growing up my mother always said
that ***** hands and scraped knees
were good for me
my father taught me
how to ride a bike
and drive a car
but you taught me that life was only
worth living if you lived it with
someone you loved

I guess my father loved cigarettes
more than he loved kissing my mother
and I suppose I loved your hands
much more than any other
set of bones on your body because
it was much harder to recover
from nights of an empty bed and
lonely legs than it was for you to say

goodbye
or
why

my mother failed to mention that
broken hearts and open arms spent waiting
in half made beds behind unlocked doors know much more of pain than ****** elbows and yellowed bruises

my hips had hoped to make your hands
their final resting place
and my lips knew no greater taste
than the toxcity of your kisses
and I wonder
if this is
good
for
me

11 alone
12 alone
13 alone
I am not alone yet I feel alone
Well felt alone
18
The feeling still lingers but does not consume
18
I am not alone do not feel alone

I. My father taught me that
there’s always something better around the corner
if you just never stop looking
when he committed infidelity.

II. My mother taught me to take what makes me angry
and knock out its teeth
when she shoved my father off our front steps
and then had her fingerprints taken.

III. My grandmother taught me that someday
you will be able to forget the bad things that have happened
when Alzheimer’s rotted her mind
and we all became someone else to her.

IV. My grandfather taught me that
love does not get up and walk away
when the going gets tough,
when he picked my grandmother up off the floor
when she fell for the hundredth time.

V. My brother taught me
that forgetting is bliss
when he lived his life to the fullest,
without his past tied to his feet.

VI. If I teach people anything,
I want it to be
that you can get back up
and dust yourself off
no matter how badly you had been shoved onto that floor.

I miss you
And I'm sorry that I don't have some
beautiful and mysteriously depressing way of stringing those words together to make them sound like more than what they are
But I'm so drained without you that
I can barely manage to make
myself function properly
There was a particularly spectacular
sunset tonight and I wonder if you saw it
at the same time I did

I wonder if you thought of me
As I thought of you

Perhaps there are more words spoken in the midst of silence.
A tear, a touch, an embrace.
An invisible conversation opaque to anyone but the two.
A shattered soul, a heavy heart. Which as they kiss
Consume.

Perhaps there is love buried deep inside hate.
Waiting, watching, knowing.
Swallowed in a sea of empty promises and lies.
A sorrowed soul, a hollow heart. Which as they mix
Devise.

Perhaps there is a message in times of disbelief.
Hiding, hoping, planning.
A beam of faith shining bright behind the darkest drape.
A searching soul, a healing heart. Which as they meet
Escape.