I have longed for this year since fourth grade
When I learned what a val-e-dic-tor-ian was
And realized I wanted to be one.

I have longed for this year since I was fifteen
And wanted to leave home
Go out and explore the bigger world
Free of parents and noisy siblings.

I have longed for this year since my first college tour
And I saw the hubbub
The libraries, the labs, the dorms, the giant sweatshirts
And noticed how small and quiet my high school was.

We picked out caps and gowns
Red
We lead the pep rallies now
The loudest yet
We're taking physics, and calculus, and the SATs
Feeling scholarly
We picked out how our names appear on our diplomas
First M. Last
We have our licenses
Drive to school
We fill out college applications endlessly
And endlessly...
We picked our prom theme
Great Gatsby
We're getting lazy very quickly
Senioritis

Graduation keeps us going
Graduation is the goal
Graduation is the light at the end of the tunnel
Graduation in June
Graduation in red polyester
Graduation in the sun
Graduation is the end

But wait.
Hold up.
Stop.
Stop.
STOP!

Seven more months with you?
You, who I've stared at for four years?
You, whose smiles make my day?
You, whose face I look for in crowds?
You, who are the most amazing person I've ever met?
You, who I haven't even asked out?
You, who have no idea who I feel?
You, who might by some miracle possibly feel the same way?
You, who I'll regret never making a move with for the rest of my life?
You?
Seven. Months.?

HOLD UP SENIOR YEAR SLOW DOWN GRADUATION THERE'S A BOY.

Wake up!
It's morning, you know it, the world around you says so
A chorus of beeping: the clock, the coffee ***, the first cars with impatient drivers, the shrill door chime of the store at the end of the block with its first customer of the day, the microwave saying your hastily-made oatmeal is done, the phone alerting you to your first message of the day, the computer screaming about the emails that piled up overnight.
Wake up!
It's morning, you know it, it's time to get up.
Rip yourself up from the sheets
A horse throwing its rider
Tear those silken sheets that have for so long enveloped your mind
Wake up!
Do you smell the coffee burning, feel the changing seasons, see how that old woman's orange scarf flickers in the wind like a flame?
Do you?
Wake up!
Hear the music playing, dance along with it, make some cupcakes, read that book you promised Amy from accounting that you would read months ago but never did, feel the chafe of those shoes against your dry heels, poke around in an antique store that has a scent of ancientness.
You've done all that? You're awake?
Good, now go write a poem.

Modern words do no good in love.
Cars, jeans, mini skirts, flirting, and texts
Pale in comparison to
Carriages, slacks, petticoats, courting, and letters
We traded something in for our knowledge, industry, and democracy:
Romance.
Love and beauty and honor have flitted away
On wings of steel.

Is true love possible in a world
With such shallow, lacking words?

Chipmunks: Adorable, furry daredevils. Or dumb.

When I peer into the mirror
(Clean clear glass on silver
A porthole into backwards-land)
I see a certain spice in our swirling eyes
Absent in those of the lonely

Cloves and cinnamon and vanilla
It shrouds us in its heavy fog
(We don't mind, we see not much
Past each others' eyes)

In the mirror, our arms are tangled
In a comforting, swaddling mess
Our heads are leaned together (a teepee)
And our smiles stretch around the world

But the mirror shows us backwards.
(Reverse, opposite, inside out, and outside in)
And I know that really, you lean away from me and frown.

We'll never reach a balance.
You tug at me and then let out so much slack I fall on my face.
And I do the same to you.
There are times I know you love me,
But there are times I know you don't.
I always love you. Always.
Overpoweringly so.
I guess I couldn't have expected anything else.
We started backwards.

Lived together for three weeks the day we met.
Sat together all day, ran around until we fell asleep.

We got together every few days in late summer.
Hours upon hours of laying in the sun.
A meal together.

Now we're lucky to see each other every other weekend.
A couple hours.
Racing around, in plain sight.
We might get to hold hands.

Soon enough we'll go to college.
Meet on holidays.
Uncomfortable hugs.
Changing without each other.
So much we'll miss.

And then we'll be strangers.
Backwards, unbalanced strangers who will love each other while the leaves float away
While the snow dances on the wind
While the grass struggles through the mud
While we grow tan laying on the grass
In separate parks on separate days living separate lives.
We'll keep a matching pair of creased photographs
And each tell our own separate children a story
Of our first, backwards love.

Few things that are constant
are appreciated for long.
Sun in California
is much too commonplace.
"I love you" loses meaning
over time.
But there is some comfort
in the constant.
And fleeting, ephemeral beauties
are sad and fearful.
Which is why people love the ocean.

Waves are never quite the same.
Each one is unique, and always changing.
There and gone in a few seconds' time.
But they are never more
than a few heartbeats apart,
and rarely much different from the last.
The ocean strikes balance
between the dynamic and changing
and the constant and reliable.
And we all love balance.

I love you.
I love you more than
A warm summer afternoon
On the back porch
With a novel
And an iced tea
In a mason jar
With a pink bendy straw
And music floating on the breeze.
But what I'd love even more than you
Would be to unite you and me
And the back porch and the iced tea
And throw in a dance with that music.
I'd remember that summer day forever.

I’m going to dance on your grave.

I will hoot and holler and stomp up and down
Rattling your bones in that bag of loose flesh that’s slowly melting off .

I will scream into the ground that was savagely ripped up
And then squished back in around that shiny box.

I will lay on my belly and read my favorite books
And laugh raucously at all the best parts.

I will swear and kick the somber stone at your head
And howl when I bruise my foot.

I will sit crisscross-applesauce on the grass in August
And sing Christmas carols.

I will do whatever I feel like doing
With little concern for what you’d think.

Because it isn’t your grave.

It’s mine.

Old stale black licorice
Crushed with a rolling pin
Ground into a minuscule mountain of ash
On the kitchen counter
And the tears rolled down my cheeks to wet the ashes
But all remained still in the cold, lonely kitchen
Nothing
Was born again
And again forever

Broken time watches warily
Godless granite-hard cruel
Unrelenting

Crooked finger shall give
Abundance of clever foggy portraits
Vaguely quick spun words
Just words

Hopeless downcast downtrodden
Shifting swimming eyes
Thrown scattered shot
Up

Careless siege of swill
Scarlet shiny garish
Plucked and fussed and
Cosseted

Gone gone gone
Vanished brashly veiled
Never more

Christmas without you feels wrong.
I don't  know why, it's only one day
Among three hundred and sixty-four others.
It's not very different from those others.
Sure, there's eggnog and bows
And fireplaces and singing
And beef roasts and hams
And traditions a mile high.
You've never even been there before.
I've never seen how you fit in
With the bows and the ham
But I'd imagine you'd fit very splendidly
And it may seem strange,
But you're missing from somewhere
You've never been.
And all I want is you here beside me,
On this day I've never spent with you.
I want it badly.
But I shouldn't be so greedy.
Each day I spend with you is already Christmas.
Even in July.

Our goal should not be happiness.
Happiness teaches nothing
Demands nothing
Remembers nothing
Inspires nothing
Nothing.

Beauty is in the contrast
Or else all is white
All is blank
With nothing to color the emptiness
Only when joy is rubble and foreign
Will anything worthy be born

Happiness is no goal
It is a plague
A curse
A coffin.

I can not let you braid my hair,
I do not love you yet.

You can muss it and flip it and twist it around
I can undo that with a shake of my head.

Hand over hand,
Strand over strand,
Weaving something out of nothing
Making it your own.

You braid sloppily.
I know.
I've heard.

And a messy, knotted, tangled braid
Can be hard to unravel
Chunks of hair ripped out
Fingers trapped in knots.
It's an unpleasant business.

So you can not braid my hair
Until I'm ready
For it to stay there.

Gushing young vermillion hearts
Like seals in dark cold waves
Bobbing up abruptly
And then lost

Smooth skin
The quiet sound of light breathing
The warmth
The press of your body on mine
Your arms around me
Hands on my chest
Stroking my neck
My face
Your fingers running through my hair
Slowly
Slowly
Gently
My eyes closed
Not tired enough to sleep
But safe enough to try
Your closeness
Feeling your every movement
Your gentle shifting
Your examining eye
Pondering over me
Your brooding mind thinking
Quietly
Peacefully
No safer place
No better place
Than in your arms

The most enlightening dream I ever had
Was the darkest I had ever known.
He was there, and no one else.

There was a stair case.
We waded through the pitch black sea stretched before it.
We went mindlessly, slowly, and groggily, not speaking.

We finally reached it and I searched for a light switch.
But the wall was endlessly smooth.
He was impatient.

He scooped me into his arms and marched up the stairs.
I curled up in his chest, rocking with each step, so very comfortable.
At the top, he spoke quickly and softly in my ear, "I love you."

And then the lights were on and he was gone.
In the dark, I hadn't seen his face.
And yet, mysteriously, I knew exactly who it was.

He wasn't you.

Don't call me babe.
Don't call me ****, either.
I'm not a body,
I just have one.
I can keep it healthy, I can do its hair,
But my body isn't me.

When you call me, call my soul
Call my heart, call my mind.
My body will heed the call, too.
But call to my body
And I recoil.
Call only to my body, and it won't ever be yours.
So don't call me babe
Unless you want me to run.

Quick, snag the highest apple, duck down.
Red on one side, green on the other.
Bite savagely into the green,
A lone apple tear trickles from the corner
Of shiny pink lips.
Stolen apple kiss.

I cut my hair just to see if it would grow back.
It was long, thick, and somewhere between
Light brown and strawberry blonde.
I hung my head upside down
And ran my fingers through the eighteen inches
Of snigs and snags and knots
For the final time.
It wasn't silky.
It wasn't particularly soft.
I gathered it into a ponytail
And
Chop, chop, chop
Thousands of tiny hairs cried out
And tumbled to the floor en masse.
I shook my head about
Flinging my shorter hairs into my eyes.
I glowed with the feeling of liberation
While I shivered from the cold on my bare neck
So I stared at the fallen golden rope
Part gleefully, part mournfully
And I waited,
Warily and giddily and wonderingly,
For my hair to grow back.

I tell you this, not to explain
That old photo of me where I look like a boy,
But so that you can understand that
If one day I decide to push you away,
I'll only be waiting.

We will be separated
So soon
So soon
So soon
No matter what
We do
So just keep smiling
So sadly
At me.
Because
So soon
Everything
Will be over
And you'll be
An old, old story
That brings a lump in my throat
So soon.

My dear you are testimony
And all are witness
To the perfection that nature can produce
You are the lone rose
Whose beauty triumphs over all of its kind
You are a graceful hawk
Whose elegant flight is perfection
You are a gentle whale
Whose calm puts all at peace
My love you are the elegant spider
Whose beautiful web has caught my heart

I was alone
Before you found me
I saw no good
I was a cynic
A hatred of love burned in me
I was of the shunned
I saw no one to love
And no saw me to love
I trudged on
As the terrain grew more desolate
As deserts and mountains of ice closed me in
As I gave up
I was rescued
From darkness
I was rescued by the light
My cynicism
Replaced by optimism
My longing
Found love
Found you

If people were trees,
You'd be a pine.
Ancient, scraggly, thick-skinned
Thick-skulled.
But you remind me of Christmas.

Contently curled fingers and toes
On pale gooseflesh limbs gone still,
Across each other and a downy blanket
It was held, but it came willingly.
Outside, frozen wintry branches peacefully slumbering, fallen in a drift of snow.
Patiently awaiting spring to rot to soil on soil.
Inside, dust motes wandering lazily in swathes of sunlight by the millions and billions
A scale model of celestial bodies orbiting and being orbited endlessly.
Pinpricks representing the possibilities seemingly spread before us
In reality, mocking the obvious and inevitable single result.
A soft sigh, a low murmur returned
I want to remember this because I know it will end


And the snow melted and the lilacs fragrantly erupted
And limbs and fingers and toes kept too warm alone
And all was movement and noise and
And the air carried the scent of time like a warning
And pollen held a vice grip on nostrils and lungs and eyes and brains and
By one it was released, from the other it escaped
But don’t you remember?
And it did end.

Love is a word
A single entity
To signify an ocean of meaning
It is too small to communicate
All the emotion felt with every utterance
The quickening of the heart
The soaring of the soul
As the body falls through nothingness
No word
No phrase
No book
Could explain what it truly is
It simply has to be known
So perhaps
For now
Love
Will do just fine

Winter means cold
It means staticky hair and red noses
But it also means you and me by the fire.

Holder of my heart
Though perhaps one day we shall part
Today we are together
Though one day there will be mountains
Insurmountable obstacles to overcome
Today we hold each other
One day
Perhaps one day soon
There will be a biting cold
At this moment there is warmth
And tenderness
So seek warmth in my embrace
And I in yours
We will keep out the cold together

Sometimes I start to think.
But then I burst a vessel and that's the end of that.