“Seldom we find,” says Solomon Don Dunce,
  “Half an idea in the profoundest sonnet.
Through all the flimsy things we see at once
  As easily as through a Naples bonnet—
  Trash of all trash!—how can a lady don it?
Yet heavier far than your Petrarchan stuff—
Owl-downy nonsense that the faintest puff
  Twirls into trunk-paper the while you con it.”
And, veritably, Sol is right enough.
The general tuckermanities are arrant
Bubbles—ephemeral and so transparent—
  But this is, now—you may depend upon it—
Stable, opaque, immortal—all by dint
Of the dear names that lie concealed within’t.

I sit and look out upon all the sorrows of the world, and upon all
    oppression and shame;
I hear secret convulsive sobs from young men, at anguish with
    themselves, remorseful after deeds done;
I see, in low life, the mother misused by her children, dying,
    neglected, gaunt, desperate;
I see the wife misused by her husband—I see the treacherous seducer
    of young women;
I mark the ranklings of jealousy and unrequited love, attempted to be
    hid—I see these sights on the earth;
I see the workings of battle, pestilence, tyranny—I see martyrs and
    prisoners;
I observe a famine at sea—I observe the sailors casting lots who
    shall be ****’d, to preserve the lives of the rest;
I observe the slights and degradations cast by arrogant persons upon
    laborers, the poor, and upon negroes, and the like;
All these—All the meanness and agony without end, I sitting, look out
    upon,
See, hear, and am silent.

If she only knew. Good lord if she only freaking knew.

She said that I was a major league player and she was just getting on the bench of recovery. She said she wouldn't catch up to the success that I am at but she doesn't know. How could she? She never listened when I spoke.

Our conversations were nothing more than her waiting for me to take a breath so she could say her bit.

I am not broken anymore she would say with happiness. As though she was the one to fix me.

I admit I am no longer shattered on the floor but that tribute goes to God. I don't live for anyone else because I want this to be the only hell I ever know.

What she doesn't seem to understand is glass never fits together exactly as it should and my rough edges still cut, still scar, still harm others and myself.

If she only knew.

Today I wrote a song about your teeth.
They are crooked and imperfect.
Just like this. Our hands. And these
songbirds are all liars. We haven’t learned.
Flesh memory is overrated. Last night
I felt the linen, and it whispered to me
nothing. Not even the shape of you
reminds me of happiness. What is the use
of these metaphors if they can’t
beautify you anymore. No longer as fierce
as the inferno I allowed you to become.
Drowning in bedclothes, trying to understand how streams of consciousness
are becoming bodies of water. Today
I wrote a song about your teeth. And I
read it aloud to the voiceless, and now
they know what love tastes like.