After years of fighting
I've learned to retreat
at the first sign of love.

If a tree is never given a chance to take root
it will not grow to bear poisonous fruit and if words never proclaim love,
then love can never be lost.

A heart beats inside my chest,
but is that sound enough evidence
that I can love,
or not hurt at best.

I try and I try and I try
but good feelings never come from my efforts,
so I take and I take and I take
and make beautiful people cry.

I should be tearing myself apart,
unearthing every sin
and dark place,
to find even the remains of a heart.

I remember the moment I fell in love with you.

You were sitting on a red couch with a very drunk boy,
and you had a cigarette with red lipstick stains on the filter.
Like the couch and the lipstick, your cheeks were red.

I went up to you and looked at you.
Your eyes were dilated that night,
and even though I couldn't see it, the shade of blue in your eyes will always be my favorite.

Your hand grasped mine as you stood up,
and the grasped my neck as we fell back down;
A heap of good intentions turned sour by methamphetamine cut MDMA,
and kisses wet with passion and rain.

In the darkness you whispered yes to every question I asked,
but in the light of the following days
your eyes would not even chance upon mine,
and I've only heard your voice with the subtle undertones of contempt.

You laugh in the same way you did that night,
and I bet you look at the stars in the same way
but your eyes never seem to shine like them.

*** is
the only way I've been able
to satisfy my desire for you,
without sticking a straw in my nose,
or shoving pills down my throat,
or smoking god knows what.
*** is
the only way I've been able
to not cry out to you.
Yet,
somehow *** makes me yearn for you more,
*** makes me crave you more,
and *** makes me realize how desperately I want you.

It's always been you,
from the day I've met you.
There's been other girls,
too many other girls,
too few other girls,
and there's been you.
So unattainable,
so out of reach,
but not out of mind.
There's always been you,
and until you are in my bed,
until your fingers leave marks on my back,
until yours is the first voice I hear,
you will not be out of mind,
and even after then you will not be out of mind.

Abigail Turnman walked along the same sidewalk she did every morning before she had to work. She had the same breakfast from the same dive as she did the morning before.

As she was sweetening her coffee she looked up and into two very dazzling blue eyes, belonging to a young man seated at the table across from hers. She looked down quickly, sweetening her coffee, while she blushed.
She usually didn't get flustered like this and she hated that she was just because some dumb boy was looking at her. She looked back up and he smiled at her, revealing a mouth of uneven, yet not horribly uneven, stained, yet not horribly stained teeth. She blushed again, this time she smiled back.

"Are you Abigail Turner?" The young man asked in a voice that sounded as if it didn't get much sleep the night before. While he was asking this Abigail noticed his hair, a dark shade of brown, lighter and shorter on the sides, as if it had months before belonged to a military man.
"No," Abigail responded humorously, "My name is Abigail Turnman." She blushed again, at the stupidness of her joke. God, how she hated that this young man was making her blush this way. As if in response to her stupid joke or in embarrassment in having gotten her name wrong the young boy laughed and blushed, but not as much as she had.
He had only a coffee on his table and so she asked him if he would like to join her for breakfast. The young man smiled again before standing up. As he did, his hair fell into his eyes, which he quickly brushed out of the way before nodding and sitting down, across from her, coffee in hand.
"How did you almost know my name?"
Again, the young man laughed.
"Mark, uhh Callahan. He said he cleans up at your office and that I should speak with you."
Oh, Mark. There's a sweetheart if she ever knew one.

And in that instant she knew she could grow to love how this young man made her blush. Instead of hating it she would prize and cherish and she would include characters modeled after him in all her novels.
She didn't even know his name.

"So, you're a friend of Mark's huh?"
She asked this in a more confrontational way then she meant to and the young man seemed to recoil before he saw her blushing again, knowing that she had not intended to ask it in such a way.
"Yes, Mark is a friend of mine. Since high school actually. Uhh, my name is Henry, but uhh," he laughed softly, "my friends call me Hank."
"Well Mark is a sweetheart. So, if I'm not mistaken, you must be native here? At least since high school."
"Yes, I was actually born here, but uhh, if I'm not mistaken, you're from uhh New York, right? The city?"
As much as a sweetheart Mark was, he sure was talkative as hell.
Before she had a chance to say anything, Hank began talking again.
"So, uhh," he laughed softly, nervously almost, "I uhh, I hope this isn't too upfront, but I was hoping, uhh wondering actually, if you were doing anything tonight. My band and I are playing at the Stonehouse, it's a uhh, a charity show for Jonathan, our drummer, uhh his mom. She's fighting cancer, uhh, her condition has been improving but she still needs money for bills and stuff. I mean, you don't even have to pay, you know, I could ahh, I could sneak you in the back or whatever, I mean, uhh, it woudn't technically be.."
She cut him off,
"Yeah, sure I'll go. What time is it?"
He smiled even wider than he had the whole conversation,
"It starts at 8, uhh, it's at the Stonehouse, uhh, ****, I already said that. Oh ****- oh, sorry, pardon my language."
She pulled a pen out of her purse and began writing the address to her apartment on a napkin. Hank continued talking, mumbling, uhh-ing, but he trailed off as she handed the napkin to him.
"Pick me up at 7," she said, "We can go get some dinner before the show, you probably half to be there early right?" He nodded, "Okay, make it 6:30. This is the only diner I know, I've only been here since the start of summer, maybe you could show me some nice place to eat?"
He nodded, smiling and blushing and pushing the hair out of his eyes and scratching his arm and shifting in his seat anxiously.
"Now, it was lovely meeting you Hank, but if I don't leave now, I will be late walking to work, I'll see you at 6:30"
"Yeah, I'll uhh, I'll see you at 6:30"
She stood up and so did he. She was halfway across the diner before Hank kicked himself for being so stupid.
"Hey, do you need a ride to work? I mean, it's uhh, it's no trouble."
"Thank you, Hank, but I'll walk. I'll see you at 6:30, okay?"
She smiled a dazzling smile of white teeth, framed by golden hair, cut short, almost short enough to be considered a pixy cut.
She was out the door as Hank mumbled something stupid.

It's a Thursday night
and I'm higher than I've been
all week.

The boy told me this was the good stuff (as he does every week) so I took it on faith that he was exaggerating.

Two blows later
and I can barely read the late Mr. Vizzini's words.
My body feels warmer than it has
since November of 2012,
and my face is itchier than my last year in Boy Scouts, circa 2008.

The walls of my room seems a lighter shade of purple than the have in years
and my carpet is not as stained as it was this morning.

Old Polaroids of my parents' wedding are tacked on my wall,
and in those pictures my grandmother is the most beautiful women in the world.

Thank God for muscle memory,
and thank God for compulsive *******,
and thank God unsharpened pencils,
and thank God for everything else that my body knows how to do and everything that I can see in my room and put down in this poem.

There is no purpose to this,
but today I asked a friend of mine
why she is always looking at the sky
and she told me because if she looks at it long enough
it isn't the sky at all.
It is her
and she can speak to herself
and she can thank God for compulsive ******* and ****** science fiction literature.

A man steps onto the sidewalk,
his new two hundred dollar shoes catch the sunlight.
He checks his watch.
Five minutes past noon, already.
He has twenty five minutes left for lunch
and however much he would like to go to The Blue Room and blow fifty bucks on lunch, he only has time to walk to the hot dog stand done the street.
"Oh well," he thinks, "maybe it will bring back some nostalgic memories of my father."
He laughs.

After taking one bite of his hotdog, he remembers how his father used to yell at him.
"Timmy," his father would say, "when are you going to get off your *** and earn money like a man? When are you going to make your father proud?"
His mother would yell from the next room, which would always spark an argument.
"John," she'd yell, "don't yell at my son! He's 14, he doesn't need a job!"
They would yell and yell and each time Timmy's father hit his wife, he would take another swig from his flask. He ended up drinking himself to death by the time John was in college (which his father never paid a time for).

Lighting up one-twentieth of a twelve dollar pack of cigarettes,
he began walking back to his office, where he made the better end of $90,000 dollars annually, after taxes.
He heard a voice beside him ask for a cigarette.
Turning around, not at all surprised with what he saw, he grudgingly handed one-twentieth of his twelve dollar pack of cigarettes to a *****, unshaven man.
"Thanks a lot, white"
"What was that supposed to mean," thought John.
"What the hell was that supposed to mean?" John asked the man.
"Chill out, white, man, I mean white collar, you know, rich boy?"
"You know why I'm a rich boy, huh dirt?" John never usually said such things but thinking about his father put him an a bad mood. As did the breaking down of his self tanner the night before.
"I'm a rich man because I work hard, and I don't sit around on my *** and *** smokes off a man who actually earns them. Why don't you get a job, huh? Why don't you stop being a *******? Why don't you stop being the black eye of modern America and do something with your life?"
John was breathing hard at this point. He would lose no sleep over saying those things.
The man smiled politely, and looked at John for a second, before saying:
"I don't make money, simply because I don't need money."
A pause.
"Do you realize why I don't need money? I don't need money because it isn't important. Do you know what is important?"
The man tapped his heart, and then his head,
"These are important. My heart is healthier than yours and so is my head. I am free. I can sit on the street corner and eat your scraps, or I can take a bus to California and eat Californian's scraps. I am free. I can do whatever I want, man. I can run with the bulls in Spain, I can run with the taxis here. But leave, your lunch our is almost over and we wouldn't your boss getting mad at you, would we? So run along, little slave, little slave to money. Have a nice day and thanks for the smoke."

The man left before John did.
John called in sick to work, and he was indeed sick.
How could this man possibly think he was better than John?
John didn't lose any sleep over what he said,
but he lost a lot of sleep,
and a lot of ***,
and a lot of money,
because this man was right.
John wasn't free.