safe sounds run soft in this world. eyes shut running backwards but reaching for the sky, my hands touch the horizon, fingers grazing an almost liquified sky. i focus on how it feels, not how pretty it is, and when i touch it, i can feel the colours can feel the things it's seen. it has seen so much.

                   i cannot save us
                   from the type of destruction
                   in my heart and head.

it's all about the wrong green, you know. shattered mirrors can't see intentions, but everyone's trying to make the green and have the happiness they think it can buy. the sky kisses truths onto my fingertips. it tells me that it has seen too many men lost to greed. too many men chasing a feeling rather than chasing the honest thing of it all. maybe the greed consumes them because they go about life with their eyes shut.
                  
                       i am so sorry
                       but blindness is the skin
                       i made, and it bleeds

"don't use me as a warning sign there's a place a few miles from here, past the place that reeks of the weakness of men, they call it utopia but it is not free of all the things that eat men alive. those animals are just more tame here" the sky speaks these things and i believe them only because i need to believe that men aren't slaves to their own blind-hearted goals. safe sound ring as men fall victim to it all.
                    
                      i'm leaving today
                      not to find more of the green
                      but to feel safer

we paint pictures of a war nobody remembers, but the sky does. oh yes it whispers it's pain and cries because it's got so much to cry for. "i have seen the blood of everyone dead and will see the blood of everyone living shed on the grass. the quiet deaths are just another safe sound you learn to embrace when you are this old." my chest tightens. "but what about the stars? there are people who stare up at you stricken with grief and hope all at once." the sky laughs, cold. "it's not long," it says. "it's not long before someone tries to claim them too and hope will be gone and grief will remain.
        
                       i refuse to think
                       that there's nothing left to hold
                       on to when in grief

sometimes you just need someone to
tell you that it's worth it,

that living isn't a game
only played
to lose.

i lost everything in moments
i couldn't count on my fingers
and toes.

all my blessings are coming,
i'm sure,

but i'm so blind
that i don't really see them anymore.

sometimes you're sad for no reason
and people ask you
why?

and you cannot answer.

you were always there
just out of touch, and i did
not know how to reach

To my brother,

You’re here now
But where were you?
When your gangly group
Of friends pushed me down
Stole my bike and you went along
Mama said you were just trying to fit in
As if that justified it
Where were you?
When Dad struck me
For spilling milk on his album
Tears were shed, bums were smacked
You yelled right along
Singing the tune to your abusive song
Where were you?
When Mama cried
‘Cuz Grandma died
And I sobbed all alone
I reached for your hand, and you smacked it away
They say people deal with death differently
But how is calling me dumb,
Going to soothe your middle-school pain?
Where were you?
When Mama yelled at me
I couldn’t do my math
Oh how I tried and blubbered snotty answers
She saw the tears on my face
While you stood, watching on the staircase
ADHD, but I didn’t know it yet
So until then, I listened to you call me *******
You’re here now,
Living in your palace of ice
I sure hope Canada is treating you nice
Because here in my den,
You’ll never be welcome again

go on
spit me out
and forget about me
like that piece of gum
on the side of
the road.

i think i'm breaking
but i can't find it in me
to care anymore

don’t you know? your body
is made of stardust—i see
it glimmering in you.
don’t you know? you are
not too much, you are not
too little, you are an
entire world; you are
mountains, you are trees,
you are the gentle-moving
tides and the soft-curving river,
you are the ever-still lake.
don’t you know? the craters
in your skin are no less
beautiful than the ones that
kiss the moon’s surface.
don’t you know? there are
nebulae inside your chest,
and they glow, they glow,
they glow—you are never
alone in the darkness, love.
don’t you know? the night
sky twinkles along you,
the northern lights oscillate
as you breathe.
don’t you know? don’t you
know? you are beautiful;
you are your own galaxy.