i.** picture this, just for a second. instead of waving from a mile away, we walk up the gently sloping hill together, side by side. the sky sheds its bruises above us. we could hold hands, if you wanted. what do you see in the morning clouds? tell me what it felt like, to swallow a star.

ii. i think of you all the time. i’m getting used to the weird volcanic eruptions in my chest when i see you leaning against the front gates at school or lacing up your shoes or when you tell me how much you hate durian, or whatever. you’ve got a habit of inclining your head slightly when you say “all right” or “okay.” i’ve noticed all kinds of things. i wish i didn’t.

iii. but tell me more about yourself. what’s your favorite color? do you get along with your sister? are you content here, with me, lying on a vast expanse of green on a dying planet, or do you still dream of colonizing a different soil? where do you go, when you get tired of running?

iv. here. give me your palms. look—your lifeline, strong and sturdy and sure. i’d like to trace your veins with sharpie someday (or perhaps even with my own hands, if you would let me). when you cross the finish line next week, maybe you’ll throw your arms up, the universal victory gesture, and maybe you’ll think of me the same way i think of you. maybe. just maybe.

v. so let’s ditch the world tomorrow and get coffee together after school. let’s tell jokes and forget everything else exists, and no, you don’t have to worry about the bill.

My tears spawned
the rainstorms
My blood painted
the clouds

I was the essence
of disaster
Now I am little more
than dust

We were reckless,
We were clever.

We were fearless,
We smiled at our leisure.

Our papers were stained with our thoughts;
We suffered through our pain and yet were not distraught.

Always we were brave enough to hope;
We ceased to mope.

We heeded our minds,
And our positive thoughts, despite being entwined
With the fragments of bitter doubt.

We would not have remained without
Hopeful shards of our imagination,
Hopeful thoughts of what was to come.

ONE. the titans live in the space between his heartbeats and they’ve taken him, even though you asked them not to. he is a) your best friend b) a monster and c) a victim. what are you going to do?

TWO. let the loneliness ebb through you, solidify into something so cold it burns. now flex your wrists. now bend the skyscrapers backwards.

THREE. imagine here a battlefield. imagine a city’s skeleton: mangled concrete and the harsh lights of bloodied bonfires. you can’t run from the truth: you did this. you did this. you did this.

FOUR. you are more than grief. you are grief personified. you are grief, breathing and bruised. but you are angry and weakened and tired, and you miss him, and it wasn’t anyone’s fault, anyway.

FIVE. every slate can be cleaned if you have the heart to do it. here, i’ll help you: the words are i’m sorry.

a kiss like goodbye
swallow the black sand beaches—
may we meet again

1
Tell me again how you danced with him on the wings of uncertainty, how you sunk into a whirlpool of promise without patent in an age of scarce truth. I want to know how you let the sand slip between your toes, how the biting wind brought tears to your eyes. The ocean calls to you and you can’t refuse it. How does it feel? How does it feel to be well-versed in the nature of love?

2
He never asked me to love him, but I did anyway, and that was the root of the problem, because he’d already swayed with her for one two three four songs, brought her to a sidewalk café with ten dollars stashed in his pocket and leaned in. The heart has four chambers. All of his were occupied.

3
There’s a house across my street where a bitter woman lives. I don’t wake up early enough to see her smoking on her front porch, but on Tuesdays my cousin spits his anecdotes across the dinner table, frothing. There’s a feud between them because he walks to City College every morning and she’s got an affair with a cigarette and he has asthma and she hates the sound of his basketball on gravel. There’s an ambulance wailing outside as he throws hateful slurs around, as if that has anything to do with anything. I don’t answer. I never do. The sirens go on wailing.

4
I have a brother who defies gods on the daily and he’s too angry to help me with math when he comes home, too caught up in the tangle of politics politics politics, and I have a brother who wasn’t born because modern medicine is a misnomer, and I have a brother who talks to me only when I’ve spent too long locked in my own room. They are themselves and they are each other and they are me. I love them all, sort of, except I could love them better if I knew them.

5
Here, I’ll tell you. Here’s a novelty: Potrero Hill on a Sunday and a sidewalk café. I haven’t blinked the sleep out of my eyes but you don’t care, you still take my hand and steer me away from coffee and drop me off at the DMV. No one takes us seriously but we don’t care we don’t care we don’t care and such is the nature of love. Come back to the beach, you say. I hate the beach but you don’t know that and never will, but you’ll be waiting there, I know, so I take the car keys when my brothers are asleep and drive home to you.