How could you love yourself that night
When garbage dumpsters lined with arsenic created fragments of lifeless skin,
As it held her in place while you shoved all your self-worth inside something so personal,
As each damaging push And release roared with a decaying boom that awakened sleepers from the metallic snare drum rolls,
As you crushed her ribs and memories that she clutched in her balled palms.
Her flower petal eyelashes wilted with tears,
Her fingers whitening from aching pain and struggles not quite powerful enough.
Her neck screaming as she bangs her head on the moldy sheet metal for distraction.
Her mouth sock-stuffed and muffled,
Saliva soaked and injected with the shrieks you refused to hear,
Because you pretend this is pleasant,
This was begged for.

When the heart strings turned to cage bars locking you deeper inside
Self achievement was smeared inside her like hot tar, tainting what forever was
Supposed to be hers.
You tossed her to malicious canines, while she folded over herself into a puddle of weak vertebrate.
So next time I see someone slouching,
I'll recognize it as your slimy mark left in a spinal cord-severing chop,
An inhuman knot tied shorter than the original nervous length,
And a marionette stance that walks in a crooked meter.
When I see a sweater, tattered and ragged with compostal decay
Lying shameful on the cold asphalt
With a print of moisture underneath
Too precisely shaped as a woman kneeling in her own agony,
I'll remember what I saw that evening and walked by
Too quickly to notice.

Next time my index finger will already be on the 9,
My thumb impatiently on the 1.

Today I learned what walnut trees look like,
But this was only important because I learned this with you.
And there's nothing more to say than
You make something out of me.
The roots we create from our individual trees dig deeper and farther into Earth,
Sowing tighter our connection through 300 miles of inevitable distance.
The ends have found each other.
They dance and mingle in playful circles,
Set to an orchestra of crunchy movie popcorn, Harry Potter end credits, and songs forgotten to remember.
They braid into one and burst out of Earth, shooting into the stars,
Dotting each one,
Intertwining tighter with each meter ascended.
They bust through layers of atmospherical glass,
A ***** wonka elevator with no limitation.
We, our roots, cradle each other to sleep with peaceful and 100% meaningful "sweet dream" goodbyes.

Together we will pick walnuts out of space forever,
And then I will always think of you,
How we grew trees out through concrete.

I seem to be the only one that knows how to cite my writings anymore (O'Donnell).
Nobody but I understands the difference between APA and MLA
(Which in reality sounds much scarier than it really is).
Yes, citation is more than plugging a URL into citemypaper.net and copying, pasting, repeating.
Don't you ever want to learn to do for yourself and not through asinine websites that get it wrong half the time anyways?
Nobody cares enough to work hard, learn good... Excuse me, learn well.
Nobody gives two ***** about good grades and class rankings.
Just less competition for me, I guess.

But no, this is something bigger than that.
Why am I the only person who cares about where their words come from?
Where are all the people who used to fact check and actually think about what they say?
I just seem to wonder more than others the vitality of truth in words,
Of validity in claims,
And of proof in ambiguous pudding eaten without prior knowledge of its upbringing.
Is it really pudding? Well you won't really know unless you care enough to find out...
And who ever knows if you're speaking words of Gandhi or of Grandma anymore.
Giving a **** used to be something of importance,
Now put to the side with adolescent legend lessons.




I wish I could make you give a **** about this "silly" school project,

But that's not what we're really talking about here anyways.




Works Cited
O'Donnell, E. The Basic Principles of English. Mt. Pleasant:
        Elizabeth, September 15, 2014. Print.

You came home with us yesterday after we connected at the local homeless shelter.
Mom wanted you, and so she channeled through our eyes to guide us to the right decision.
Her absence was never unnoticed.
But we did well, with a soft heart we found you and you accepted our invitation.
Soft spoken quickly became pack leader.
As pack leader quickly became elder.
As elder became...
... Are you there? Did you wander too far again? Should I start the car to drive the blocked radius you love to rome?

But no, there's no need to locate my car keys, because you slipped beyond,
And I payed no attention to your foothold.
I never said my goodbyes because you fell so soon, without warning you moved into the darkest realm.

But I'm thankful for your simple passing at the same time that I weep for you, for my mother, and for your now lonely sister.
The transition was graced by something bigger than us.
Too long did we wait for Sarah,
When we had the chance to relieve we deceived.
And we thought it was beneficial but you had the worrying eyes that told all emotions,
You knew it was time, but we couldn't read you.
Thankful are we for the extra hours,
But pained are we for her extra suffering.

The last time I saw you, those eyes came back,
And I knew it was for you and not for Andie.
At this point I could have wished you peace for the last time but I didn't.
"In four weeks she'll still be here", I thought and denied myself of pain momentarily.
I patted your head when I should have hugged,
And I should have given 30 minutes, not 30 seconds.
I regret the time not spent just looking at you.
So I apologize for ignoring the signals you sent,
And I hope you forgive the lack of attention I gave.
When I see you again with everyone there to greet me-
Mikey
Jeffy
Sarah
And now you-
I'm going to love you deeply.
I'm going to make up for past bath times neglected and postponed.
But most importantly, we will all love you together as deep as the ocean,
And who knows where we will swim to?

She put her ears up in a
perky
quirky manner,
and smiled with a full tongue out at the purple clouds cast against the salmon sun.

Finally, we had found something in common.

We sweat and gasped together, but we felt beautiful together.
And I scratched the exact spot on each side of your face simultaneously
which cripples you momentarily as you fall over in excitement just to hear me say one consonant.

And for the two seconds we gazed, the leash in my hand became more than vinyl weave.
It was a connection we didn't understand, something money doesn't own, and something God never created.

We were us.


But peaceful bliss dies as quickly as the squirrel she smells,
had the leash not been wrapped around my blood-thirsty, suffocating forearm.
So back down the stairs we walk (run) as her smile tightens and mine fades like the pigment of my arm's skin.