When I think about how I got my first taste for words
and how human it is to know the language will fail
but dress it up and try in vain anyway,

I think it’s because all the ******* time I have spent thinking of safe and clever ways to tell people I loved them so they wouldn’t mistake my love for something less than my equal definition.

That’s because growing up in a garden of shame,
rejection was the only fruit to blossom in the
then only place that was a home.

Back when I used to think in terms of to what is what owed and how
I had accepted that nobody could ever know
what ten thousand tickets in an arcade,
while eyeing the prized Mr. coffee machine,
could mean.

It means black coffee in the black of night,
thinking I owe everything to everything,
and believing you could know what that means.