stranger with my face,
where have you been?
where have you gone?

can’t find the answers
watching myself shave
in the ***** mirror,
where blood that we both
once shared drips into
the sink from a cut
on my chin

do you remember when
you wanted to prove
that i wasn’t your son,
until you had to
pay for it?

because i do,
and laugh every time
i tell that story
like it doesn’t still hurt

as if i don’t look
exactly like you;

and a door closes,
but a window doesn’t open

after all, there are no exits
in this hallway constructed
from grief that slowly
curdles into hate

and i could drink about this,
but what’s the point?
this is a hurt that knows
how to swim

but i’d like to toast anyway,
so here’s three cheers
to absent fathers,
the boy he never wanted to see,
and the man he never gets to know

unsolicited and unwelcome
a man bigger and taller than
i am demands to know what it is
that i believe in

and when i tell him that
i believe in love
he tells me that i am wrong

and i tell him he is
making me uncomfortable
and finger the cap on the canister
of mace in my jacket pocket

i do not tell this man
that he doesn’t know what he is
talking about, nor do i
ask just who the hell he
thinks he is to tell me
that my belief is wrong

i believe in love
in the way my friend wears
the pajama pants i bought him
and makes me pancakes and coffee
for breakfast

i believe in love
in the way she hangs the art
i make for and send to her
in the houses of her home,
willing to bring a massive
canvas all the way to alaska

i believe in love
in the way they welcome me
into their heart and their home
and lets me make them dinner
and clean up after like
domesticity is what you make of it

i believe in love
in the way my sister
calls me her brother
for the very first time
and doesn’t laugh when it
makes me cry

and i believe in love
like one could or would
a god,
but my god is not cruel
my god is not distant

my god
is in the bus fair he makes sure
i have, and then offers if i don’t

my god
is tangible and believes in
me like i believe in it

my god
makes sure i’ve eaten and drank
makes sure i get home safely
and asks me to text them
because they’ll worry if i don’t

there is a choice to be made here
a crossroads, if you will
and i very much do,
thank you

i can either keep beating
the dead horse of what
you did to me

or, what,
forget you?

like how you made me feel
when we first met and the cliche of
this boy is gonna break my heart
so i better break it first
ran through my head

isn’t it funny,
dearheart,
the lies we tell ourselves?

but you lied to me, too
in more ways than one, and
the coercive and manipulative man
i spent five (miserable) months with
was not the kind artist i
really could have fallen in
love with

i don’t care what happened
to that version of you anymore
because melancholy and remembering
do me no good

you taught me a lesson
unintentional though it may have been,
that flowery words and pretty poems
don’t mean anything without actions
to back them up

you knew just the right way
to break down my walls
to make me feel safe and loved
and i won’t forgive you for that

but i will forgive you
for enough
to forget

a bard believes in love
with all that he is
and all that he has

holds it in
his two trembling hands
regards warily sometimes
as judge, jury, garroter

making a home on
this island in the middle
of a vast ocean was
an act fueled by love

and maybe there’s a story
to be written here
about the lines in a
sea captain’s handsome face
carved there by roaring
wind and raucous laughter

maybe there’s a story
in the way a siren’s flame-red
hair fans out around her lithe form
where she stretches to gift
the bard pearls and a promise
of never being alone again

and maybe there’s a story
in the way a kitchen witch
welcomes the bard into her home
and a seat at her grand table
holds him steady against
the rocking of a weather
beaten pirate ship

there’s a story in these people
the bard has willingly tied himself to
how he immortalizes them in love
and the written word

keeping the lighthouse
like a beacon and a promise
of a love not like a choke-chain
but a fistful of flowers freely given
again and again and again

it’s something like a love letter,
the bard thinks to himself,
draping a well-worn jacket
over the captain’s shoulders

you’ve returned to me again
followed that bright beam
from an island lighthouse
out of the ocean depths

and over the wooden floorboards
to this table,
laden with the kind of soft
cookies you like,
and just the right amount of ***

and certainly there must be
a kind of magic imbued
in the way the captain
glances at the bard
with a twinkle in his eye

that hints at the star
he used to be,
when he sailed towards
a much closer horizon

and watching the captain
wrapped in his coat for a change,
the bard remembers why
he fell in love with the captain
all over again

and when the captain
has sailed out upon that
vast and salty ocean once again,
the bard will press his face
into a jacket sleeve that

the smell of the captain
still lingers on,
and pretend that fabric
were his wind-worn skin instead

and think to himself, yes,
there is surely something like a love letter in this

you made me feel
like i was hard to love
and that’s something i
can’t find it in me
to forgive you for

after all, what good
am i to you
if there’s no ***?

seems like the answer
to that is a naive and
generous $400 and that
hoodie you stole from me

i told myself that if you
were happy, that was
enough for me,
for 5 ******* months

and what do i have to
show for it?

a last dinner together
that you were 40 minutes
late for, that i ate alone,
which is ironically the best
meal i’d ever had with you

and i think of you
years from now
doing to another partner
what you did to me

and in the midst of this
anger and hurt, i pity you

because, dearheart
when it comes to lasting love,
selflessness, reciprocity,
and symbiosis

your cup doesn’t
runneth over

it just runs out

the pecans i buy
are not for me,
can’t justify a price tag
like that on myself

but when i see them
on the grocery store shelves
where the star bucks baristas
know me by name
all i think about is you

pecan sandies, mostly
but it goes good with pumpkin, too
and i know you’d agree

and i think about all these
things i have baked for you,
like trying to fill that hollow place
in both of us with sustenance
will make that darkness
a little less oppressive

who’s to say it won’t?

and there must be something holy
in the flour dusted on my black shirt,
hot oven in an even hotter kitchen
when you asked me so sweetly
for something i had never made before
and how am i supposed to say no

how could i?

and you weren’t mine to love,
much less fall in love with

but, just the same,
that’s not something i can bring
myself to regret