I want my words to be beautiful.
Beautiful like yours.
I want to see ordinary things,
Find the magic in them,
And put the magic on a page, for everyone to understand.

I want to have a way with words.
I want every poem of mine
To become a masterpiece.
Just like yours.

I am not broken.

But you are.

You see the world through pain,
And pain makes the colors brighter.
It makes the value of feelings
Climb higher.

Sometimes I wonder
If I should be broken like you
If I want my words to resonate
Like yours.

Sometimes I wonder,
If it will be truly worth it
In the end.

I wonder what it will be like,
To cut myself up to pour out the beauty inside me.

Just like you.

I imagine that you
Raise the blade
Slice your feelings open
And write your masterpiece
In red.

"I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

God topples from the sky, hell's fires fade:
Exit seraphim and Satan's men:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I fancied you'd return the way you said,
But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)"

I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair.
Silent and starving, I prowl through the streets.
Bread does not nourish me, dawn disrupts me, all day
I hunt for the liquid measure of your steps.

I hunger for your sleek laugh,
your hands the color of a savage harvest,
hunger for the pale stones of your fingernails,
I want to eat your skin like a whole almond.

I want to eat the sunbeam flaring in your lovely body,
the sovereign nose of your arrogant face,
I want to eat the fleeting shade of your lashes,

and I pace around hungry, sniffing the twilight,
hunting for you, for your hot heart,
like a puma in the barrens of Quitratue.

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way

than this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

The sinking of the mid-afternoon sun has yet to lose its magic, but our eyes are unable to recognize the beauty of this world in our old (enough) age. Our surroundings have not changed, but they have changed us.

We close our eyes, blinded by the sun's reflection in the shallow pools of water on the side of the road. With each car we pass, we are getting farther away from a place we once called home. Shadows stretch from barren tree branches and highway signs trying to hold onto the last light of day, but coming up short.  We all come up short in this life.

Our efforts are never enough to stop this dying planet from spinning around the sun once more, but we still try to at least slow it down so we can finally exhale and let go of the air we've been holding in our blackened lungs since the day we were born

It all moves too fast. One minute you've got your whole life ahead of you, and the next you've somehow ended up stuck in a failing relationship or working a job you hate. You never thought you'd make it past high school, and now you're on your own wishing you hadn't.

We're all just wanting someone to stay up with us on the nights when sleep is the last thing on our minds, but we always end up alone, watching the horizon fade to black. The night sky is starless and as empty as we are. Nothing has changed, but nothing's the same. We didn't grow up to be what we thought we would. The sun sets, but we cannot. We will still be awake to greet it in the morning of the next day of our never ending, meaningless lives.

A shoebox of letters
hand written on yellow looseleaf
pages upon pages of promises
written in red ink,
a coffin in need of a burial
a reminder of a life
and a love denied.

February 14th, 1989
penned within my first year
the name at the top is not mine
but she writes to him
the way you will write to me
only two decades later.

I shiver as I read each draft;
to realize our failed romance
was but an echo of the past.