how easy it is to write a poem
of unrequited love
an ode to that insatiable hunger
that lives unwelcome in the pit of
my stomach
and slowly eats away at me
gnawing a black hole into that space
an emptiness i couldn't look at
its darkness burned brighter than
the eclipsed sun
who always called with the most
beautiful voice and promised that
if i simply stopped averting my eyes
i would most certainly become one with you
and i forsake my sight
to have your heat
your radiation from all parts of the spectrum
to burn my traitorous eyes right out of their sockets.

how different it is to write
of contentment and perhaps even
a love that i can reach out and touch
without having it sublimate each atom of my being
and reduce me to a radioactive ash
scattered to the wind.

it's a love that i can submerge myself in
it presses in all around and the
mega-Pascals of pressure simply reach
a placid equilibrium with my porous skin
i breathe it in and my lungs
somehow learn to pull the oxygen from
the molecules of liquid desire and vitreous joy
and it fuels my body
infiltrating and inhabiting every cell
feeding my muscles as i
sensuously move my body
fluid as the frigid water around me.

3rd grade, chipped tooth from swinging on the monkey-bars that were still wet from the rain. I held your hand even if you were a girl, too. How everybody teased. You kissed me behind the stacks of books in the library. I thought about telling my mom. I wondered if god saw.

2. 13 yr old stealing eyeliner from the drug store across the street. You blowing smoke into my mouth after-school. I was spell-bound. You taught me words like "****". You forgot my birthday and I gave myself a bruise punching you in the face.

3. he was in the hospital. I couldn't sleep for three days. I never told him about any of this. We spoke only on the phone and I wish he were sincere when he was sober. I realized then that people are revolving doors. I still love him. I think about him often. He's a best friend.

4. You made me lose so much blood. I thought we were more than child's play. You showed me your favorite artist and I showed you my soul. You took your coffee dark and I tried so hard not to smoke in front of you. He stared at my legs and I told him I took three different types of pills that are supposed to make me happy and he just kept on staring.

5. loading.....

I never meant to be wet cement
because you gotta understand that sometimes my hands are
earthquakes and there's no reason behind it and you just have to understand
I tell you baby, I miss you
and you say learn how to zip up your dresses for your own good
See, we grow up
we become atheists and we wish on stars that are dead
we do illegal things but we apologize to our mothers
and this is being okay

I keep wishing to be in Nevada
that we would chase the sunset all the way to Florida  
and then you'd talk about your clinical depression and
I'll tell you about the time my father kissed my mother's knuckles
on my birthday
You'd tell me you're in love with the way I always have a story to tell
and I tell you I wish you had something better than a storyteller
I don't speak about browsing through my parent's wedding pictures for days after their divorce, or the way I couldn't push my bully off their bike
But I wanted to, how I wanted to
Instead I tell you, god has been playing hide and seek with me since I was a child and I keep winning because he hasn't found me yet
and I'm beginning to lose faith
You tell me about the poplar tree in your back yard and writing an angry poem on it's bark and that's how you knew it was fondness
I say all I'm looking for is a slowfuck under the sun
and you tell me it's okay  
because at least for once, you'll want the same

It's like you're left with extreme paralyzing psychosis, or deja vu, or an epiphany that you greet with swinging fists and bouts of palpitating aggression that doesn't have any sense of direction.
It's like when you try unlocking the door to your house, but the locks have been replaced with new ones and there are people inside that you don't recognize but they're strewn across your expensive living room set that you bought when you were manic.
Then you realize that your home has replaced you. This always happens.
Maybe this is the plot twist to your life. You're the one that's haunted and your house is afraid of opening the door when you arrive.
See, perhaps it's tired of being inhabited but not being properly lived in.
You don't remember seeing an eviction notice but it feels exactly the same like the time he abandoned you during a thunderstorm.
Except it wasn't raining but your mind was already creating apparitions of puddles and floods.
You can't say goodbye to things, you can't let go. You claw and you scream but nothing ever comes back.
It's like missing the last train home. Like, forgetting about your birthday. It's like deleting a number knowing full well that you have it memorized but it's the thought that counts. right?

When I was a child, I was the riverbed's bend. The silhouette of a person from far away smoking a cigarette. I was the blushing sunset and the barred teeth of nightfall, moon's jutted chin and all.
But as I grew up, people became less tree-house, more crawlspace.
In his drunken days, my father once went out with a crowbar shouting at god for giving me clinical depression instead of a man or a hobby.

When I was a child, I would hold hands the way you hold a loaded gun. No one told me that some people are bullet teeth, trigger wounds, and pistol shot screams. That I would become one of these statistics. Those analogies. My grandfather once told me that the bravest people of all sometimes go a little mad. But you have to find the darkest recess of your mind and tell it that you know what it looks like with the lights on. I no longer need a flashlight.

When you're a child, you're the billow of a skirt. The hum of a refrigerator door in July. You could be the sun's glare or the sky's mouthpiece. But as you grow up, you start blowing out candles for other people's birthdays. You begin looking at the cracks of pavement rather than moths clinging to streetlamps. your house slumps its shoulders whenever you open the door. and why?

if none of this makes sense, regard it as a poem.