There's a certain kind of comfort in talking to strangers.

Maybe it’s not having to care about what he/she thinks
because you don’t know them at all,
and when they begin to be of importance that you start to care,
that’s where it starts to fall apart.
That’s why you keep a certain distance
from a person you actually want to care about;
keeping them a stranger,
but wanting them to be so much more,
but you can never find the courage to get attached to,
because when you start to care,
things change.

I once knew a boy
Who breathed in words like air
We crafted a book together
And selected each sentence with great care

That boy was the best part of every genre
He flowed like sweet poetry,
Kept my thoughts racing like a thriller,
And never gave everything away like all good mysteries  

But that boy left cold turkey
Scrawled me a messy ending
He would never bother to rewrite
I guess that he was only pretending

I never thought you
Would pull a Mockingjay on me
Unsatisfied and bitter
Is how I will forever be

Because our love is a cliffhanger
And you pushed me over the edge
The days waiting for you like
The wind carrying ripped pages

It was anticlimactic
No closure in sight
You let go like it was nothing
While I hold on with all my might

And so you will continue
To breathe in hearts
The way you do air
To you, it's become an art

I will carry on
Gripping a jutting branch called hope
I'll pray you give me a sequel
To the romance we wrote

Heart thumping
Face on the desk
We're talking about suicide
And I know what comes next

She tells us not to look
We have to close our eyes
She says it's an anonymous survey
And I wonder if I should lie

Raising our hands is a yes
And everything inside me
Screams no while I
Try to calm my bouncing knee

I raise a tentative hand
When she asks if we've considered suicide
That tentative hand raise is the largest step I've taken
And part of me feels peace deep down inside

“I parked my car in the Harvard Yard”
People ask me to say.
My state was a
Paper
T o  r     n
by terrorists
This day.

7th grade, April vacation
on a cruise ship, I was excited
To get out of that cold
New England weather

Laying on the twin bed
Stomach churning
From the sea, Like butter that never thickens

TV said,
“Boston Marathon Bombing”
My face turned red.
I willed my friends to stay out of Boston.
Jill was in Boston
Thank god she’s alright

What kind of fame did they want?
What kind of pride comes with this?

The worst part:
We could not do anything about it.

Aged 13, 7th grade.
Nothing we could do.
Cruising past Virginia in a stark lit cabin room
I couldn't do anything.

In these months passed since the attack
I have taken the live and dead and held them like a closed fist in my heart.



They will cease to remain a number
of a statistic
of an event
5 dead
It said.

5 dead means nothing
They had lives, families, people knew them.
People knew them as more than the “5 dead”
So when you say 5 dead. Think about what lies behind the number,
1 was 1 to many.
No time for regrets.
Could we of changed what happened?
Could we of taken more precautions?
No one knows.

We can’t change what happened that day.
So if we can’t change our past,
Lets start by changing
Our
Future