somehow with the small specks of dirt under my fingernails
and the skeleton in my closet to keep me company i still manage to cower
under heaps of blankets
and wait for you there

The thing about fingerprints is not that, right now, there are seven billion different unique fingerprints on seven billion different people.
It is not that in all of human history no one finger print has been repeated, making, if my math is right, which it's not, twenty trillion individual fingerprints.
Nor is it even that none of the quadrillions of people that will come after me will have my exact finger print.
No, the thing about fingerprints is that they are utterly useless
Which is to say they serve no practical purpose in the survival of the **** Sapien.
That's a lot of effort to put into something that is pointless

2.
If we were created in God's image, then God was a man and
I imagine he took Sunday off and came back to work on Monday like the rest of us.
So maybe fingerprints haven't been forever.
Like with snowflakes maybe God's just doing some interior decorating lately.

Or maybe Saint Peter was kicking it with God in the break room at heaven and was like, "Dude...we need a new system, too many people are dying and I can't keep looking up everyone's deeds by hand; it's taking too long."
And in a moment of genius He was all, "I got this bro" and invented the fingerprint
Then went down to Best Buy and got one of those scanner things for the pearly gates and now when you die you just scan your finger and it auto-populates your deeds and if you get in it's all awmmmm and the gates open,
And if you don't get in it's all whup whum and you fall through a hole in a cloud in the sky and land in a fiery pit of hell.

(My parents stopped making me go to church in 2nd grade so my visions of heaven and hell are colored in crayon.)

3.
I wonder if the image of God sitting at a desk with a protractor, compass, drafting pencils, and tracing paper designing each individual finger print all day long comforts you?

4.
Maybe we're some Alien sociology major's thesis and our fingerprints are our unique identifiers for tracking and data collection purposes

5.
When I started this poem I thought maybe fingerprints are keys.
As in someone out there has the fingerprint that unlocks me.
But I've loved more than once
Hurt more than twice
And had a lot more *** than that
So unless this key unlocks something I've never heard of my lock's broken and I need to know who to call about that.
But I don't like to think of myself as broken anymore.

6.
Maybe when God's little helpers are making us they slice off a sheet of skin from the butcher roll, spread it out flat sticky side up on the stainless steel slab.
Grab a set of bones off the shelf lay them down and like canvas around a frame stretch the skin tight around our skeleton.
Starting from toes, to the knee, over the shoulder, around those pesky elbows
Until they tie us off at the finger tips with twine, cut the excess with sheep sheers, let it heal.
Fingerprints.
Our our little "Heche en el cielo"

7.
When I fall in love for the last time, I will dip my finger in red paint.
I will roll my finger across the bare chest of my love and she will wear it there
Like a tattoo no one else could give her.

8.
Maybe there is no point to fingerprints
Like arpeggios before a concerto
Maybe God was just warming up

9.
Maybe fingerprints are the point to everything

10.
Maybe an omnipresent God is at every birth
In every bedroom, hospital, and taxi cab
In every town, in every city, in every country in the world.

Maybe every time a baby is born
God, takes the time to name it
Then writes it down
In a language only He understands

years from now
i will look back
at all my summers
and get super nostalgic
probably.

people keep asking me
"so Red...what are you doing this summer?"
and then smile at me
like i have something
exciting to tell.

i *******.
for like
four minutes
until they get bored
and
walk away
because honestly
i have spent this entire summer
staring
at
a
wall
in my bedroom.
not even an interesting wall
outside of my house
...nope.

i have spent this summer
in various ridiculous positions
on my bed
or floor
in front of my laptop
trying to figure out
why this ***** so much
and why i can't
go out anywhere
and why whenever i do
i wish i hadn't.

maybe because
i'm tired of trying to make my life sound
PC
and exciting
when it isn't
and the people that ask
don't really care if it is
anyway
they just want something new to say
around the dinnertable
to more people who don't care if i'm alive or dead
but only care if i'm
lazy
then they'll
talk about me

yeah....
i think i'll just stay
in here.

i like strawberry ice cream.
it makes me feel like my tummy is smiling
even when my mouth can't.
it makes me feel ok
for the ten minutes i take
to eat a spoonful
it makes me feel
like these ten minutes that i have
aren't going to be spent
wasting something
even though
that will never be
true.

looking in the  mirror
look at me when im talking to you
dont trick yourself.
you think love is the way he touches you?
the way he used to wake you up at midnight just to have some good good *******?
He's got you lying saying he makes time for you cause he calls you on his break just to ******* then get back to work.
you say he shows you to his friends but its only to get you dancing on that stripper pole.
you say you know he has feelings cause after your finished he says
he loves ya
no a kiss says he means that.
yet he's got five other girls on the side.
nah, thats not love, no not even close.
but you cant stop your addicted.
**** your in so deep.
you think your fine till your all alone in your bedroom and you hate being alone so you call em'...
you do it like you hate him
you say you can take it with no feelings attached, but you know your lying.
deep down you know you want him... you want more, more , more
but you cant cause he wants nothing to do with love.
he's not into catch your feelings.
****..

The truth is
We are all running
From something

A daughter runs
From a father
Who never loved her

An alcoholic runs
From the cold harsh reality
Sobriety brings

A man runs
From the shattered
Foundations of a love
That didn't ever work

But if you're
Very lucky
I think that
One day
Maybe
Just maybe
You would be
Running
                   Towards
Something