Remember that time I read you poems in the dark until 2am?
and the way you used to hold my hand until you fell asleep
...You know I hate when you do this.
Can we have an actual conversation, please?
Oh, right. Because I’m always the bad guy.
Would you just listen?
I love you.
What about that time we made love in your truck?
There is something worth saving here.
What about all the nights we spent laughing until we cried?
Yeah, well you’re never willing to try, anymore.
I’m not crazy for asking if there’s someone else.
You’ve always said this would never work.
I’m ******* trying, here...
You’re tired of all of this?!
Yeah, me too.
No... *******...
Babe, please... people fight...
Don’t tell me it’s not me.
It’s not over. It doesn’t have to be over.
Let’s give this a real chance.
Fine, ******* go then.

Wait..

Long ago when Eden masqueraded itself as a paradise
Back when the tree of life bloomed with the sins of fallen angels
And Eve picked the apple that the snake had offered her
And once the juice trickled down her lips
So the snake laughed and writhed with glee
At the idea that woman had condemned us all
With her feminine wiles
And selfish urges.
Back when god scoffed at his muddled creation
For being weak enough
To take temptation by its supple fruit
****** us all
She did.
By being human.
How could woman be so stupid?
How could woman be so vile?
Did she not understand what she was doing
Did she not understand what she was setting into motion.
That all of this
Could one day be her fault
For being hungry
For being human.
Did she not understand that the fruit
Was poisoned.
Wasn’t it?
Woman be ******.
For isn’t it your fault.
It must be.
That the monstrous ways of men were born.

No one will ever love you
the way that I have.
And no one will ever hate you
the way that I do.
I hate that there is nothing left of you here
nothing for me to hold on to of you
nothing to burn in place of you.
Because the only things I have left
are the images burned into
the deepest layers of my brain garden.
Past the wall where
Kurt Vonnegut is reading poetry,
the shelves that cradle the words of “Catcher in the Rye”
the lyrics of “American Pie”
past the wild flowers planted
by the sweet giggles of my daughter,
the orchids nurtured
by the smiles of my sweet boy..
deep
deep in my brain garden there is a corner,
behind an old iron fence,
where the images of you play on repeat..

I don’t walk back that far anymore.
I don’t open that gate.
For if I do,
if I cross that threshold,
I am bombarded by the times that we laid in that hotel room
and laughed until we ached,
where I awoke from a nightmare
to you stroking my hair
and holding me tightly.
Or the night
we made love in my apartment
and I caught you looking at me
like I was magic..
Before you shook the thought away,
just like that,
and the moment was gone.
Before you,
I never knew that you could fall in love with a moment.
Never knew
that you could fall in love with an instant,
a single solitary second where I thought
I could’ve sworn,
I saw you love me..
before I watched you
refuse to acknowledge
or accept even the idea
that you could love me.

I held onto that moment.
Planted wilted flowers in that moment.
And waited.
Waited for another fleeting moment
when you would let your guard down
and love me.
But while I waited,
your flowers began to grow
thorns but never petals.
After that moment,
those thorns engulfed my garden.
Every second
that you convinced me
that you didn’t love me,
those thorns spread,
twisting
and curling
around everything that attempted to flourish there.
Through the books I had loved,
and the songs I had danced to,
they covered the memories of past loves,
past lives
I had lived before you
until it was only thorns.
Until I truly thought
that gardens were supposed to be just...
thorns.

You.
Destroyed.
Me.

Then you left me.
Left me standing in the dark,
***** ground surrounded by nothing
but cobblestone remains,
walls that had crumbled
until there were only structures
that had once resembled castles.
And everything became just
dark.

Until one day,
when I met a boy who brought a single rose
into my desolate paradise.
A single rose
that would go on to multiply into a thousand different flowers,
flowers that would cover my brain garden,
grow higher than the clouds
you had covered me in
until the sunlight shattered the sky.  
Together,
he handed me brick,
by brick,
until there were castles again.
The books that had burned
in the trails of you insincere actions
rained down from the sky as beautiful new stories,
laced with golden scriptures.
And your thorns,
the thorns that you had planted,
retreated back,
back into the farthest corners of my garden.
And I built that gate.
And there you stayed.

I gave you
everything that I had.

What the **** did you think
would happen to me?

This morning I had coffee with God,
or the divine being, or the top dog..
Whatever you want to call her.
Sometimes I call her a *****.
But that’s the thing about Gods, right?
They are what you need them to be.
So she strolled in around 6:45,
blasting Jay Z’s “Encore” through my Alexa and asked me what the **** I was doing.

It went a little something like this:

“Get your *** up, we need to have a chat.”

“I don’t remember calling you..” I groan as I put my hand over my eyes.

“Yeah well, you never call me anymore.”

“Yeah well, I prefer to think you wouldn’t answer anyway.”

“Been a long time since I’ve heard you say that one… I think you were a kid, still.”

“I dunno.. probably”

“What’s the matter? You look a little hungover?” She asks as she begins to bang the back of a frying pan with a wooden spoon.

“Is that my ******* pan?”

“Yeah, Lp. It sure is. Did you want me to stop?” As she hits the pan harder.

“Okay, okay… what do you want?”

She puts down the pan, hands me a cup of black coffee and sits on the edge of my bed.

“This isn’t you. Not all of you. You’re allowing the parts that are missing as an excuse to crumble. That’s not you. You don’t do this anymore. I raised you better than this.”

“You raised me? You never stepped foot inside that house.”

“Whining over trauma you worked so hard to get past? That’s what we’re doing, now? Fine. Crumble. Drink too much. Push people away by trying to scare them off with your nonsense about being too much. You want a grenade to throw into your life? Fine. I’ll pull the pin and stand clear…”

“Being an accomplice doesn’t really seem like your vibe.”

“You really are a ******* sometimes. Stop trying to rationalize giving in because change is hard, because you miss them, because you’re worried you won’t be someone that someone decides to take a chance on. You are better than the you that you have convinced yourself that you are.”

“What if I’m not? What if this is just… where I am, now?”

“Then you’re a brat, and all the courage you’ve built, has been wasted. Get the **** up. I won’t coddle you next time.”

And just like that,
I blink and she’s gone.
Back to wherever deities go
after dishing out epiphanies,
while leaving no blueprints of how to do so.
I spend a couple more moments
with my face in my pillow,
“99 Problems”
pulsing through an otherwise empty house.
Before I get up,
mutter to myself that she’s a real pain in the ***,
and pour every drop of ***** down the sink.
Clean my kitchen.
Fold the laundry.
Change the sheets..
Because she’s a ****,
but she’s right.

I’d like to think that this ends
much like a dying star.
That it burns and boils with fury and passion
until one day it implodes into itself,
in a beautiful spectacle of cosmic mourning.

But there’s a feeling in my soul
a quiet, dreadful haunting
that this dies uneventfully.
Like the anticlimactic withering of the last flowers before the frost.
That one day
we just realize it’s been awhile,
but neither one of us really has anything to say.
And the final petals fall
without anyone really noticing
at all.

I’m going to miss you tonight.
Every single part of you.
Every last ounce of who you are.


And tomorrow,
well tomorrow...

I won’t.

I had never noticed that bar before,
the one hidden amongst the neon signs.
I'm sure I'd driven by a hundred times
over the course of nights
I spent stumbling down those streets..
I'm sure I'd even looked at it once or twice,
unable to make out the name
or the sign on the door..
Just passed that alleyway
in the pursuit of other things.
So when I met you there,
I was apprehensive,
hands shaking,
heart pounding,
in anticipation of what you would want me to be.
Anxious of who you would think I was,
after a "couple of drinks"
on a Friday afternoon..
And my hair was a mess,
in a faded Biggie shirt,
and a pair of converse I'd worn since the tenth grade,
but could never seem to throw away
because they had meant something then,
so they must mean something now..
Because I'd worn the soles out
sneaking back into my parents’ house,
after my virginity was stolen,
tripped over the laces the morning my father had held my hand,
as he walked me into rehab and told me to be brave..
And the first time I was brave enough to see that headstone,
when I’d sobbed alone in the pouring rain,
and they filled with water through the holes in the sides.
They had been there.
Every time my heart had shattered,
so no matter what,
Capital Ave couldn't be too bad.

I do believe,
without intention,
that I have somehow,
in some way,
become undeniably,
enchantingly,
horrendously,
addicted to you.

Write something beautiful.

I tell myself,
"Tonight,
I will write something beautiful."

I think..
as I drink wine from the bottle,
wine I chose because that particular taste
seems to **** the loneliness better than others.

Cheap moscato.

I feel somewhat like
the sad counterpart to a jay-z video,
sipping bottles and writing rhymes.
But my writes don’t rhyme,
and my bottle was $6.99,
bought by my cousin because I’m still too young to legally drink,
but somehow I can vote and go to war..
I could die, if I so chose, for the very country that tells me
it’s illegal to find some sort of way to **** the pit in my stomach.

But this is the alcohol talking,
and I’m starting to sound like I do this often...

Then again, the way I’m writing, if I told you I didn’t, you wouldn’t believe me anyway.

So yes world!
Cruel, sad world.
You drove me to a bottle I cant even own,
and somehow I’m still allowed to be



this
*******
sad.


Riddle me that...







..But then I remember that my problems pail in comparison
to those in other worlds,
and my demons are child’s play compared to victims
of all the other sins of evil-doers...

But you know what?
Tonight, I want to ******* feel sorry for myself,
and I don’t want to be sorry about it.
Because, my family is terrifying.
And I ran away from the clutches of a life I still believe
I’ll fall victim to in the end.
And the boy I still cry over,
finally told me that he loved me,
but regret it twelve hours later
when the whiskey had worn off.
I haven’t spoken to
any kind of god,
in longer than I can remember
and I doubt any of them would listen anyway.
At this point,
the men I’ve slept with no longer have faces
except for the one, with the whiskey and the sweet words..
and all I can do
is lay in bed
and wait for the world to slow the **** down
so I can figure out which ******* direction
I'm even going in.

So **** it,
that’s it.

There’s your something beautiful.

What the ****
am I doing.
And why can’t I
quit you?



...why don’t I want to?