My insides are empty train stations
Where our kisses go to die.
I have spent months rhyming
Your name with bandages
And bullet torn nightmares,
Still smiling, still growing,
Left still and surrendered
I am the rain that could not fall,
The night that did not turn to day,
The infection, the terminal,
All change, all change,
all change.

apologies are nothing
but lifeless letters until you breathe meaning
into the spaces between each and every word

I've always been told I can't run from my problems
but why can't I drive down the coast,
boardwalking and hanging ten
smiling at hippies dressed in henna
why can't I ascend the mountains
reaching into infinity with palms wide open  
I could hop into Seattle,
feel new rain on my face
kissing strangers reflected in the ***** puddles
or maybe flow with rivers til I found a bear's den
they tell me I can't run
so I won't
I'll spring
leap
slide
crawl
I'll tiptoe over the line

Fake beef and chicken
No one will really like you
Despite condiments

I study her withering hands every time I'm around her
they are becoming so thin... all her veins stick out like snakes
her fingers are all crooked--
broken tree branches fighting against the wind
eighty years of working her flower beds and scrubbing floors and
baking the best meals and desserts that only a grandmother can prepare
and my grandpa, I have never loved a person as deep and as securely as I love him  
saying you have a hero borders on icon-worshipping but in this case he's solid
he is the absolute best and absolute most loyal man I have ever had the pleasure
of knowing
he married my grandma at eighteen, and
eighty eight years of wars and he never took one sick day off of work
he sleds down his long, winding driveway to pick up his mail in the snow
he used to pour water in my hands and tell me that if I could catch it,
I could catch the entire universe right there in my palms
I tried for years

I study their hands because I want to remember their greatest parts
arguably, that could be every inch, but their hands have shown
such strength, boldness, fight, hard work, dedication, love, and tenderness
maybe this is wrong but every day I practice saying goodbye in my mind
so that when they pass, I am not so crushed that I cannot move on
they have been my saving grace too many times for me to thank them for
so I just say I love you, you're my reason for existing, and then I
carefully etch their hands in my mind so that never for a second
will I forget the great work they have done here