It probably is the pollen all
around me. The trees and flowers are all super
***** and putting all this drunk,
yellow pain into my
Or maybe it is the amount
of time I spend looking at

Nonetheless I find my eyes to be very itchy
and I find myself reaching for the eyedrops.

I promise you, I am not writing about
rubbing my eyes for clarity nor for hope. About the stupidity
of previous circumstances and how to resolve my issues
and pains with another person, nor about the sharp
daggering embraces we reluctantly continue to dig into each
other, nor about the seismic novella you choose to make me
read through every indeterminate eye glance and concave
movement in the curvature of your lips, nor about the
indescribable, uncontrollable, unbelievable,
in-*******-consequestional amount of times I can't
help but to think when I was happier with you-
but you weren't.

Maybe I should stop rubbing my eyes, it's making it worse

She left us a cookbook before heading down South-
I don't know why, we don't know how to cook
nor was her cooking ever good,
so it's hard to say if we can even trust this book


"A Gentleman's Essentials in the Kitchen"


My brothers and I (three of us) were in a diner,
debating on what to do-
after Mom left the funeral we were forced to
acknowledge each other for the first time in years


1 cup white sugar, 1/2 cup butter, 2 eggs, 1/2 cup milk


She did not remarry after the divorce,
so I think she probably took it hard coming to Dad's
"Life Celebration"
She probably had some lingering love for him
But I don't know, it is the first time I've seen her in 17 years


1 1/2 cup of flour, 1 3/4 teaspoons of baking powder


I hear my older brothers arguing over the logistics of the funeral,
how cheap it was, how weak the amount of attendees was,
how smelly the reception was, how shaky the transitions were,
how sad they were, how mad they were,
how defeated I was


Preheat oven to 350 degrees F and grease and flour a large pan


Dad never spoke to Mom (not that I know of) since they split-
I don't think there was anyway he could ever see her face without
falling down crying over her mistakes/
I can still smell her putrid odor walking through the front door 17 years ago
I can still hear them yelling knives, gravely ripping through the air with arguments and deflections through many rooms 17 years ago
I can still feel the spike of pain and blood running down my face by "motherly" hands 17 years ago


Cream the sugar and butter, beat the eggs, and stir the milk in


He wasn't a good dad, he was just objectively better than Mom
He remembered our birthdays, but never got us a cake-
I think he tried to bake one for my 10th birthday, but
all I remember is him taking off his oven mitts and taking us to
McDonald's
saying, "You can get a happy meal today, the rest of y'all, pick from the dollar menu- or share a 2 for $5 with me"/
Mom always baked us a cake
My brothers used to love my birthdays when I was a baby because she would still bake a cake, even when I can't eat it
For my 7th birthday, it was a simple white cake


Bake for 30 to 40 minutes in the preheated oven


Why did she even come this weekend? She had nothing to do with Dad's life for years. He was fine where he was, and so was I, and so were my brothers, and probably so was she. Is it a social obligation to go to your ex-husband's funeral? Is it a social obligation to divorce after abuse? Nobody forced them to do anything. I was forced all my life to go there, move there, eat there, study there- but all the freedom lies on my stupid parents. She can leave whenever she wants and it's just me and my brothers arguing and picking up the pieces. She leaves a book and is it supposed to mean something? Is she going to bake 17 awful white cakes from all the years she decided to frolic in the grass and hide from my scars? Is the book a symbol of her love or a ****** way of saying sorry in a poetic manner?

Take it back. I said I didn't need it. Exchange it for a real apology. I don't even want to exchange it for my Dad's life, just say something  meaningful Mom, don't hide behind a ******* book.

Just stand up for something righteous. I can't breathe your unapologetic air that we shared.

I felt a tear drop onto the page of the book that was open on my lap. It was the first time I cried the whole weekend. That single tear had been crawling its way through the trenches of my depressed visual vessels only to be dropped off by gravity onto a recipe for a white cake.


The cake is done when it springs back to the touch


I sink back into my chair being pulled and gravitated towards the floor, exhausted and learned

And there will be tears filled to its highest salinity
and masks melting with every confession of sin

When God came down to judge our insecurities,
our cancerous thoughts that slowly rip our untouched *****,
where we usually hide our true prayers,

When He came yesterday

to blow away the golden cornfields of a child's memories,

to set fire on the marshlands where one notices the roots
of the trees facing up, grasping, reaching,
and pulling for air that is polluted with God's smoke,

to bring a thousand faceless angels coming not to guard our souls,
but rather to shatter time into
a thousand little paused moments to keep for themselves

God stands

in my very own Judgement Day

Hm.

Where was he last week?
When I was crying tears filled with its highest salinity
and I melted with every confession of sin.

Where was God?

Measure me.

Can you quantify the gradients of emotions
I spin through daily?

If I awake from years of passivity,
will you still know how to walk through years of
conversation and growth?

I hate when
I call upon the gods of anxious hearts,
The ones who have troubled
every decision you have made.

They make your commute from genuine emotions
to a grey, murky house full of
players pretending to be teams,
blue's pretending to be rainbows,
and persons pretending to be people.

Come here and hold my hands.
Mine have been missing their fingerprints
for countless lifetimes.
Touch my incomplete, hungry dreams.
You alone can.
I alone can.

Can I?

It recently just rained.
The air still has leftover water in the pockets of its existence.
I can feel it.
I swat and shoo away the mosquitos,
who can smell my fresh blood ten miles away.
While I am distracted by the pests,
the river flows.

The river is murky- a not yet green, not yet yellow,
not yet brown Beast that has vague faces on it
from the reflections of the clouds.
The faces are so hidden and so unrecognizable
you cannot tell if they are
happy, sad, mad, or even emoting at all.

The leaves on the river glides along forward,
as if it is going to work on schedule-
cars along the interstate hoking at the other cars to move.
Meanwhile the river takes its time,
lazily it dries the leaves along.

The sun's perfectly crafted light can be seen
like waves on the underbelly of the
-alive, dark, green-
leaves of the limp tree that hovers
over the river on the bank.

The river looks peaceful from afar-
afar, it looks like a constant, steady movement
from left to right.

But, there is a war.

Two sides of the river are constantly fighting.
One side is constantly victorious, however the other side
keeps fighting and struggles to live,
but it seems as if the table can turn at any time;
a chair with three legs.

The sun is facing directly at me,
while still casting a towering shadow on the surface of the river,
due to the trees that look like giants from another plant
that I read once in a comic book.

A cool breeze rewards me for being in this atmosphere,
for staring at a body of water for an hour and analyzing its heart.

But does the river have a heart?
Does it have a brain?
What does it think of me?

The dry eraser has a soft, light, grey fluff

with a brush black finish,

that's been tainted by the imprints of black ink,

and a black rectangular prism,

that also has the word "EXPO" bolded in large letter

in an organized yet artistic fashion

as if to say,

"I erase ink"

This particular eraser has...

160 calories
0g of saturated fat
420 mg sodium
1g sugar

Literally zero satisfaction

I can eat mountains worth of these
little Pretzel Sticks,
yet none of those mountains will fill the vast space,
the vast universe,
the vast vacuum


of my stomach.


A hole that goes on and on forever.