When the waves are pounding
and the winds are shouting,
trembling in the shadows,
you're crying out.

I will awake from my sleep
and call out to the storm.
Do not be afraid,
I will silence the waves.

Be still,
I crafted the oceans.
Peace, be still,
I set the wind into motion.
Be still.

*m.w.

do you ever wonder
about the difference between
looking at something
and the hallucination created
when looking past it?
if you look at your hand
it's all you can see
but if you look past your hand
there are now two of them
sometimes it's hard for me
to remember which is real
it gets me thinking
about how my father
used to wake me up
in the morning by rubbing
his stubble across my face
i spent my 11th birthday
under the assumption
that he might come back
if i drank his aftershave
like maybe if i could turn blue
if i could be his favorite color
on our bathroom floor
he would forget why he left
the paramedics were all sobing
as they pumped memories
out of my stomach
i coughed up the day the post-it note with your new address on it
burned a hole in our refrigerator
coughed up the day
the divorce papers came
and my mother
took a baseball bat to the mailbox
i've been choking on the splinters
for 17 years
it's been 17 years
since the last dinner plate
exploded on our dining room wall
17 years since my mother
started accidentally setting your place at the dinner table
17 years since italian night
at the restaurant on the corner
where the juke box
spat tired music
and like so many other things
it stopped working when you left
i guess it's no coincidence
since the juke box went quiet
that the cds in my car
only skip on "i miss you"
i've been hemorrhaging memories
for so long
and now that i'm looking back
i can no longer tell
the mirage from the truth
sometimes i swear
you showed up to my graduation
and last time
i was at your apartment
i can't remember
if the imprints of my hands
are in clay hanging on your wall
or if they were left in the mud
the day god had the audacity
to let it rain
or maybe it's like the time
i saw someone crying on a bridge
now that i think about it
i can't remember if it was me

"There is no poetic beauty in pain."
I am learning this slowly.
My hands still shake when it's past 2 in the morning
and breathing isn't easy most nights.
I am not poignant with my words
and some days it's hard to get out of bed.

This is my adolescence:
A tangled mess of dismantled almosts
and empty promises scribbled messily on the back of restaurant napkins.
It's stolen kisses in sleepy coffee shops,
failing chemistry,
driving recklessly,
and staying up late on lonely nights to watch the sunrise.

There are days where I'm convinced life shines
with a brilliance unknown to me,
so I continue on and live for those days.
Those days where breathing comes a little easier and I remind myself
that everything happens for a reason.
I hope you find these days where all you know is basked in a vibrance you've only read about.

Live for those days.
Live for me.