And after knowing you for only a few weeks, we knitted our failures into a heinously tacky quilt. It scratched against our bare skin when we spent the night making love underneath it and kept us warm when we went outside to puff away the day's disappointments. The quilt got bigger everyday because you and I stopped caring about anything that was not each other. You, swallowed up by a sea of shortcomings and I, mummified by a warmth that blinded us from reality, became strangers. Now you are just a patch in the new quilt I am creating from battle wounds. It is thick and vibrant, even more coarse than the last. Underneath it, no one can touch me but myself.

1.) Waking up alone Saturday morning means not having to get breakfast hung-over for anyone but yourself.
2.) Cleaning your room is optional.
3.) Books are so much better at pillow talk.
4.) Taking the stairs will do more wonders for your body than elevator hookups ever will.
5.) It is a blessing to have no one but yourself to debate with over Netflix selections on a Sunday afternoon.
6.) Choosing true friendship over a hasty ****** will always be the best decision.
7.) Music provokes the heart when you’re with someone, but provokes the soul when you’re not.
8.) Crying over things other than men gives you a better understanding of life’s meaning.
9.) Sometimes you discover things you thought were lost forever when searching long and hard for your key, because without it you have no where else to sleep.
10.) Contrary to the hand of another, a pen will not let go.

Forgiveness.  Is it an act or is it a state?  You have wronged me so many times that for me, it has become a state, a constant state.  I don’t even feel the cathartic aftermath of “letting go” anymore because now my forgiveness is preemptive.  You are my father; we sons and daughters are conditioned to love you unconditionally.  But to what extent?  To our expense?  

Love is not synonymous with loyalty.  My own shortcomings have made me sure of this, for I have loved another while making love to another.  When is it my turn to turn on you?  When do I get to scream, and you listen?  I’ve been screaming my whole life but your own self-hatred has made you deaf indefinitely to anything but a voice that spews from the depths of your pain, but tis a voice that is not your own, much like the one that exists inside me, regurgitating your dreams at the dinner table.  I will not become a soul disfigured by the fear of your disapproval.

Have I become the epitome of hypocrisy?  I preach self-expression to those who know nothing but their own self-suppression, though when I am with you I hide my spirit, gone are all traces of a free soul, I imprison my spirit in fear and submission.  A man of command and a child of madness, face to face trying their **** best to love one another, but only one has given up trying to understand the other.

And I’ll say “slouch while you can my child and stay out late,
Because once you get older they make you stand up straight”.  
My thighs are decorated with a million cuts and lines,
But you should see the stretch marks on my spine.

Doe eyed girl, well-versed in pretending
Wolf toothed musician, jaded by poisonous prey.
Bundled up in three dollar beers,
They weather the storm
And cremate their words.

There is a can of cheap tobacco
Sitting patiently on your desk
Cracked open on occasion;
Ready to be chewed up
And spit back out.

We finally unwound
After hours in my bed
A thin film of your ego peeled off and clung to my skin
Asymptomatic…I wish
You spread through me like a wildfire
That burns with every breath.