Instead, I give you

simple tragedies;

how you will
never remember everything
and the more you live the
more there is forgotten.
Sewn optical cords
seeing the reimagined
through blurry suspicion,
stifling doubt, and
****** buttons.

Metallic words
cutting skin like butter.
The knives will sink
slowly into our
chests and we will be
exactly too far away
from anyone to
do anything about it.

How convenient.

A set of hands,
their cross-stitched fingers
frayed at the ends,
entangling. Still,
they will stumble
to pick up the pieces,
to fix the seaming
in the strings.

There is the lake,
its undulating softness
reaching out soothingly,
and it's jarring
how much it
feels like you.

There's a disconnection,
   because he doesn't know
where the line crosses
from crucification
   to melodrama.
The light plays
   on his face,
mysterious, illuminating,
  and all that,
but you pay attention
  to his wrists,
nailed to the slab
of wood in such a
   way as to incite
divine intervention.
  Cue the angelic choir.
Their voices are not rejoicing,
    though, but divinely wrathful
towards our imitating.

The hole in my
roof gives me
the perfect view
of the stars,
let's me connect
all the dots.
My life is a
group of
constellations,
but the ladder
of silence
descends
too far
from the
atmosphere.

He was standing at
  the front door,
  but watching the cat
sitting on the rocking chair.
It was black and white
  and looking out onto
  the green grass, or above
the apartment complex,
or beyond it, at the place
  his mother was, somewhere.
  He didn't have to jiggle its handle
to see if the door was locked,
to know if you weren't home.
  But he had locked you out of his heart
  for so long by then, that
hating you for locking the front door
would have been ludicrous.
  He was just tired,
  not only from a long day at school,
but also from asking the
neighbors for a bite to eat.
  The cat flicked its tail in
  drowsy agreement. It never
came in, but he never tried
to make it come in anyways.
  By then it was too late
  to care about cats
in rocking chairs.

You are standing
on a great, grassy
field as far as your eyes
can see. The ground
is firm, there is a peaceful
wind in the air
gently rustling your hair.
This is not what you expected.
You had anticipated
explosions, yelling,
a thud on the wall
that sounds like someone's
skull is being hit by
the house phone!
But no,
the field is
the serene place,
the confinement
that is childhood.
It is an illusion.
It never existed.

I want to love you
but I can barely
stay afloat.

I don't know
how to put it all into words
and still keep myself intact.

The hands in my chest reach out to catch a star,
but instead they grab a bird, which escapes,
leaving everything behind
but its feathers.

He wishes he had a hobby.

Wishes he had a hand to hold,
wishes the intake of breathes was
filled with a special kind of
something.

Special something? He can't even name
it, yet he wishes.

Names little things to himself, knows them with
a distinctness that he won’t admit. For
what reason, we will never know.

He hopscotches around the details.
No one mentions this either.

Walking through the house
while no ones around,
speaking loudly to himself.

He's trying to fill up the long, quiet years.

Trying to fill up his quiet heart.
Maybe there is something he's missing.

Oh, he's missing a lot of things.

There's a list, somewhere.
Someone bets this.

It's him.

It's his brain.

It's his memories, the way they echo in his
head after repeatedly going over them
like lines for a play.*

Sometimes he acts out the parts.

The morning glories
bloomed from one side
of my chest to the other
in an archway.
He ****** the
succinct little flowers
into my wrists,
which only showed themselves
in the morning,
because by noon
their eyes were closed,
and by evening it
wasn’t love anymore.