His body floats on the surface,
Limbs spread wide and bound to the water,
An "X" marks his place on the planet.
Ankles and wrists between water and air,
He submits to a force of nature,
An "X", half submerged in the waves.
It says, "You are here",
but the ocean has more "there".
The water is a woman.
The sea is terrifying,
But he won't ever fear her.
A force of nature does nothing for spite,
Nothing for greed,
Nothing for personal gain.
His death would be clean.  
Honest.
Absorbed, even, thoroughly, back to the source,
The waters from which we all came.

This thing, the words and all?  I was trying on a new skin.
It was made of the old -the familiar, too, but transformed.
Something added that could take root,
Take me out from the norm.
Take on a new identity.
Perform.
Squinting at a light, held at arm’s length:
My own spotlight.
So you could watch me act it all out,
Over and over, forever on the page.
but nothing ends as it began.
My troubles, my worries, my lust, my greed,
All fictionalized and petty.

Disgust and shame.
Anger and fear,
Are not advisable
Unless they bring about change.
Even those, now left behind.
Moulted.
Shedding my old skin.
Toughening up the new.

have you ever believed
in something so blindly
so genuinely
that the moment you realize
it isn't true, something inside you
changes forever?
i wanna tell you a story, see
seldom do i ever
go swimming in drinks
deep enough to drown in
but when i do
i speak in tongues
about things that none
of my memories
are allowed to talk about
like that christmas
at the isthmus
where my girlfriend
plucked a conch shell
whiter than gods teeth
out of the sand
held it to her ear
and stopped time
that day she was a shade of blue
the could've made the ocean sick
see, she loved to play jokes
when she held
the sea shell to her ear
she gasped, called my name
and said "i want you to hear this"
i said "yeah, right, everybody knows it's just the same old sea"
she replied "no. not this one. this one is special. listen. theres music in this one"
she handed me the shell
like a promise she couldn't keep
and i held it to my ear
with all the potential
of seeing shore
after being stranded
at sea for years
only to hear
a tired dirge of silence
spill from its emptiness
i guess she didn't know
how desperately
i wanted to hear it too
because ever since
something inside me snapped
now sand pours out
of every post card i open
i hear seagulls
in telephone static
sometimes i have dreams
where i bury my hands
in every beach
i've ever been on
and exhume this graveyard of noise
every time i try to sleep
i spit up fishhooks
and i guess i'm obsessed
but maybe
if i hold my ear
to enough vacant things
then i could have back
the time stolen from me
since it happened
maybe they would get it
if they knew what i wanted
when i blow out birthday candles
maybe they'll find me
face down in a wishing well
i watch eternal sunshine
of the spotless mind every day
pretending i can forget too
because this sea sickness
has followed me for years
because yesterday
i walked into a music shop
and all the pianos broke
but the only thing
i can think to say is
*do you know how bad
a memory has to be
that you fantasize
about forgetting it?

+I met you after Sunday school, behind the church. We weren't a match made in heaven, as much as a match made in our over exuberant parents' minds. You passed with Autumn weather.

+You were the start of all of my bad habits. I was there, but you were lost in an empty void in your mind. I was only a part of the grand experiment, after all. You left with the summer months, but my mouth still tasted like nicotine and empty confessions.

+You were a new way to feel good. We always watched the sunset, but we never got to watch it rise together. Your lips felt like sunshine, but there were constant storms behind your eyes. The snow fell as fast I did for you, but when it melted, we were left with nothing but mud puddles and thunder storms. We weren't equipped for the showers, because the memories of you quickly washed away from my mind.

+You were the beginning to coffee every morning, and reading every night. You were the death of the old me. You were the sun, the moon, the stars, the clouds, the plants in the ground, and any other cliche your beautiful mind could piece together. You were an addiction, quite honestly, but a bad one at that. You had all of my soul, but you walked out two years later, your hands covered in my blood. Every empty promise your lips have ever uttered still hangs in the stagnant air, and I can't breathe. I promise that I will never forget you, whether you like that or not.  We both loved wildflowers, but you didn't stay
long enough to see them bloom out of the cracks in my persona.

+You were my truest love, and my shortest happiness. You always smelled like flowers, and your freckles hung on your face with an unspoken confidence. Your smile could have stopped traffic, but that same mouth tore me apart before I even had the chance to piece myself back together. We spent our time as ghosts: floating around, never waiting long enough for the other to catch up. Your habits finally got the best of you, and I was left alone in the middle of my fantasy.