I'm not okay
and thats okay.
Sometimes its okay to not be okay.
Okay?

A baby learning to walk. an old man fails to.

you haven't been touched in a week aside from a man who likes your socks and shoelaces offering you an elbow cause you have a chicken sandwich in your hands.

Shorts so small you can see the pockets. Red hair. Walking past fossils cause you're looking at your phone.

Why did you go in the "insect zoo" Mike? You ****** hate spiders.

your most human interaction is the man who asks if he can use your leftover donut bag to carry his food. The food he got from the soup kitchen across the street. The one you went to to use the bathroom. Borrowing him privilege in bag form.
he doesn't like to eat outside. Too many mosquitoes. He babywalks with a cane.

The gun that shot Lincoln is tiny and I am interested in it only for it's death potential.

A French family crying, don't have the right papers to get into the White house tour. I wish I could tell them the tour wasn't that good.

drunk conversation with brother about father.
don't talk to. Don't know how. Don't want to.

I am swallowed by the heat
The silence that passes for conversation.
my mother is very conservative. the strain of hiding myself. Closed lips

I am a silent eavesdropper. A parent pays 7.50 for a ****** tourist piece of pizza. Placed in front of her child. Exhaustion drips off her face. Oozes out of her posture. Her kid doesn't like the pizza. Mouth a tight line. The child tells a story. The tight line blooms into laughter.

My friend (I wonder about kissing her) goes to a Philando Castile memorial.  I go to the lincoln memorial. Pictures and profit. It's smaller than I thought while she’s heavy from the impact.
Memorial – pictures – walking – repeat – heat – feet – and the wondering of how much memorializing goes on at giant statues.

His fedora looks stupid. small kids bumps into me. child-style. I don't see him cause I'm so tall. His mother tells him to watch where he's going.

My dad’s not on the trip. Divorce’ll do that to you. My brother calls him a lost soul

The trip was good and I would never go again.

As my brother and I drove away from my grandmother’s funeral he asked me if maybe grandpa called her “Anne” instead of “grandma” was because he didn’t remember who we were.

I think I’ve cried more about Hannah than I did at my grandma’s funeral. Which is kinda ****** up cause Hannah isn’t dead she just doesn’t want to date me anymore.

So I feel like kind of an *******.
I’m kind of an *******.

Hannah’s not her real name.

I have this blanket. On my bed. My grandma crocheted it for me – to give to me on my wedding day.

I’m not married.  
You could probably guess that.

And my grandma is dead now.
You could probably guess that too.

The blanket sleeps on my bed.
My bed sleeps in my memories of
where Hannah used to lay.
Soft slumber and figures puzzling together in the warm darkness – thick with breath
The blanket following the soft curves of her body and now I’m thinking of my naked ex and dead grandma in the same sentence and we should change the subject.

My grandparents slept in separate beds and I always thought that was weird.
Grandma was like peanut butter on homemade bread
The fancy peanut butter. Not that Jiffy crap.

It was the bread that made the difference.
give a loaf of it to each family for Christmas
My cousin got the recipe but she doesn’t make it right.

We made ramen once. Hannah and I, not me and my grandma. We didn’t use a recipe and the eggs made her sick.

I had a cold when I hugged my grandma and I fear it made her sick.

She died two days later.

Grandma once said you’re never too old to hug your grandparents.

Anxiety glows in the dark
The nightlight you can’t turn off
Bioluminescence highlighting the worry lines on your face

I’ve been saying things outloud recently
to try and help me deal with stuff, y'know stuff like
she’ll never love you
stuff like
you have an anxiety disorder you broken *******

i dont know that its helping

she remains the gum stuck to the underside of my tabletop mind
grows stale while I endlessly chew over her memories
my jaw grows sore – tastes bitter and salty, like tears in your morning coffee
and that would be a terrible flavor for gum

its like cry driveways because you told yourself you deserve to be happy and your mind couldn't ******* handle it
couldn't process that
instead the logic leaks out your eyes and disperses in every throaty gag of misplaced regret
my eyes need windshield wipers and my windshield wipers need to be replaced.
the new ones are in the backseat but its been so cold i haven't gotten around to it.

It’s bad form to show emotions at work
Instead you write ****** poetry, one arm covering your paper like a 4th grader who doesn’t want anyone to steal his test answers
where am i going with this? is this just a venting poem?
a poem to feed the seed of depression born out of our sapling romance?
I need a 2 drop spell, tap 1 and a blue
Counter target emotion
That was a magic the gathering reference but I don’t expect you to get it.
im rambling now - scrambling thoughts of her cascading down my interior monologue
blink and her face has been burned into the nightlit darkness that waits behind my eyelids.
she can join the rest of the crew there, like a ****** up breakfast club of regrets that comes to shake hands every morning

i've never seen that movie but hey, at least it’s a reference you'll probably get

ugh. This got sad fast. I’m sorry. I didn’t get much sleep last night. i couldn’t turn off my nightlight.

my brother does this thing where he siphons the stories from someone. Usually old people because they have the best stories

I drive through the old homestead – the fog of my emotions

Have of my memories

My father does this thing where he holds his little hands at his waist, twisting them inside one another

We are three generations eating dominoes pizza

Defined by death and divorce – not there and not existing yet
My grandfather is 90. He is stories made flesh and my brother pulls at them like a rope from a,

Well,

Because he has discovered the census data for Ham Lake from 1940

My grandfather tells stories of the missing generation

His father – can’t work because he’s a welfare brat

His mother died young

Stepmother an angel – gave him socks when his father was crying because they cut him off

My father – tells underbreath mumbles of lost arguments and lost respect – he gives me socks for Christmas

Father drank a lot. You get to pick who I’m talking about. Maybe alcoholism skips a generation. If so I fear for my children.

Grandpa joined the navy. His father got a job – everyday worked it through sickness and in health – a marriage of money and mind because the paycheck meant freedom and freedom meant everything

He finds his dad at work – navy uniform coated in the expectations of his brothers.

“So you went and did it.”

The story kind of trails off there, the way old people stories do. Kind of like young person poems

I helped my dad set up the TV we got him for Christmas

Because he never used the guitar center gift card from last year.

You ever notice how it's hard to appreciate giant bronze statues when you're hungry?
I rumble

an empty stomach
I need to be filled and a thousand dollar plane ticket leads to an attempt to do that

It gets blasé after awhile

"Oh, you're church doesn't have gold mosaic ceilings? What is this trash?"

I'm surrounded, guns drawn
by an endless litany of priceless art and artifacts

but

I find more inspiration in the teen trying to herd pigeons than the golden horses on the Venice balcony
more from the father trying to teach his baby daughter that cigarette butts aren't a thing to be picked off the ground
(there are some conversations you don't need to speak the same language to understand)
than the ancient cannons in the Salzburg castle wall
the cannons used in some ancient battle that truly represented the blah blah blah
A long time ago men died here, killed each other, defending their home so that years later privileged ***** like me could stand around it and take pictures and not give a ****. All for the low low price of 10 €.
If you stand very still you can feel the ground shake underneath you
the collective drone of the tourists rumbling
Mouths watering on feed me your culture
I step into a building older than my country. In the bottom is an H&M

I fill myself in the simple message poured out of a spray can on a Munich subway wall
I ♥ U

or perhaps, what filled me the most
Thanksgiving dinner
was some graffiti scrawled in shaky hand at the base of a statue in Barcelona.
The graffiti was in French

"Je suis malade"
I am sick

We stand in line for a delayed plane airport stale oxygen recycled through our mouths. This is work.
“It’s gonna be fun to watch.”
We’re popcorn on the sidelines. Your sorrow is our television and soon we will fly to vegas. Because our white ***** make us bulletproof. Make us able to say things like “It’s gonna be fun to watch.” Instead of saying things like “I’m scared.” And “I can’t believe this is happening.”
The conversation continues. This is work.
“Those females sure do have a way about them don’t they?”
I wonder myself a coward. Does the upstart stand over the 60 year old? He’s a short man.
“Did you see that one?”
They’re talking about *****.
“Oh how could I miss it? He’s helping me find my wife, you know?”
What is the proper response to a sexist wink? I awkwardly smile. This is work.
Plane boards.
Takeoff.
Landing.
Slot machines in the airports.
Lights.
Smoke.
Decadence. I’ve never been. The neon hits me like stargazing. Walking alone seems to be more palpable to my tastes than company. There’s strippers on the sidewalk. One tries to spank me. When you walk back to your Paris themed hotel at 2 in the morning, everyone wants you to go to the *******. My hotel room is spacious. ******* is odd when you’re surrounded by ***.

Time rolls into the work event I’m in Vegas for, like limousines and unenthusiastic drummers strapped to the backs of moving advertisements. It’s a social event. I’m supposed to play nice with my customers. Make them happy so they give me more money. I’m paraphrasing.
One of my customers is talking to one of his customers. The guy is around 85. He notes on how young I look. Says that I can use this to my advantage with the ladies. Oh sorry. I’m paraphrasing again. What he actually said was:
“Never get married. When I was 40 I caught ***** like you wouldn’t believe. I’d find a 23 year old and toss her away for someone younger.”
Time rolls into overpriced drinks walking hand in hand with gambling and stories of conquest
Testosterone
Unrest
Like champions of our pants we are gladiators in the absence of romance. The game of one-up-man-ship, each story told and stacked like the cards slapping down on the tables around us.

“There was a 99.9% chance I was going to bang this chick. She like, had her hand on my leg. I had my arm around her. And I was the hero of the night because I had gotten a bachelorette party over.”
“Oh yeah, she’s hot.” “ Your wife is ******* standing right there, dude.”
“You know if things are wrong at the house cause my wife keeps me up aaaaalllll night. Talk talk talk talk.”
He moves his hands like lobster claws to mimic his wife’s mouth.  I feel my awkward smile crack across my face again. I pay $10 for a watered down drink. I talk to a girl who doesn’t want to talk to me. She leaves.
“You strike out or something?”
When you walk back to your Paris themed hotel at 4 in the morning, everyone wants to ******* in exchange for your wallet.

“Where are you going? You ever had black *****?”

My hotel room is spacious.
It’s odd to feel alone when company can be paid for. And as I lie naked in my bed I wonder what it would be like to have *** with a *******. I feel failure creeping at the floor, climbing the sheets that tell me I’m in the city of sin, so why am I not sinning?
Winning.
“You strike out or something?”

As men we are taught to be strong and that we don’t need anyone
Wolves
This is work
(but I must have missed the ******* lesson)

Because it seems I need someone. More than the soft cheek kiss of innocence lost. I want the feeling of seeing old people hold hands. The hard glare of the no judgement mirror. It’s like *** over *******, but there is silence in the nothing and if you listen closely you can hear the screaming drool between each ***** syllable. I’m tired of – **** it.
Let’s keep this a secret. Don’t want my man card revoked.
Have you ever felt like you could die and no one would give a ****?
A hangover morning pours overpriced coffee into our stale eyes. It seems the strength has waned
Tunes have changed
And the act is becoming hard to keep up. If you look at the corners of their eyes you can see they miss their wives and warn of men like themselves to their daughters.
But that doesn’t make for good stories, does it?
“I’m ready to leave”
“I can’t say I’m a fan of Vegas”
“I hate this town.”
Even wolves travel in packs and I wonder if some consider the proper response to a sexist wink to be an awkward story.
A company too exhausted, from dripping money and LED seduction to wonder if society knows the size of all our tiny penises.
“I’m tired of people assuming that just because I make a decent amount of money that I’m a republican.”
What?
“Oh I hate Trump. He’s a monster.”
We’re getting somewhere.
“You ever motorboated *******?”
Aaaaaaaaaaaand we’re back.

I'm sitting on the sidewalk and it starts to rain
I like the rain
it's romantic

Flashback to a different sidewalk walk to my car arm in arm in the streetlights of the passing cars dancing through our eyes
we kissed
and the rain tracked teardrops down our cheeks
because god knew we wouldn't do it ourselves

through the storm in our eyes
lines blurred between object and malice
problems rose up from the primordial goo of my personality
evaporating into lust and distrust
my insecurities manifest like rainclouds in her independent sky

I'm sitting on the sidewalk and it starts to rain
I like the rain
it's romantic
numb phone plastered against my face

I told her she was ready to pull the trigger from date one
Her stalwart no's were a pressure like her fingers, rifling through the hair on the back of my head

I'm sitting on a sidewalk
the rain tracks teardrops down my cheeks.
because god knew i wouldn't do it myself.

I pull up to the house and don't recognize any of the vehicles. My mom is driving her new car she got after the accident she didn't tell me about because we don't speak as much as we used to.

It's the middle of the day and yet it's as if a darkness has worked its way between the walls of the home. There is one light. A motion light. Crunching steps activate it above the door. I am illuminated. The doghouse next to me is my reflection. Dark. Empty. Folding in on itself like a sheet. I enter and the house exhales a shallow, broken breath. Like a house of cards falling down. Like something is missing.

Obviously that something would be my dead grandparents.

My mother's voice greets me and I'm startled. The tone sounds awful cheery for someone who, as of 15 hours ago, doesn't have parents anymore. Exhale.

The house is the same as I remember. I was here last week for ***** sake. Here to watch my grandma. She never liked to be home alone after she got back from the hospital.
After part of her got back from the hospital.
After the hospital.
She was never the same after that. Only the same conversation with a skipping record.
Eat carrots to avoid ****** noses. (Yes grandma.)
You should move to Hollywood. (I'm not that good of an actor grandma.)
Your other grandma hates me. (She doesn't hate you grandma.)

We don't talk as much as we used to.
We didn't talk as much as we used to.
It's death in two parts.

We're in grandma's room now. Sheets are being folded. There's a coffee ring in a half drunk cup of coffee. She'll never finish it now.
Exhale.

An innocent question (Did you find her in the bed?) Opens a wound with turns into a story which bleeds into a card game where we used to have Thanksgiving dinner because my mothers eyes are cracking floodgates and she needs time to repair them before she drives home.
She lives alone.
And we don't talk as much as we used to.
Silence.
The sound of cards slapping a table.
My mother says that talking about what happened has helped her and her voice sounds like someone who as of 18 hours ago, doesn't have parents anymore.
Exhale.

I leave the house and it's.
Still. Dark. Black.
Every light is off. Even the dog is dead.

I leave the house and it's
empty inside. This time I don't mean metaphorically, I mean physically actually devoid of people, and I don't think this feat has happened in 35 years.

There's one light.
Motion light.
It turns on when I leave,
and then it never turns on again.

i think too much and when im with her i cant
and i like that

shes all walls and i'm only windows
and sometimes i think she looks inside me and doesnt like what she sees

i feel like muscles and lust and nothing but, and she assures me i'm not
i feel like i'm a footnote (she puts footnotes in all her essays) in the story of her life while she is a chapter in mine
and she assures me i'm not
but sometimes she says things to convince herself of what shes saying
and sometimes she leaves me breathless and sometimes she leaves me praying

Maybe we've just put our walls in different spots. It's like my ears are deaf and my lips are tingling when she kisses them

she's like a golem
a stone skin guardian against her emotions she wont let me see
but maybe we've just put our walls in different spots It's like my eyes are blind and my body shakes when she caresses it
she wakes only to the magicians touch
and i've never been good at magic

shes tired of my worries and excited by my body and this is an equation i'm not sure i like
I've always been good at math
my mind is calculating
a steel trap
it's cold inside and she is warm in my arms, like a promise I can't keep.

I want to buy her flowers, but i'm caught between building my nest and digging my grave and i often think they're one and the same. she wants to have fun and I want to have ***. she's touching my body while i'm reaching for her mind
but maybe we've just put our walls in different spots.

UUUUUUUUuuuuuuuuuuuuugggggghhhhhhhhhhhhh

**** this and **** that and im
dying and
crying and i hate this
******* brain i have where i
scream at it
just ******* enjoy this
because with each word
i speak
each
worry
in the breath of my throat i push her away
speaking leaks in our boat  
and lets
be honest
it wasnt a very sturdy boat to begin with
i need
my sledgehammer hands
destroy and rebuild
something that actually functions from
the rubble of the ruin
Build some ******* windows
a glass bottom boat
so I can always see the mistakes
i'm trying to leave behind
my
mind
scraping plaster
crumbling
and fumbling
stumbling darkness
and she feels like sunlight
she's bright
soft light through the blinds
film noir
rain
pain like kisses  
i'm the handprint on her skin
the bubble in her oxygen
and i used to be fun and we
****
just *******
**** **** fuckf
fuckf fukfcuffkcuc\f\ ff
f
f
f
c
fuflufc
fuuf
***
****
***
uf

i think too much and when im with her i cant

and i like that

His eyes lolligag across the words but he's not actually reading them.
You can tell because he turns a page, only to turn back, realizing that he didn't digest what he'd just read.

It takes a long time to read this way.

With one's mind elsewhere, anywhere
nowhere but here
Like a fly in amber
encased in this single moment of waiting for her
Feeling the car lights outside rub his back, but not in the scritchy scratchy way that she does it.

He clutches his phone
turns back a page
checks the time
actually registers these numbers
and wonders
if this is routine

Him, waiting in silence, alone in a restaurant, looking like some pathetic **** who never managed to make friends, food on the counter sitting as undigested as the words in his hands.

Her, on her way, late and always dissapointing

He turns back a page.

I had an *******.
Not because I'm some sick **** who gets off on girls crying
but instead, because I got to hold her in my arms one last time
I found it odd
that she was taking comfort from her insanity by confiding in the very person who had caused it
as if she were finding solace in the arms of her problem
and as the apocalyptic rain outside locked us in that car like a coffin I would have gladly been buried in
I remarked to myself that her smell reminded me of cherry blossom trees.
A tree that I don't think I've even even seen in real life,
much less smelled before.

When I was in Korea I wrote her an e-mail
It said something like
"Hey, I don't know if you care anymore but you were right all along and I'm just now realizing that"
I never sent it
but I didn't delete it either and so for days afterward it haunted me
My e-mail drafts folder screaming out the number "1".

After we were finished but before the dust had settled we spoke a lot about regret and she said things like
"I'm glad we tried but we both knew it would end up like this."
Well I sure as **** didn't. Why the hell do you think I tried in the first place.
I think it became very important to her not to be one of my regrets.
Which makes sense, right? No one wants to be a regret
and so I resolved that if she ever asked me if I regretted her, if I regretted us I would instead ask her a question in response.
I would ask her if I helped her in any way.
If I helped her take control of her nerves
If I helped her get a hold of her anxiety
much like a sexually frustrated boy holding onto a crying girl during a rainstorm
And if she answered yes to my question,
If she said "Yes, Mike you did help me."
Then I would answer her question about regret by saying no

I don't need to worry about that though.
I don't need to worry about her asking me anything
because since I've been back from Korea, she's said exactly three words to me.
They were said at a party of a mutual friend of ours about six months since we had last spoken.
The words were "Can you twerk?"

And if we take our imaginary camera now and shift it out of that house
down the street
to a new street
to a new city
to my street
to my house
to my room
to my laptop
to my e-mail drafts folder
it still screams out the number "1"

And as we stood in the circle of our mutual friends and poked fun at a ridiculous dance craze
something cut through the haze of alcohol that hung in the air in order to penetrate my nostril
and for a brief instant
I was reminded of a tree that I don't think I've even seen in real life
much less smelled before.

she's like sleeping beauty
and by that I mean
she's beautiful
and she'd rather be sleeping right now

Falls asleep instantly
eyes closed tight in between lines in our argument

let me give you a better example
and we shift the scene to a bedroom plagued by doubt
but despite that the sheets are soft comfort, liquid warm radiance
To the end of a conversation at the beginning of a night

Me: Did you know that?
Her: Yup.
Me: Well did you know you're beautiful?
Her: LOUD SNORING NOISES

But where am I going with this?

I don't know

I'm going to better days
to reminders
kissprint frozen on the window of my car

To the cutest little kick I have ever seen as an excited girl enters buffalo wild wings after working 12 hours

excited because I'm there

That's where I'm going.
Back in time to "she likes my hands despite the warts"

I don't know

back to my hands
let them be a hammock
so I can hold her
rocking
because she'd rather be sleeping

Because sleep escapes the day
escapes the people
and the way
I say
the thoughts that echo in her mind
she's horrible
guilty
fire
tired
knife wounds
twisting
resisting
the urge to ram my self righteousness down her throat

I gave her my coat
and she asked if I smoked
(because that's a deal breaker)
I told her no

and the next time she slipped her hand in my arm
and the next time she slipped her thoughts in my mind
slipped her hands through my hair
her tongue in my mouth
her lightning in my eyes

surprise
I don't know
I don't know
My hands are distilled comfort
drink them up
this might be a beer you actually like

I don't know

I don't know

If we work
If we can

go back to strained conversations in which I am dying and she is existing in the same place with another person because that's what she's all about

A kiss
Another
kisses close our mouths to the arguments

and a single text
drips back into my thoughts

"Please don't leave me."

And I wonder if I am speaking to her
or the depression
if she lets it be her face for a while
while her mind rests in the background of her life

Because she'd rather be sleeping.