torn jeans
dimples
station wagons
shifting eyebrows
eager hands

wry smiles
chapped lips
cheap beer
deep-set eyes
pirated music

hates his birthday
stoplight-kisses
star-gazing in cornfields
****** knuckles
broken minds

lanky limbs
poetry books
scruffy faces
jet-black coffee
calloused hands that still feel soft

adventurer's heart
jumping fences
midnight tokes
always gives you hickeys
always opens your door

worn sneakers
chewed pen caps
late for work
old windbreakers
dirt under his fingernails

omniscient smirks
expensive cologne
good intentions -
but is bad with goodbyes
hates himself for making you cry

broken cigarettes
aviator shades at night
a perpetually furrowed brow
and a laugh that sounds like autumn leaves as they crunch beneath your feet

m.f.

(regarding the death of my son)

I fear very little
but the one thing I DO fear
is forgetting the sound of his voice.  

It was 70 year-old husky
by the age of 14.
The manifestation was a quartet bass
tucked neatly in the body
of a fray-headed sparrow.
If you closed your eyes
the lumberjack you imagined
would be tickled to see
the tiny powder keg
that actually stood before you.
Inside the resonance was a warm huckster laugh,
half good ole boy,
half saint,
half comforter.
He was fifty percent more real
than anyone I knew.
On the good days his chuckling possessed him
to the point of breathlessness.
His joy-tears are the Rembrandts of our memories
never to be tarnished by any pity demons.
But on the bad days his laughter trailed away
into a pugilistic cough.
It's the one thing I fear I will always remember.
Yet when he spoke the sincerity was so ominous
that any inaccuracies seemed irrelevant.
Love was the spine of his vocabulary.
There were no meaningless words.
Regardless of the lettering
they all had the root meaning
of clemency.
He spouted new beginnings
and hope
regardless of past mistakes of failures.  

I fear very little
but I fear I will forget the sound of his voice
for I fear that I have already forgotten my own.  

Today it speaks only of him being gone.
Reliquishing are the days
that were full of him.  
I submit to songs that were his
and find myself tethered to unmerited heaviness.
No matter how loud I scream
the present rains on me
and my voice is lost
in the sickness of the storm.
I cannot turn it off.
I press my radio presets
to chase away the Rascal Flatt residue in my head
and land on a Christian station.
**** it.
The only thing he loved more than Rascal Flatts
was Jesus.
Me too. But not today.
I just want to stop crying.  

It's the magician's multi-colored scarves
tied corner to corner
in a endless tug of futility and frustration.
The more I want the prank to stop
the more irritating the infinite parade of colors becomes.
I pull again and again hoping the next scarf,
the next involuntary sorrow,
will be the last one.
I open my mouth in concious agenda
to change directions
and speak of the blessings I have
in my other children
only to find his name tied to the last name
which was his as well
just in another color.
I cannot stop speaking of him
no matter how hard I try.
And I wonder if my kids know
that I know
they're suffering in his shadow
and I can't fix it.  

I fear very little
but I fear I will forget the sound of his voice
as I am forgetting mine
and terrified that I may be muting theirs as well.

I just wanna sleep until
I can wake up next to you
I don't care how long it takes,
I'll sleep until all I have are bones
I will dream everyday right away
Cause I feel like a skeleton
when you aren't here
anyway

Love, the real kind, is never simple.
It is the one thing that makes life worth it in the end,
and something that wonderful and sought-after is never going to be easy to get.
You have to work for it.
Blood, sweat, and tears.
So if it’s easy, yeah maybe you won’t get broken.
But you won’t be truly happy, either.
You’ll be settling.
Don’t get me wrong,
There are lots of things in life that are totally acceptable to settle on.
Sure, Harvard was your dream school.
But you know what?
Going to your state school because its more affordable
Will still get you where you want to be in life.
And I know the hairdresser couldn't match the color you showed her,
But you are beautiful and can rock it anyway, so don’t worry.
But love?
Settling in love is like buying a pair of shoes that are a size too small,
Just because you thought they were pretty.
They may look nice,
But you are dying on the inside. I
f you had just held out a bit longer,
You would have found a pair just as beautiful that fit well, too.
Maybe that nice guy looks good on paper,
But if he doesn’t give you butterflies whenever he looks at you,
Don’t be with him.
You want someone who makes you fall for them every day,
Not just once.

I fell infinitely in love with your voice after a cup of coffee and two menthol cigarettes and I love the way you smell like marijuana and whiskey and you. You look like the best beginnings and I wish I saw you in the stars I watch every night. The stars are tired of me wishing on them, wishing for you. I like the way you look in the morning and the way your eyes are like the clouds when you look at me. You are a supernova. You are like the welcoming warmth of my house in Winter. I'd build castles for you with my bare hands. I want to wake up and just watch you watching me. I want to wrap myself around you and kiss your neck and feel your pulse and write thank you letters to your parents for creating you. I want to whisper your name in the same sentence as ''you're mine''. I want you to agree. I want you to tell me that you're only mine, that you're always mine. I see you as a puzzle just waiting for my clumsy hands to put you together. I think about you every second. For once, it doesn't hurt to love someone this way. For once, I love someone that doesn't hate me for it. I've seen some beautiful things but none of them compare to the way you fall asleep next to me. You're the first person to look at me like I'm some kind of significant human being and I love you endlessly for that. I love you for saving me when everyone else thought I was beyond saving. I'd rather be sat in the passenger seat of your ****** old car with you than be anywhere else in the world. I'd go to the end of the earth with you. You make me feel alive. You make me want to be alive simply so I can hold the perfect image of you in my head. It hurts knowing you can't  see how wonderful you are. I want to make you feel alive. I want to be alive with you.

I have been in love with you since the moment
I realized we could sit in silence and eat a meal

Neither struggled for words or reason.

We just,
Sat alone in a booth, together.

My hand bumping yours , my eyes
Are locked on the freckle on your neck,





Loving you, loving her, while she loves him and
We sit in this triangle wishing for someone else.




Please hold my hand, like the nights we walk together late at night,
Those fleeting moments when I’m the girl you love.
Before you throw our feelings back into the dark.



Darling, I will always love those moments

When you’re body stopped me from

rolling out of bed.

And I wake up in the morning to your imprint in the sheets.