I'm looking for artisanal  language.
Prose with a maker's mark.
Words that contain perfect imperfections,
evidence that a person first touched these letters and then my heart.
I need a personal touch to color the paragraphs that fill these pages.
I wanna see the hands that craft a stanza in the body of the text.
I want something real and alive.
I want these words to burn with the incurable human spark.
I'm on a quest to look at the tome and see the beating heart of the man.

I once read a note you left on the fridge and I could read in your word choice the shape of your smile.
My god! I would read volumes of your missives left throughout our life on CVS receipts.
They contain a warmth that I can feel even in memory of them.
I don't know if it is talent
or magic
or love.
Or all of the above.
My words...I guess, I fear that they're hollow.

Do they reach you through space? Is my pen alight with intelligence?
Does my writings evidence my soul?
I don't know that they do.
Certainly they do not seem to.
I've tried different theory, different pens.
I've written sonnets and songs with this and also the other hand.
The results are robotic.
Bland.

I want to explain you, my love...
I don't have the words.

I've seen churches on fire and wondered what that meant.
Is God's judgement final? Is his wisdom all spent?
I saw the parishioners teary eyed, jaws muscles tightly knit.
But, like, how does this help me understand the world or where in it I fit?
I don't know if it's courage that you battle the darkness every day
Just because you know how much I want you to stay.

I gotta be honest, man.
I don't know how to be happy.
I don't know how other people do this ****.
I don't know much about life or happiness or love.
But I do know: it's gonna have to come from us.

Life can be dystopian. It's a long relationship with violence.
I've known it to be twisting pain and having to suffer in silence.
We are clenched little fingers, nails dug deep into the palms of our hands.
We are all odd, emotional nationals of strange and distant lands.
Sure, I mean, we were born and raised in the same places.
But we stare out from foreign countries behind the eyes in our faces.
What works for you, my old friend, will not work for me.
You bask in shining, brilliant light but I gotta squint just to see.

We'll lie and say we're happy.
Say we're just fine.
We try to believe it, too.
But we just feel like we were left behind.
Like, somehow we missed the day they taught this ****.
How is everyone smiling in timeline photos?

Everyone's got perfect teeth and an audience to keep.
A life of happiness, assuming we don't look too deep.
I wonder if the pervasive sadness is in the water or if it's just in me.
I hope for end of tunnel lights and locks to fit this ******* key.

Keep up the fight, my friend. Don't quit. Stay.
I know it's ******* hard. I know. Find a way.
I love you. I need you. Don't you dare leave me.
I'll fit the mold. I'll be what you need me to be.

She wakes up alone, thunder roaring distant warnings and churning up her worst memories and instincts.
She is desperate in her need of comfort,
scared of her loneliness,
And ashamed of her fear.
And ******* the storm!
******* this hollow need!
I've paid for my sins
But never enough, it seems.
Never completely.

Nothing helps.

And she wants him to hold her
But the French death only brings him drowsy to sleep.
She touches his back with cold fingertips and ignores the gnawing sense that tomorrow is still on the way.
He snores and she wishes life had been, if not different at least, bearable.
And ******* these worthless men!
******* the empty!
It was full of you once.
Nothing else is enough.
Nothing helps.

In the evenings she stares at the wall above her desk.
At the place where it used to be.
At a future that was taken. Stolen away.
******* the silence.
******* the absence.
**** it.
******* it.

******* the last kiss.
The chances always missed.
The hope she watched die.
Tomorrow is on its way
and somehow, she knows,
she'll have to get through another
Vicious
Day.

Aside:
The sun sets and the moon grows bold.
People grow up, grow old.
And so what if every story's been told?
So what if the telling leaves you cold?
Still hurts for those to whom it will unfold.
End of aside.

Across the ocean, a world and a lifetime away, he stands.
A boy, perhaps only just a man.
There is in his heart a very similar hole.
And it eats him up and it leaves him broken.
Wanting.
Weeping.
Lost. And desperate.
And he hates his fear and his lonely.
He hates that he hates the pity in your eyes.
But it doesn't help and he can't explain why.
He doesn't know why.
He once knew love. He once felt whole and safe. He knew happy as well as he knew family.
He wishes now only for his promised other. His love is a bird with broken wings.
Sure, once he tasted the sky,
But crippled and low he can no longer fly.
Nothing seems to help.

Her words could help. If he could only hear them.
Because we suffer by ourselves
But we never suffer alone.
"I'm not sure if that helps."
We all say with words and eyes
And they smile, because the thought is what counts.
But inside they know a truth, tried to tell us all along.
They'll get better. Stronger. But that's just getting through another day.
Another day.
Another day.
Because we mean well, they love us, but the truth?
The truth is:
Nothing helps.

What is this even?
He writes about writing
and the world is possibilities
Probabilities.
Maybes.
My god the maybes.
And I wonder all the time,
"Is this too much about me?"
Because I have no idea if it comes through.
****.
...pomp and circumstance is the measure of the day!
I know what's next
I'm destiny, made manifest.
Sheer will power capped by shear valves
and sure the plumbing works
But let's talk about the cost.
Brass tacks.
Numbers.
******* it all...
He writes about writing,
lacks understanding.
He has no clue what any of this is.
What any of it is about.
And, yeah, in our 30s we aren't...aren't...
We are no longer figs, Sylvia.
No longer plums.
Not yet prunes.
**** it.
Leave it.
Start fresh tomorrow.
With fresh eyes and...
He writes about writing.
Y'know?
Get it?
Do you get it?

Closer and closer still.
Boiled blood and ******* bones.
Hallowed out the marrow
hung on a string around your neck.
Crossed like salvation
But backed with trumpets like judgement day.
Knuckles pronounced like a second language
stand on cracked and stained hands but hold nothing.
And that old sun is setting
future, my love, the future is coming.
Bored like teenagers into the meat of our chests are messages cryptic and final.
Messages written about us and left by others, cross pollination.
Freeform Saturday shopping trips are become the air I live for.
You my raison de'tre.
Stand back and watch us bleed for the future.
His quiet breathing like music between us.
Bring on the judgement.
Welcome the night.
Stand.

I'm remembering...

The chlorine damp of your hair.
I'd never seen you in a bathing suit before.
You saw me and bit half of your bottom lip.
It wasn't sultry, we weren't capable of that.
Not yet.
It was bashful. Age of innocence.
You were shy.
And ******* me for not noticing.
Failure to recognize.

I'm remembering...

Observing the grass stains on the back of my tee shirt.
I had lay down on freshly cut grass to take in the smell and the blue sky.
I wondered if grass could bleed. I hadn't rolled around.
I know grass doesn't bleed. I know.
Not yet.
Age of innocence. Season of ignorance.
******* all this knowing.
It's left me undone.

I'm remembering...

The bottom fell out of my stomach when you smiled at me.
When you laughed. I remember the weird mixture of fear and hope.
Two parts coward, two parts poet.
So many warring hormones. So much lost time.
Not yet.
I recall thinking.
Notice me. Notice me!
******* it! Notice me!
I've been here the whole time.

I'm remembering...
Long walks at night with holes in the bottoms of my sneakers.
The stale taste of cigarettes mixed with crisp night air.
I can hear you breathing, even now, on the other end of that digital tether I had in my left hand.
You were hundreds of miles away and falling asleep to the sound of my voice and I was young and so were you and we were alive!
I'd love you forever, I knew.
But Not yet.
Not yet.
******* we were so alive.
So far from the waiting pit, those days.

One day I'll look back on now and remember...

But not now.
I am undone with knowing.
With failure to recognize.
Age of ignorance.
Soon, the pit. Sooner every precious day.
Not yet.
******* it all, it'll come. And I'll be here.
I've been here the whole time.

I drank all your poison, every drop.
didn't know to beg for help or to stop.
Surrendering to vengeance I've bought?
Suicidal intentions? Perish the thought.
I was born complete. Now I'm not.

Don' you forget me. Don't you dare. Please stay and love and care.
Come mornin' I sure wish I could be there.

'Fore I was rubble I was a man.
I'm not nothing, just nothing that can stand.
Can you fix this barren, empty land?
And create something else to spec? To plan?

Feed me sweet poison, if you think it'll help.
Treat me badly, like some churlish whelp.
But beware the skyline, my dearest friend
'Cause that sun is gonna set and this'll end.

An' listen, you're gonna remember me like the lingering taste of fruit.
I'll be seen in muddy footprints and a discarded roadside boot.
I'm gonna matter to you, I'll stick around like an elm and soon take root.

Don' you forget me. Don't you dare. Please stay and love and care.
Come mornin' I sure wish I could be there.


Build me like Lego.
Bake me like Eggo.
But don't forget to let go
before darkness falls and we go.

Forgotten as flowers on a grave plot.
Loved as long as unbraided hair.
I do care. I'll miss you a whole lot.
And come mournin' I'll be there.