His heart does not belong to you. He is a poet.
Don't you know they only love words?
Love, yes love, he lives and breathes and writes love letters
About your brown hair around your neck, and the gold he found in your eyes.
Maybe the way you smile more with one side
Or other things, perhaps, about you he believes he loves.
But it's not you he loves, and you must realize this now.
He only loves words. He is a poet. He only loves words.
He's not looking for any heaven he can spend with you
Because he's already found it in that cup of tea he sipped
At the coffee shop around the block
Where he sat, and listened, and watched, and thought
Of the words he loves more than you.

A small child once swam up to me
While I was drowning and gasping for breath
And asked.
Kindly.
Be my friend?
Without responding I looked at her,
And ignored her
To continue with my flailing in the shallow water.
And it took me until now,
And until later
To realize the deepness of the water was in my mind.
That she had not swam to me but walked
With water around her ankles
Her ankles alone.
So now I'm standing
In shallow water
With a friend, who has waited
And waited
For me to realize there was never any water at all.
None at all.

He used to walk with his head down,
Eyes on the ground sheltered by black lenses
Brick walls covering the window to his soul.
He barely even walked,
trudged really.
Like he was making his way through a swamp of ***** things
Things he wanted nothing to do with.
He deafened himself with his music
So he couldn't even hear the filthy creatures that taunted him.
Tennis shoes or moccasins, didn't really matter,
He moved them one at a time, step-by-step,
Carefully choosing the route that would leave him most alone,
So he could wonder to himself why no one loved him.
I've never seen his eyes, but I've looked into his soul
And though he's never spoken a word to me
I understand his heart.
He's let it be so, that people can see,
That he maims himself out of love
And though he is still blinded by walls,
And deafened by music
He now walks with his arms open, his head up,
His heart vulnerable.
He is a book you have to take from the shelf and open for yourself.
No cover art, no summary on the back,
But the greatest book you will ever read
Nonetheless

All I know for certain is that I lost you.
Somewhere between "hello" and the goodbye that stopped my heart,
My smile didn't matter to you any longer,
And my hand became a world too heavy for you to burden.
Somewhere between "hello" and never seeing your face again
Watching the moon rise over the lake turned into a complete and utter memory
Of a moon that waited on the other side of the parking garage roof,
And love turned from a campfire
To wood too damp to kindle a flame.
I don't know where my accomplishments began affecting you
More than the spring in my step,
Or my tears became tangible evidence of discovering reality
But there was a specific point where it turned.
After so many months, years have passed, the point has left me.
My heart beats again
I smile, and write, and dance,
But for fear of finding the turning point once more
I do not love.

Sometimes I feel like a participation trophy.
Congrats, you did it.
Here's to commemorate your dedication
Now goodbye, go do something better with your time
Earn something you're not afraid to show off
That's worth more than this five cents of plastic
Unless, of course, you're not good at anything
In which case look, everyone, at my trophy.
I participated in something
That took more effort than eating food or breathing
I showed up sometimes
And did some stuff
And I got this trophy I can put on my top shelf
So everyone can see it's a trophy,
But no one knows I barely earned it.
Not that anyone cares anyway

He is made up entirely of perfection
The boy who without any flaws, they called him.
With as much heart as soul, as much soul as mind, and as much mind as strength.
The way he carried himself was perfection.
Steady, step-by-step, looking neither down at his feet or up at the sky
Nor straight ahead
But perfectly in front of him with attentive eyes that didn't search the crowd.
He sat when he needed to, stood when he needed to,
And knelt down only to God.
Each word he used on paper or in voice was riddled with kindness and honesty, and deliberation
As if he had dedicated his whole life to finding that word, to use it in such a way
As to share it with you in that moment.
Truly he spent his time thinking about words and meanings,
So that each word he spoke and thought had meaning
Nobody knew that he was lonely, and the words were to him more than words
But a way to describe, but a code, but a message in a bottle
With limited time to speak and ears to hear,
Words chosen perfectly for each occasion to introduce himself
To perhaps his soul mate.
But he was made of perfection, whose soul-mate didn't exist
Whose soul-mate was too imperfect to tell him she heard him when he said
In his backwards code
That he was in love with the sky and the sun, the moon and the stars
And wanted nothing more than someone to walk with at night.

Coffee shop boy sitting at a wooden table with headphones tucked gently into his ears
Sipping espresso or tea from a paper cup that says "Caution: Hot Contents"
Which makes him think desperately of her clothes, and the wind-kissed skin she wears underneath
Wishing he could be the air and wrap his soul around her with each of her steps.
He takes a sip of his latte or black coffee, and feels the burn as it travels down his throat
While it warms his heart he looks out at the night sky framed by the coffee shop window
He glances at the moon and all of the stars and prays they light her path and keep her safe
In envy he realizes the stars look upon her every night, when she wears the moonlight around her face
With her head resting against a pillow, eyes closed and dreaming things the day can't contaminate.
And he wishes beyond hope he could be there to write them down like a to-do list kept secret from her
Until completed he presents them to her, with a check mark on his own heart to show that it, too, is hers.
But since he cannot do these things he picks up his Americano or Cocomo and takes another sip
And he lets the banging of the drums and deliberate pounding of the guitar put her out of his mind
Until later at night he picks up a pen, half-full with ink, and writes once again about himself
Hoping she'll read each word and fall as in love with him, imperfections, flaws and humanity
As he is with her beauty, words, breath, heart, soul and spirit.