I wish you’d left a mark on my skin,
something to last for days,
something you can’t do.

I considered lying back in bed
with you.
So that if I never left
and we never parted,
we’d remain in the glowing bliss,
and you wouldn’t have disappeared again.

Don't ask me what it is like to love someone
I have thrown the word love away
Like they do colorful beads at Mardi Gras
Abundant and beautiful
Yet no one throws them back
Don't ask me what it is like to love someone
I have waited by too many telephones
I have kissed too many of the wrong people
Hoping to find one who's lips might taste like his
Like craving something you're allergic to
Yet still giving into the temptation of eating it an suffering anyways
Do not ask me what it is like to love someone
Because I have not experienced real love
Real love is when it is returned
Having the one who's eyes look like the sunrise
The one who's walk makes you want to follow behind them
The one who had a smile that can reignite a fireplace
Having the one who makes your heart melt like ice cream on a summer day love you as much as you love them or even more
That is real love
And I am not familiar with something so precious
Because the one who stimulates my well-being is too busy
Following someone else, someone who is nothing like me
And yet still I wonder if he is taste testing too

I shouldn't let it bother me.
I'm starting to think
there's something wrong with my head.
I'd like to think everyone would tell me to let go.
I'd like to think I would if I knew how.
I still write you poems.
Not on paper of course,
I can't just leave them around your house anymore.
I found one in the corner of my ceiling last night.
It had something about the ocean and your skin.
I smiled.
I've forgotten the way you looked at me.
It's better this way.
It's exhausting;
knowing you still exist, figuring out if I still do too.
You understood,
that's more than I can say for anyone else.
Most days break me.
I stand up most of the time
and remember how you taught me that's okay.

While our sun is setting during
The evening commute,
On the other side it's
Rising.
Alarm clocks and whistling
Coffee pots in morning light
Breakfast cigarettes on the
Front porch watching dawn break
And I'm watching dusk so
For a second in time we're
Inexplicably intertwined.

I haven't spoken to you in quite a while.
I know you know all I want to say.
You can read it on my heart.
But, I'll explain myself anyway.

I've made some terrible mistakes.
My mind's in such a spiral that I don't even know which way is up.
Maybe it's a good thing.
Maybe it's the way we were meant to be.

Even though I'm trapped,
I feel so free.

The bird inside me sings.
It realized it can fly.
Don't ask me how.
Don't ask me why.

You see Father,
There are some things that are better left unsaid.
Secrets between you and I.
Secrets I'll answer for when I'm dead.

You are my Lord.
And I thank you for your son.
Thank you for forgiving me for all the things I've done.

In seventh grade I watched my friend bleed out
Holding what was left of his leg, he whispered, "This isn't good."
They say that the human body contains eight pints of blood
I counted nine.

When you were born, no one knew.
No one knew how intense the galaxy inside of you was.
How each star would illuminate your eyes,
and how you would illuminate mine.

In tenth grade,
my dad didn't talk to me for three months.
I didn't know who I was for three months.
My light became darkness as his love became emptiness.
Father, love me the way I love you. I pretend not to,
please be the same way as me.

Your heart grew faster than my hands, brother.
I hope someone loves you more than I.
For I am what you are, everything without and within,
forever and without the night.

Mother,
do you feel what I feel? Do you see what I see?
Am I what you imagined, more or less?
Do my words matter? Does my heartbeat pound alone?
Do you love me?

You are what illuminates my eyes, Queen Anne's Lace.
With or without, from your eyes to mine,
silence with noise, electricity moves throughout
yet I am calm. You are what I know,
and all that should be known is that
you deserve to be happy.

In twelfth grade my father tried to stab me.
If he was successful, it wouldn't have been the first time
one of his actions got past the surface level.

It's not your fault, burning rainbow on the water.
Adaptation without reclamation I find you in my translation
as hurt yet elation. Mother.

My kaleidoscope,
so soon,
mirroring colors and shape.
Am I looking at myself?

I don't care if you don't comprehend, the words I say or how I end.
And if you don't understand the words that pass,
your eyes, like your heart, are transparent glass.
Taste throughout, with blood mixed in, the way I beat has always been
to know, to show, to allow what I see now to be seen,
may I know what I let go is what I'll always mean.
Thunderbolts from your mouth, good luck to me because I am shocked.
There is no lock. There is no lock. There is no lock.

I live throughout different years, with evolving eyes without resolving fears.
I've been afraid. I've been lost.
Kaleidoscope.
No longer, no more.  
My heart is an open door.

Blood stained pants.
Hands without.
With every word,
every shout.