1) For every great skyscraper, there are petty fingers that built them.
I wonder if we were made the same way.
They were strong enough to raise a hammer, but not enough to raise a family.
I wonder if we were made the same way.
She is cold, and he is drinking, and this is our backbone.
She is alone and he is driving home too fast because sometimes you don't have to be in the wrong place to be looking for the wrong thing.
She is afraid and he is warm, this is the beginning spark of a forrest fire filled with broken glass shattering in broken homes with broken people inside on a broken piece of land in a city that has too much rain for someone to build an emergency room in. Everyone with a burden holds their confessions in their left palm and their beggings in their right and no one ends up having enough arms to hold each other.
2) One day the whole world will be in your hands too, and you'll see that sometimes darkness can blind you worse than the red glare the sun paints your vision when you stare at it with your eyes closed.
You will be brave, you will stand up straight, you will stop being royal when people stop painting Jesus with a purple robe.
Even the concrete asks the sun to make it a garden so try cracking your knuckles a little louder and maybe you will wake up as a mountain.
3) Autumn. When you wrote secrets on notebook paper and taped them underneath benches in the city park, you gave too many pieces of yourself to things that weren't made for holding that much weight.
But you said it kept you honest and there were never any reasons for me to ask you to stop giving away the parts of you I wanted to myself. It kept me humble.
4) I am alone
5) You are October in a green dress with a black mask around your eyes and you have stolen the breathe of that day. And I hope when you are 80 years old you feel a breeze sliding on the back of your neck reminding yourself of all the times it should have snapped in half during the moments of what should have been your hanging, how it takes you back to living life like you're always in the desert and stealing innocent people's money and smoking cigarettes beside rattlesnakes.
I hope you find a beach in the Caribbean that asks to be died on, I hope you learn to forgive people harder than you can cry on their shoulder. I hope you watch a sunrise that you spend the rest of your life thinking about. I feel like for that to happen you need your feet in the ocean or underneath a rocking chair, but I would settle for your bedroom.
6) But with you it was never settling.

When I died
Face down in the night
The ambulance
Parked outside

My friends
Much older
Carried me
Over their shoulders

Pumped full
Of something
On the couch
I felt nothing

They thought
I died
That night

In a sea
Of red
Barely breathing
Strapped to a hospital bed

They called
My Father
And
I never told
My mother

They told
My sister
She could have
Lost her brother

Morphine
Took over
And I
Went under

I should have died
Alone that night

God, I need to stop writing about you.

But it seems my hand moves with your eyes
forcing me to forge letters with its movements,
and the words you say always sounds like music,
so by the time I look at my paper,
I've already written sheet music to last eternities.

I even went to meditation seminars in hopes of
finding peace within body and mind to get rid of you,
until I realized that you left a trail of your DNA
on the surface of my skin after the way you touched
every inch of me; its particles leaked its way
into the crevices and grooves of my brain.

And God, I just want to stop writing about you.

gd

I visited your grave the other day, and it occurred to me that I couldn't tell you how I was doing.
I assumed you're doing fine, or at least I'd like to think so.
I couldn't bare to tell you that I've stopped believing in Heaven,
I couldn't bare to tell you that I've become the soil surrounding your casket.
I sat there in silence while my fingers went numb and I swear for a second
I could feel my soul sinking into the ground trying to shake you awake,
To tell you I need you. To tell you I haven't made progress. I'm killing everyone around me.
I wanted you to wake up for just ten minutes. I wanted to tell you everything I haven't been able to write nor say out loud.
I wanted to tell you that I'm okay and I wanted you to tuck my hair behind my ear
and melt these frozen tears off my cheeks and look me straight in the eyes to tell me that I'm not.
I wanted to sit there in your arms and scream,
Because every time I try screaming, I  fear that I'll awaken parts of me that are meant to stay unconscious.
But I've been meaning to think about myself for a second and-
I'VE BEEN SPENDING RESTLESS NIGHTS CLENCHING MY FISTS AROUND MY BEDSHEETS,
AND DIGGING MY FINGERNAILS INTO MY HANDS BECAUSE I'VE FOUND AN ADDICTION THAT I CANNOT TAME,
THE SIGHT OF BLOOD DOESN'T BOTHER ME THE WAY IT USED TO.
I'VE STARTED DOING THINGS TO FORGET.
I'VE STARTED LIGHTING PLANTS ON FIRE TO GET SOME SORT OF HIGH OUT OF LIVING.
I'VE STARTED BECOMING THE TYPE OF PERSON YOU TOLD ME NEVER TO BE.
MY PALMS ARE THE EYES OF HURRICANES AND DESTROY EVERYTHING THEY TOUCH,
WHY IS EVERYONE ACTING LIKE THEY NEVER SAW THE TREMBLING IN THE FIRST PLACE?
I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT SANITY IS AND I DON'T REMEMBER THE LAST TIME
MY HEAD WAS SILENT.
IT'S LONELY YOU KNOW, HAVING FIVE DIFFERENT PEOPLE TALK TO YOU AT ONCE IN BETWEEN YOUR EARS.
I MET SOMEONE THAT LIVES A BORDERLINE AWAY BUT STILL MANAGES TO SIT
ON MY PORCH AND WAIT FOR ME TO LET HIM IN.
I CAN'T STOP LEAVING DINNER TABLES WITHOUT PUSHING MY CHAIR IN FIRST,
I CAN'T STOP LEAVING PEOPLE WITHOUT SAYING GOODBYE.
I FEEL TOO FULL. I FEEL TO FULL OF FLAMES BURNING DOWN EVERY LAST CITY IN MY BODY,
I FEEL EMPTY. I FEEL LIKE IT'S SUNDAY MORNING AND I'VE POURED MY FATHER A BOWL OF CEREAL JUST TO FIND OUT WE'RE OUT OF MILK.
PLEASE DON'T HURT ME, I'M SORRY, I DIDN'T MEAN TO, PLEASE DON'T HUR-
I have a body made of one-hundred sheets of college ruled notebook paper that kids like me used to make scrapbooks out of.
I am a collection of bruises holding up photos of a Father's fist,
My hands were only made to hold those who feel empty when not holding a glass of wine.
Some days I am full of constant negativity and feel the need to rip grass out from the earth
and throw China cabinets to the floor to say that nothing stays pure forever.
I stopped thinking about myself for a second.
I sat at your grave and said nothing.
I was going to tell you all of this but I couldn't bare to tell you I stopped believing in Heaven.
The only time I ever saw you smile was on Sunday mornings.

From your Father,
When I grew up I lived in a small brick house that was cold in the morning no matter how many times your grandfather yelled at the fireplace, the world never let him dream, he had to earn it.
You will never meet him.
You will never be the small reminders and the soft tug on the bottom of my sternum helping me sleep at night, I will give you string and yarn asking you to weave silk and save me from the winter.
Your hands will be overflowing with apologies, the sink will always be filled with water that looks like it is pulsing at an open wound, and the gauze from your mother's gentle throat is never going to stop you from leaking out how sorry you are.
I was not raised to be what you need.
I am not going to love you the right way.
When you are 7 I am going to tell you that the way you carry yourself isn't tall enough, for your 9th birthday I will give you a mustard seed and a pocketknife and will ask you to grow cherry blossom trees throughout our back yard and in all the pastures of the city, and cut each of them down the very next day, and THEN I will tell you how to be a man.
When you are 17 you are going to cry so hard that God mistakes your mouth for the trumpets that were used to tear down Jericho and when your walls come apart I am going to color your heart with footsteps leaving the room.
I will show you how to miss a warm shower, how to pretend so hard your head cracks and your skull looks
like the coldest bowl of tomato soup I ever gave you.
You will not see that this whole time I have been staining your windows to see things in a better light, even if it is not clearer in the afternoon.
This is my blessing.
From your Mother,
I was raised with ***** hands and the only person who I ever looked at in the morning and loved back was the sun.
Your grandfather taught me how to ride a horse, and cover up a bruise, how to scrub blood stains out of my white blouses, and a whiter conscious, and how to grieve.
Oh how he taught me to grieve.
You will never meet him.
When you are 10, I am going to write down all the sins of your father on a piece of paper, slit your throat with it, and tell you that it's just a papercut, I will show you that faith does not move mountains, it simply makes them smaller.
You will stand up, shake the dust off your knees, and learn to clench your fists without worrying who will hear you.
I will try, but I will not love you correctly.
When you are 13 I am going to show you that what you see is not always on your side, you can love someone harder than you can stab them, but people are going to worry about ****** knuckles before they take a second look at a bruised heart, they're going to forget which one is more important.
I am going to tell you to forgive them, and I will never truly mean it.
Maybe I am sorry.
I am going to flirt with death until it blushes so hard that the blood from it's cheeks flows down to it's chest and gives it a heartbeat.
I am going to make you understand that GOD needs you just as much as you need Him, and there is power in prayer, in the way God might not be worth as much when people aren't giving Him their attention.
I am going to help you need less of the world, but a little more from people.
Your words will be full and deep, but never your pockets.
This is my blessing.