Dearest,
Killing yourself would be easy
But missing out on the next Stephen King novel would not.
Imagine the ******* you'd never have,
And the video games you'd never play.
They just put Megaman in the new Super Smash,
So he may be getting a new game soon.
Think of how many viewings of Back to the Future
You'll miss out on,
The indie concerts you'll never attend.
I want you to picture your perfect, glowing effigy of manhood
And now I want you to see him
Caressing your cheek
And pressing his lips all down your spine
Because this time two years ago
I wanted to be in a hole
With maggots eating my skin
And now it is lit on fire every night
By his touch.

Don't think of your family,
Your friends,
Think of yourself.
Be as selfish as a member of AA
And as resilient as one, too.
For I have felt the hot breath of depressive temptation
And anxiety bubbling in my tendons
But I overcame.
And even if no one else says it to you today,
I believe in you.

Think of all those cups of coffee with cigarettes
You'll be missing out on
And you'll never get to read the sequel to Fight Club
That's coming out soon.
Remember the book stores you'll never smell
And all the record shops
You'll never get to laugh at hipsters in.

Breathe and keep breathing
And I swear you will live
And find beauty.

He loves me with an innocence
So far behind his thirty years
That it should be a sin
To call us blasphemous
As many have.
It's in the way he breathes as he sleeps;
He is easy and fluent in his being.
I am at a loss for words tonight,
Though I speak to him as he rests.
He is as still as a coma patient
Yet somehow a smile creeps across his lips.
These are the wonderful things to me.

Every minute
Of every day
I trudge on to make it to this moment:
His heartbeat in my ear,
My hand on his rounded hip,
Love in our hearts.

Number one
Smelled of Marc Jacob's cologne from Kohls
And he tasted like the cigarettes he never smoked.

Number two
Smelled of alcohol,
Tasted like alcohol.
**** Everything and Run.

Number three
Smelled like home
And tasted like fleeing dreams.

I'll take
Contestant number three.
**** Everything
And Run with me.

Time will come to pass,
My love.
And with it,
Our time will become limited.
I will be exposed,
As plain and unbridled as ever before.

However bleak and unstarred the night may seem,
I will always be able
To find my way back to you.

Freshmen year
I was involved in a play
About women in the 1920's
Who were paid to paint watch dial numbers
And hands
With green-glowing,
Radioactive paint.
The point of doing this
Being so soldiers could see their watches at night
Without giving away their position.
However,
After years of exposure to the radium,
The women themselves began glowing
And forming cancers in the deepest recesses
Of their young and tender bodies.

Before the horrors began,
The women had taken a trip to the beach
Where they ate sandwiches
And talked about the things that shined
In their lives.
And between the Rudolph Valentino's
And pearl necklaces
In the windows of department stores,
I believe they could also list you
Among the beautiful things they had
In spite of all the danger.

I'm a master at
Never finishing a job.
Like how I will never finish counting to infinity
Before my biological clock
Is done ticking and tocking,
Or how I will never be able
To stop loving you
Until I take my final,
Clawing breath.