.

It’s true what they say of the bullet that kills you;
I never even heard the sound.

i have wasted so much paper for you
i have told strangers things i haven't thought about telling you
i have written poetry like
its a cheap substitute for therapy
and i've held the pencil so hard the lead breaks
when my hands shake too much to keep going
i have gone to all of these great lengths
i have written epics about the way you left me
i have written sonnets about how you came back
ive never shown you any of this in fear you will see how my handwriting slowly deteriorates into shaky lines and abstract complaints
in fear that you will make the connection that i havent spent one day free of you since we met
i feel like i have so much to say
and maybe im an expert on beating around the bush
or maybe you're just too self absorbed to hear me
i have tried every way to encrypt my words and say them without letting their meaning sink into your skin
ive got enough for a novel but i havent made my point
i love you
stop hurting me

its taken me too long to unstitch my hands and free every thought you shuffled and stuck inside of my head

one. i think you lost me somewhere between wanting to cross miles to get to me and forgetting i exist because at some moments it feels like you worked overtime to fix the abandon architectural artwork inside of me like i was community service

two. after you came and knocked down trees and shifted the tides, every ounce of clarity was able to mirror
your whimsical efforts of drowning me out with pretty girl phrases and only calling me when you were too high to choke out my name

three. i had something inside of me that was kept under glass and i let you behind closed doors and watched you destroy it
i let you build me up with toy blocks just how you wanted me, and i let you lose interest when you decided it was more fun to knock me down and listen to the noise i made when i hit the concrete

four. the Worlds Most Fragile museum was being catered to in the holes in my chest and if i was an armoire and you opened me up your name in red pen ink would spill out of me over thousands of artifacts and priceless memories that you've bubbled over and consumed

five. even as i write this, you'd think i would find a home in an elementary classroom by the way i can barely remember how to speak
and ive got no doubt that you went out with your usual bang
and when you left you took a goodbye that never quite delivered and all of my words with you

six. my grandmother told me insects sing, for months, the same song in hopes that they will attract a mate with their repetitive soliloquies and maybe that's my hope when i tell you i love you even when you hurt me, hope that maybe one day you will pick up the phone and echo my ache with a clear, sober melody that sounds like home.

im sure the insects will find someone who enjoys their neurotic patterns and im sure i will sleep alone in an uncomfortable bed only shushing the silence as the mailcart comes by my front lawn and pauses for a second as if it empathizes with the way i stand at the door.

seven. im always waiting for a manilla package addressed to me
containing every night i spent trying to be anxiously clever and overlooking your bad judgement and the flickers across your sentences where you were forcing yourself to care

eight. every night all i receive is the crickets and a reminder that the letters that spell out your name had become my own personal hamartia before i started whispering it in my sleep

nine. ever since we met you've infected my veins like you were a deadly back alley drug and there's something so addicting about wanting to fix someone and figure them out and work for their love

ten.  if you steal my expressions and bury them in your ground and stick a wooden stake through my last words in order to make sure i only resurface when your sobriety is fully compromised, i will, as writers do, create myself a new dictionary

the act of your name will become a verb: forcing time to scrub the inside of every part of me you touched like im a sold off garage sale item and you're trying to expurgate any emotional damage that might have been done to lower my price

the way the bugs echo will become an adjective for when i am too tired to go out and pretend that my feet arent sinking into the floor

the drilled-for-oil glass museum in my heart will become a noun;  the eighth wonder of the world, and i will continue to let people destroy it and piece it back together for the sake of art

the way you left me and the ferocity of how you stole every part of me i showed you will join adverbs and Aristotle's tragedy principles among people who created their own cloudbursts.

the way i wrap everything i've wanted to say to the back of your head as you walk away into a bulletpoint essay will become my new definition for poetry and i will build myself up from the ashes i will create from your destruction, i will sing my own songs and showcase my own museums and mail my own letters and i will **continue.

Please don’t let me be like my Mother.

Don’t let me be the woman
Who never gave me a second glance
Because whenever it came to children
She stopped loving at one.

Don’t let me be
The woman who gave her all to the first born,
But when it was me
She gave it all up.

Don’t let me be the woman who smoked
Half a lung into ashes,
Every night thinking I don’t see
The grey puffs rising to my window
Darkening my room
Choking me as it slowly became the air I breathe.

When I grow up,
Don’t make me marry a man
Who never loved
And lived for numbers upon papers
Caring more about his reputation
Than his own blood he weaved into
Us.

When I grow up
Let me teach my children
Happiness and what it is like to smile,
Instead of drilling into their brains
All the reasons they should cry
And drown in their tears.

When I grow up,
Don’t let me search for my dreams
At the bottom of a shot glass
Taking more and more
As I get drunk on false, temporary happiness.

Don’t let me come home to my children,
Telling them how useless they are,
Throwing things at them
And finally collapsing into a heap of hopelessness.

Please don’t let my children
Have a father who never even cared
Enough to remember their birthdays
Let alone save them from the nightmare
That was their Mom.

Don’t let me become
The reason my children cried at their reflection
Because beauty never defined them
The reason they refused to eat
Since the flesh on their body
Kept growing in their eyes only.

Never let me be the woman
Who found only the ecstasy
She bought through men each night.

Even then it wasn’t love.
Even now it isn’t love.
She never learned to love people like me.
But I loved her.

Yet it was forced,
I only saw the mistakes she made
Every time I looked at her.
Including myself.

Please, when I grow up,
Let me learn to love my skin
And suffocate in all the things that make me
Beautiful.

Let me prove to the woman who claimed
To have raised me up
That I will never make the same errors or ever be like her.

I’ll love, I’ll live, I’ll care.
Three things she never grew up to do.

When I grow up,
Please don’t let me be like my Mother.

I long for change
but refuse to do the leg work
to get there
I'll walk down the sidewalk
avoiding the same glares
I never acknowledged the ordinary faces
which could alter my local reality, so

No, I resign to be a stranger
My sober brother won't stop
moving on a day-off adventure
but just as I got outta bed to see what was up
The spot on the driveway was empty
nothing but a power steering fluid puddle, left
It's hard to turn, but he's gone

Anyhow
now I sit here resigned to make some armchair change
it's better than the bed
and instead of organizing this squalor
I work in it
My disgust calmed
by good use of my possessions
I found a scrap of rotting meat
only to find
it was the pit of a plum I ate
New growth from death
with nothing but an investigative mindset

Don't just listen.
Feel.
Because the answers don't always come
In loud preachings and audible words.
Sometimes they come
In the dark of the night
Brought by the silent whispers
Or the cold midnight breeze.
Sometimes your heart hears
More than your ears do.

What do you write to the saddest girl in the world?
Do you write about the beauty in the moon
The way its reflection
Stains the waves white?

Do you write about the way the rain
Falls on the surface
Of the water
And how it looks from underneath
Dancing with the oxygen
You exhale


Do you write about the wind
Tearing
Caressing
Green
Red
Brown
Yellow
Non- existant leaves?

Do you tell her
About your cheeks stinging
When the sky is grey
And how it feels to have drizzle
Falling across your closed eyes?

Do you tell her about the little boys
Who pick flowers
Just to see her smile
Or the girls who spend minutes
Writing her name?

What do you tell the saddest girl in the world?

Do you tell her
That everything is infinite
Or that it is necessary
For all things great
To end?

Do you tell her
About the flowers
You see
And the smiles
You can no longer count

Or do you tell her about the flowers
That lose their petals when she
Forgets their beauty
And the people who fade away
When all she sees
Is grey
Grey
Grey
Emptiness

Do you tell her
When you miss her smile
Or do you kiss the tears
Off her cheeks
And dance with her
Slowly
Across the bed
With rumpled sheets
And lines
And lines
Of sunlight

Do you tell her
That you love her
Without her sadness
(God, I hope you do)
But with it too

Or will you
Never tell her
The way she never tells you
And will you keep
The receipt
That she had written
About never telling the person you love
The most

How much you love them.