i split myself open
and it wasn’t poetic
and it wasn’t for you

was it a gurney i spent
two hours laying on
intubated and unconscious?

remember sinking under
feeling naked without
any metal in my face and ears

i put my trust in the
hands of a surgeon
freeing me up with a scalpel

didn’t ask what my ribs
looked like
even though i was curious

could he see my heart?
did he see a body that could be
made into a home again?

the poet that i am
would like to think so
that he pressed a key into my hands

this key carved from flesh
and bone and bruised ribs
finally a welcome kind of pain

this pain of something new
thick scars like a promise
like coming home
after so long

what kind of love
do i think i deserve?
a thing that yields poems
sweet platitudes and flowery words
but no romance
a loveless and lonely
kind of something?

and sure, love can be elating
wouldn’t be such a popular topic
of poems and songs and ballads
if it weren’t

but an unforgiving love
can be such a hollow feeling
like having my chest opened
and emptied
and sewn up again

and i know what that’s really like, too
but this kind of love is more numbing
than cut nerve endings
and the scars that that leaves

glad to have never been in love
since there are only so many ways
to say that you’ve made me cry
and make it sound appealing
but a bard with a broken heart
is something no one wants to see
a broken heart yields no coin

but my heart is weak
my heart is wanting
and i am helpless
in the face of how i feel
how i ache
how i yearn
for you

singing your praises
like any good bard would do
even though you’ve never liked poetry
and isn’t that just my luck,
my love?

unrequited love is all well
and good in songs
written out as a poem
a sonnet
a ballad
but the reality hurts

the only heart i’ve ever
broken is my own
which, i guess that’s not
such a bad track-record

and what kind of poet
a wanna-be bard
would i be if i didn’t
think or speak with my mind
but with my heart
my love?

but i have grown tired
of licking my wounds
always hoping for hands
that are more steady than my own
to take this hurt from me

and i am so full of love
yours for the taking, always
i’d give you my heart if i could
better with a knife than with blood
but that’s a risk i’m willing to take

i ache, i ache, and i ache
not entirely knowing what for
maybe out of longing
something akin to wanting?
an answer only i can give

but i still don’t know
what the question could be
and so words die on my tongue
afraid of smothering you under
the weight of whatever
this is

does the melancholy come
before the sorrow
or is it the other way around?

does being a fool make
me a poet
or am i a poet because
i was first a fool?

if my hands were steady
enough to hold an instrument
i could be your darling bardling
and sing you into immortality

but my voice is as shaky
as the rest of me
even when you’re not around

and there’s nothing poetic about
a bard that can’t hold a note
without going all to shambles

is there, my love?

i wonder if this is
what love feels like
your hand ****** in the collar
of my shirt

our faces so close
i could lean forward
and kiss you gently

or bite your lip
make you bleed
like i have bled

instead, i bite my tongue
tasting copper
but nothing i will regret
having said

like all these apologies
stagnating in my throat
maybe a broken plea
but i don’t know what for

i’d ask you
if i could find my voice
putting the pressure on you
to fix this

and that’s selfish, isn’t it?
wanting you to hold me
like one would a lover
without the other iterations
of that silly little word

but that’s all i have
ran out of ways to make my sorrow
sound poetic and palatable
long before this infatuation
blind-sided me so cruelly

and maybe right now
this is okay
your hands rough on my skin
but your voice so soft
when you look at me

i wanted you to touch me
was eager to teach you
the curves and plains of my body

baring all those scars
on wrist and chest and knowing
you’d only look upon me
with adoration and something
akin to love

and maybe that was selfish of me
putting so much trust in you
but you were selfish, too

you wanted more than i
was willing
was able
to give

and maybe you didn’t know
what you were asking of me
trying to put a time limit
on the years upon years of
****** trauma i had
yet to work through

and if my own hand was
sometimes too much
how would i react to
both of yours?

i was trying to save you
the burden of
my choking on sobs when you
touched me
over the shirt and below the belt

knowing how quickly pleasure
can turn to fear

and would you have been able to
talk me down from the brink of
being a scared little boy
and back into the body of
a young man?

and it’s not that i didn’t trust you
not that i didn’t murmur your name
not that i didn’t want to know what your
mouth would feel like ******* hickeys
into my collarbones and shoulder blades
i just needed you to wait

that’s all i ever asked of you
giving so much more than i ever
expected in return
and it still wasn’t enough

maybe i wasn’t enough?
maybe you were unfair
trying to pressure me into an
intimate act that was a precursor to more
to something i couldn’t handle

i wanted you to touch me
but now i’m drinking away
how your hands felt
held in my own
in my hair
on my body

the memory
the ghost
of your touch is just one more thing
i am trying to forget

am i a young boy
or a young man?
the only answer that
i have is i am alone
and i am afraid

night is closing in
i want my mother
i want my father
but does my father want me?

another answer i don’t have
cold seeping into my bones
feeling both too small and
too big for my skin

my wrists and hands look like his
the lights are on
but the house burnt
down long ago

and i sit at a table
made from charred and twisted wood
waiting for my father
to eat with me
to even look at me

but he never shows
because of course he doesn’t
and i sit at that table
until i am a young boy again
waiting for my father to
carry me to bed and tuck me in

and still he is not there
just me and empty plates
full of rotting food
and all these broken promises

the broken heart of a young boy
still beats within my chest
wondering what i did wrong
when it never was me at all
just a selfish man
that never should have been a parent

and i stop waiting then
packing that particular wound
with cotton and whispered apologies
promising to never let it happen again

and my knees creak
when i stand
fitting my skin like i should
an old heart in a young body

and the lights are on
but the house burnt
down long ago

and and and
i tell the remains of this house
that never was my home
that i’m just stepping out
for a smoke

with no intention
of ever going back