When forced to use the public loo,
there's something you must always do:
before you sit to do your biz,
make sure there toilet tissue is.

Let lovers sleep-- the night is mine and mine alone,
and I cannot close my eyes, for I am too busy thinking of the wide world.
I lay here in the pale dark, listening to the night
and I wonder if the universe is so much larger for a fly than it is for a woman--
are the days so much darker for the dead than for me?
I tangle my fingers in my hair and smile;
oh yes, I hear the delicate music creeping through the air,
and of course I am moved, Mother,
how could I not be?
How could you ever expect me to sleep when there is such a place
as this in my mind?
I will never close my eyes again, not when there is air like this to breathe,
not when there is pale dark to bathe in,
not when dawn is a matter of hours away and it is back to the stale air that crumbles in your lungs,
back to the carpet stains and back to all those thoughts
that are trying desperately to fill up my empty little head
or someone's pretty little head
like smoke withering away, dripping lazily out of my lips and into the ears of another
though there is no other,
not for me
not tonight,
tonight is a night to wonder about the universe of flies and women
and if my world will ever grow larger than this pin-head that is threatening to crush me
and a great deal of other things that I'm sure you've thought of, Mother,
though men have been sure that the earth is flat and that flies and women are not so different
so who knows what I'm sure of?
I certainly don't.

i don't want to write this.
i really, really don't.

momma, daddy.
i love you both very, very much.
but you guys make me cry.
you were supposed to be together forever.
i kind of always took pride in you guys.
completely opposite but totally in love.
except how you weren't, apparently.

i'm too old to blame myself.
too old to beg you to stay together.
i understand everything,
but it still hurts me.
i still hate it.

i blame myself.
please stay together.
i don't understand.
i hate it.

i don't know what else to say.
i don't like this kind of honesty.

good night.

you taught me ABC order.
you taught me to rollerblade.
you taught me about limp bizkit.
you taught me the words to "danger zone".

you gave me my first taste of anger,
gave me my first feelings of terror.
how anyone could feel so much, all at once,
and let it out at something so mundane,
[your punching bag]
and still scare me so much is beyond me.

you gave me my first taste of alcohol.
miller lite, and i hated it.
you made me drink more, because well,
"it's an acquired taste, you know, like wine."
in later years you'd say the same of ***.

i still don't know how i let it happen, really.
one minute we were friends,
and no one really knew how close.
the next minute your hand was in my pants,
and that's the last place i wanted it.

in the next minute we're on the phone,
you somehow got my number.
you're apologizing, and crying.
i've never heard you cry before,
"what the hell is going on, a?"

give you a second chance? to do what?
to apologize? you never had a first chance.
meet you where? when? tonight?
"you know i can't do that."
then again, if you're leaving in the morning.
just this once, for you. i need the closure.

i still feel like i asked for it,
i don't know if that will ever change.
in the middle of the night, still,
i wake up, convinced i'm bleeding.

soaking through my sheets just like that night.
it stains my skin in a way that will never wash off.
the glint on your knife from the moon that night?
leaves a scar that will never fade away.
unlike the one on my thigh. it's gone now.

you took so much from me.
you took my innocence,
and i'm not just talking virginity.
every single person i look in the eye,
i can see potential.
the potential for destruction.

we are none of us born good or evil.
some of us are just good, with evil tendencies.
you, though. you're something else.
evil, with sadistic tendencies.
you're a ******* monster.

but i have nothing to say to you anymore.
i wish you nothing but the worst.
[i hope your **** hurts where i bit it.]
and i hope you hear my screams when you sleep,
every
single
night.

i'm so tired of being a joke.
and i'm so tired of.
everything.

stop hurting me.
i do my best, always.
it's tearing me apart.

you can't see me crying.
and i'm not going to tell.
but i can't seem to stop.

i love you, too much.
*******, i don't want to care.
nothing makes sense.

especially when you.
when you can't.
can't remember anything.

i really don't understand why i am this way.
why every day is a struggle, why i have to dredge up
every single ******* positive thought from the parts of my heart
that continue to beat and bleed.

i really don't understand why i can do this.
why i can sling excuses and *******, why i can talk away
every single ******* positive thing that could happen to me when
all i want is something to smile at.

i really don't understand what keeps me here.
what keeps me holding on to you, what makes me think of
every single ******* positive thing you did for me
when there was so much negative.

i really, really don't understand why everything i write
is so angry, so sad, so ******* angsty,
even when i've had a wonderful day and i could swear to you,
i could swear it doesn't hurt anymore.

nothing hurts anymore, and nothing makes me angry.
walk away from everything i felt for you
and everything i did for you
and all the tears i ******* cried for you,
and it won't hurt me, not this time.

Every story I write
has a quiet boy who loves words
and a girl he doesn’t quite understand.
She has a laugh that ricochets
and she makes the quiet boy smile.
She looks like algebra but is more like calculus.
She is deceptively hard to solve.
You don’t see her fault lines until you think you already know her,
but her plate tectonics only cause aftershocks,
never full earthquakes.

I always thought she was me,
always thought I wanted to be
that kind of captivating.
Enough to make the quiet boy happy.
But then I met you
and your quarter moon smile.

I always thought the girl was from some coast
but the first time I saw you in a bikini
I realized you don’t have to be from California
to have drops of seawater glow like individual suns on your skin.
I want you to drip dry
on my clothesline arms.
I’ll hold you up to the sunlight,
let your bare legs dangle in the wind.
I want to straddle your fault lines
and hold you through the tremors.

I always thought I wanted the spotlight
but I’m content
being the quiet one beside you.
I thought I loved the boy who loved words
and I wanted to be enough to inspire him to write
but you make me want to get published just to share you
with the world because
something so beautiful should not be kept secret.
You said you wanted to make the history books
and you will, but for now
I hope my poems are enough.
You are rainy day inspiration.
I thought I was the girl
but it turns out I’m just a quiet boy
who needed someone to
inspire me.

I can clearly remember
the moment I realized my daddy wasn’t perfect.
We were in the kitchen,
and it was dark outside.
He said of course gay people should be allowed
to see their loved ones in the hospital and such,
but he wasn’t sure they should be allowed to get married.
It was disorienting in ways I can’t begin to describe.
You just expect things, think there are
things in life that are certain,
and then your dad isn’t sure gay people should be allowed to get married.
There is not a measurement
to explain how much my dad loves me,
It is without bounds.
I know that.
Of that, I am still certain.
But I’ll always have that memory of incomprehension,
when he separated people into an “us”
and a “them”
and I think maybe I was supposed to be in the them column.
We haven’t really talked about it since,
because if he still feels the same,
I’m not sure I can handle knowing that.
To this day,
that’s the only part of him that I’d change.