My friends in high school
Used to laugh when I told them
I always slept with my phone on,
Just in Case

Four months into my first real job
I try to stop my head from spinning
By silencing my friends
In different time zones on a Monday night

I wake up from a dream
Where I see you for the first time in weeks
To missed calls and messages
"I need help. I am in trouble."

My stomach becomes your rope bracelet
That got stuck in my lace shirt
The first time I slept over
Only this time, I am trying to fix it alone

You answer me before the sun
Lights up my living room
Not laughing at my overreaction
As we both know your alarms are often warranted

I do not try to turn your pain
Into something beautiful
But rather my fears
Into something concrete

That night I brush my teeth,
Gums bleeding,
Eyelids falling,
Phone volume on Max

i am water
  calm
         and quiet
     like the
                raging ocean

Water is complex
gives you life
But can drown you

I salute my sublimation.
tackle my monsters
with pen and paper,
Die in my art, you beasts.

all my characters are myself.
different shades
textures of my complexity
a palette of my entity

Im the protaganist
the underdog
idealistic dreamer
with a happy ending

I'm the antagonist
the enemy
cynical pessimist
with doom impending.

I scrape down on paper
these pages of me.

Sublimating aching
intermission from tragedy.

You didn't forget how to write poetry.
You ran out of words
That describes the moment as more
than it is.

We lay down together in silence almost every night when all I want is to talk with you.

I wish I were the phoenix
Die and burn to live again
Fly up the sky
and repeat: times ten

I wish I were the dragon
Strong and resilient, but though
Havoc and no mercy...
So maybe just no

I wish I were the Pegasus
So grand and noble
Up high and mighty
but chained... terrible

I wish to be free
To fly high in the sky
To glide across the sea
To live and to die!

Again and again...
I wish I were the phoenix so I may die
to live again and again
So more I could rest and lie

Each new year brings the same question

             What comes next?

last year you died.
but really,
two nights ago you died.

you died doing what you love,
but that doesn't make me
any less angry at the world
for taking you from us.

forget us.
my mind is spinning in circles
because you gave so much
and had so much left to give
it's not fair you fell taking that picture
that likely would have opened people up
the moment they saw it
and read your sweet soothing to the world.

so young.
you realized your dreams so young.
most never do in a lifetime,
i guess that means your time was up.

you know what they say,
only the good die young baby.