He was once so adamant.
So ready to deny the duty of somebody else’s war.
But something must have changed
Once the camouflaged man was through the threshold,
Because when he left the young man was no longer a boy.

I always pictured him as a frat type guy.
The one that ended every night with a different girl,
But always called his mom.
He wasn’t sure what he was doing after graduation,
But he promised me
Weekend trips,
And car rides,
And ice cream.

He spoke to me slowly when he told me.
Counted the benefits on each hand and was sure to highlight the safety.
He says,
“I just know you worry,
But there’s no danger where they want me”
His words dangle between us
And I swallow my heart.
I should be proud,
Or happy,
Or feeling something other than this pit of dread in my stomach.

He enlisted,
And soon after began drinking.
His breath now smelled of cigarette smoke,
And he was “man”.
But every time I tried to meet the boy in his eyes
He would pull away.
We haven’t spoken in months.
Until one night he calls me.

He spoke to me slowly when he told me.
His mother was sick again,
Only days before deployment.
He’s been chain smoking
And can’t sleep.

I hear the words in the back of his throat.
Wanting to escape,
But refusing to admit
That maybe he just isn’t ready to leave.
But the days pass fast now,
And it’s only a matter of time.

I don’t know when we will speak again,
So instead I have late night conversations
With the moon,
About the boy who signed his life away
Too soon.

She must have been *****.
Must have made you dizzy
in all the best ways.

Her tongue was sharp down your throat,
But you just couldn’t stop taking gulps
of her air.

As she passes your lips,
you are filled with warmth
of another world.

Of a world where everything is numb,
except her.

But don’t you see,
it’s all a part of the appeal.
She will hide things from you.
She will convince you to say yes
to her every word,
just for another sip

Every time you step away
her bottle shaped hips sway to you,
beckoning you.

Just one more drink from the rim of her mouth
has you begging for more.

She will leave you the next morning,
questioning all your decisions.
You will curse her name
with your head hung.
You will tell yourself,
you can not do this again.

Come night,
her aroma will threaten your senses.
And she is back in your arms.
Invading your veins.

You know she is bad for you.

What you don’t know,
is that I am a different kind of moonshine,
that will get you a different kind of drunk.

I do not smell like regret,
nor leave you in pain.

I will light up your darkest hours,
show you everything you missed
while she was in your mouth.

You will never have to feel guilty after a night with me.
You will be gazing upon the stars,
and not the sloppy ones
she convinced you to paint into your skin.

You do not have the option of drawing blood on the glass of my body,
I am more substantial than that.

Maybe you like getting drunk,
but my love,
if you ever decide better for yourself,
you’re going to wish you did it
while my light was calling to you.

It’s too late now.

Your head hurts
and you have nowhere else to turn.
One day you will see your error,
but until then,
have fun letting her destroy you.

Her eyes blaze with guilt,
and an outrage at being guilty.
Being caught.

I patiently wait for the crows,
who so lovingly printed their feet
on the sides of my mother’s eyes,
to swarm me.
Swallow me whole.

Even when I’m right,
I’m wrong.
But that’s just how it is with drug addicts.

I want to hate her.
I want to deny the human that is littered
across her hands and grey hairs.
I want to erase her from my DNA
and ignore her as she has done to me.

I want to personally lay the burden
of my addictions on to her shoulders,
tell her, ‘you did this to me’,
watch her knees buckle, and then
have the audacity to ask
why she has kneeled.

But I could never hurt her in that way,
so instead I choose to look her in her face,
and ask why she can so easily do this evil
to me.

As a child I would sleep
with my head on her back,
hoping that one day
I could piece her back together.
Love her enough to make her want to change.
I tried to hold her down
like the weight at the end of a balloon,
and yet she always managed to drift.

To this day she calls me ‘baby’.
Speaks in a play voice that tells me she knows she was absent
When I was small enough to look up to her.

She never would mean to hurt me,
But she fails to see the chain reaction.
By bringing drugs and a child into her life,
She made those two companions.

And in that garden,
I searched for love under every rock that I could find.
Dug through the dirt just to blow kisses at worms.
Soiled my hands,
Searching for stability.
For something.
Anything to hold on to no matter how small.

And everything was always so small.