I feel separated from everything that is happening
Like the audience attending a musical, watching
Not involved, yet knowing everything that's happening
It's the strangest feeling of being unconnected,
And I have to say, I'd rather be a performer than the audience

you felt like a still life.
i laid next to you and held your hand
and tunnel visioned on your IV
while everyone sat around you in a circle
coloring you in without looking up from their paper
convinced they can capture the color of your lips
as if they exist in a way that isnt
completely unique to you.
scratching their pencils in an echo
that stretched across the grand-*******-canyon.
(i'm no artist
but i traced a smiley face into your palm)
i've watched your eyes fall over your pale skin
cursing your own body for making you into
a stone cut marble statue
instead of a vibrant painting on the wall.
(this poem does your portrait no justice)
if i could drown myself in a thesaurus
i would come up with words that are
synonymous to the hole you are leaving in my chest,
you felt like a still life.
you reached out and ghosted your hand over river water
you reached out and pulled budding flowers from trees
you reached out and broke pencils and snapped necks
you reached out for please do not touch signs
(you reached out and your arms fell short of distance.)
and i refuse to believe your legacy will stay in this artwork,
that your vibrant light will be caged in the chest of those who know you,
that your masterpiece will be shoveled into the storage rooms,
and pushed around and cracked at the edges,
that eventually i will forget how your voice sounds
and how you reach out and touch right through me
(and how you clung to your body and forgave it for betraying you.)
i can only imagine
that you will leave me
(with a grief that is waiting in a sickly anticipation
crawling up my legs and surrounding me like ivy)
i dont know anything about grieving
but it sounds so heavy, like a cement weight subject
a sixteen-year-old isnt supposed to teach.
(with deafening echos of people who scribble over your eyelids)
(with a calling into the earth like there are stones in my stomach and i make a home in the bottom of a riverbed)
and don't understand what it means
to watch art be nothing more than art
when your words become quotes
and your life becomes dates
and your eyes become a memorial
(i will live with you
trapped in the holes)
covering the parts of me i left at your bedside
drenched in the ironic taste of brushstrokes and immortality
you still feel like a still life
you are your own genre
you give art a new definition
(and i will spend the rest of my time
getting your details right)

I write, not to deploy pity or ***** commonplace conceptions
I write to potentially discover the sole rationale as to why I am who I am
What variety of experience and array of struggle has molded my self being
And who is to say that I have or have not become who I was intended to
There is a fine line of losing touch with society's notion of impeccability and drifting towards the horizon of individual pediment in assembling the parts of your inner soul
The pieces of you that may never see the light of day but still continue to participate in your decision making and how you articulate ideas
Every part of the whole is significant
Yet we continue to sprint towards the standards of conformity
Our lives, slowly becoming a smaller line of which we walk upon, holding tight to mediocrity
Because the only thing to do when the curtain is falling is say what the audience wants to hear
And I fear that perhaps I and clinging to the same things I curse over without being aware of it
So, I write, not to deploy pity or ***** commonplace conceptions
I write to potentially discover the sole rationale as to why I am who I am
Perhaps I am who I think I am, whomever that may be
All I do know, however, is I am not who you think I am

You are the letters that I write all unsent, all kept inside my drawer yet I am wishing that one day you could read them without me having to let you
You are the stars I put in the backpack of my mind when I have full grasp of attention that I am approaching a long, cold journey
You are the name scribbled in the top corners of my notebook
You are the feeling I get after a long drive and I can stretch and reach out, far in hopes to touch you somewhere in the sky
You are the unzipping of a formal dress in an old hotel room
You are the place I would like to call home and never need a vacation from, a place better than anywhere else, a place of safety and passion, a place of rest for my weary soul
You are the puzzle I can never solve, the Rubik's cube stored away in a junk drawer, the books I never got around to finishing, the poems I left as drafts
You are the unwound clock that confuses visitors, they are not used to adding two hours and three minutes because I never bothered to change it
You are the amazing opening to a really bad movie
You are the reason some people put too much sugar in their coffee the morning after kissing you because you leave such a bitter taste in their mouth
You are the unraveling of a cigarette exhale that will end up killing you
You are the best thing that I decided I didn’t actually need
You are out of my mind, you are burned letters, running out of gas, you are getting lost on the interstate, you are nothing to me anymore and you were once everything
You are not who you used to me and neither am I and perhaps you should walk one way and I, the other

You are not your pain.
You are not your pain.
You are not your pain.

You are not what happened to you.
You are not what happened to you.
You are not what happened to you.

You are not what they did to you.
You are not what they did to you.
*You are not what they did to you.

with detachment, he stole my world.
the very breath from my lungs,
leaving only the hollow ache in my ribs
and mourning holding my bones on fingertips.
our room is silent now. and you told me it
would no longer be ‘our’ room. but only
after you stained it red with hollow intentions
and empty promises. the memories, your
voice is a deafening numb that pulses through
my ears constantly reminding me of the weight
of your absence. the dark shades that hang
from my eyes rock me to sleep as your
voice sings Moon River.  
memory has never failed me until I try
to recall our last kiss, the last truth from
your lips. because I can’t remember how
your smile tasted or the gentle glide of
your hands but their scars are all over
my body and they won’t let me rest.

now you’re just a reflection, the anxious
itch of addiction, the exhausted ache of
alcohol drowning my veins into a subdued
state. you are the moaning of each muscle,
reminding me of how difficult it is to simply exist.
you are the inferno engulfing my chest as
bourbon fuels the flames of the hell that
I am. you are the angry, crimson cuts collecting
over my arms and legs because physical pain
is so much easier than the empty bed you
left behind. you are the approaching decision
of whether to sink or swim. and I am so scared
of choosing either one.

As time goes on I am starting to learn how everyone has someone they love but just can't be with
It is the sad reality of stumbling blocks ruining what could have been, the imagined perception expectation of the future that we let ourselves believed we deserved to live
I often imagine meeting you at the record store in another life and it working out the way it was always supposed to and you've been holding my heart for centuries and though here, we may be foolish and alone but this is just one time dimension where maybe things are difficult but I will see you in the approaching vigor, in the dim light of a motel room near the city, a place where things are better, a place where we are better and I will kiss you like a poet trying to rewrite the language of love on your lips and you will touch me like your hands are praying to the religion beneath my skin and we will burn with love beyond what any movie or book describes
But here, I cannot love you and you cannot love me. Here and now we are poison to one another, a disease not worth catching if it can be avoided, our bodies were never strong enough for our love, we didn't want it anymore, we got too busy, too stressed out
You wasted my time but that’s okay I wasted yours right back, we were never in love but oh God we could've been, you know, as time goes on I am starting to learn how everyone has someone they love but just can't be with and regrettably, you are my someone

i've spent hours cramped over thesaurus pages and days ignoring warnings to write about the people who make me feel the things i am supposed to feel

i've spent sentences and words and enough knowledge to fill volumes like a life-time credit debt, pouring sentiments and metaphors over people who won't even bother to read how i venerate their actions, their touch, their reactions

how i analyze each detail like ive got a four year degree and student loans to last me until im ninety in How to Make Yourself Sick With Overthinking

i've spent so much time deflecting like a broken pinball machine in the back of an old restaurant, telling anyone who listens that people make me feel human, give me emotions, make me feel real

i've never spent enough time away from instant gratification, reaction, attention, to know who i am without the people that fill gaps in my lungs and ribs, who stitch me up and send me into a field of disconcerted intentions and bad messes

i can't wite much about who i am, how i react, my actions, my touch, my reactions. my soul is based off of the fragments of other souls that have touched me.

and still, i want the words and syllables and poetry.
i want the actions and touches and reactions
i want to mean something to the people that mean so much to me
i want someone to raise me to this compulsory apotheosis
it's impossible i am the only one with emotions bursting inside of them like nightlights and meteor showers

i suppose
i haven't spent enough time thinking how
there is a vain narcissism that encompasses a person who, without people, would not be a person at all.