When I lose something,
I gain.
This isn't Karma.
Let me explain.
Lose greed,
Gain charity.
Lose despair,
Gain hope.
Lose hate,
Gain love.
You see how it works.
Lose anger,
Gain peace.
It's exponential too.
Lose a negative.
Polarize.
Be positive.

We sit together, in the quiet
You turn to me and apologize
Apologize for your depression
Your sadness
I turn to you and tell you to not give up
That I love you.

You apologize for me dealing with you
For going through it with you
The way I look at it; this is a journey
for two
And I have the privilage of doing it
with you
Lo there are crooked trails and deep ravines;
You have my help,
You have my love.

I didn't see this at first
But when I was told it
I finally got the idea
Of my other family
They don't live with me
Or share my blood
But they do share my heart
And they all love me
For who I am
And not what other peopleme see as

And I see them
As my class family
Because they are in my class
This class is the best
It gives me happiness
That I haven't seen for years
So to my family of classmates
And ms. Sullivan
I want to say that I
Dylan
Love all of you

"hey grandma, how are you this year?"
"how's deer season going, uncle wayne?"
"how many cats do you have now?"
by the way i think i'm depressed
(sjb)

We are empty caskets. Broken Surgery tools. A banned book in a school library. We are backpacks with busted straps attempting to hold other people's problems while lacking support. Teaching our arms to only hold onto things we can complain about.

We become a teenagers forgotten toy. Under a bed and covered in dust. Our hands are winter gloves covered in holes. Hearts bleeding to find a home. Our bodies play one hit wonders with low batteries in a empty prison cell. We are prisoners of our own thoughts.

Scribbling love poems into our rib cages in hope that someone will open us up, and understand the language these lips can't speak. That the rose bouquet of bones in your body will let go of it's thorns so you know pain isn't always your fault.

Loneliness exists in lost socks behind the dryer. Let it stay there. Find the symmetry in your stem and bloom out of the depression of ruined soil. You are a buried treasure. Let them find you where you are. Snuggled up in your excellence.

Let today teach me the things that yesterday did not.

do not date a girl
who writes.
she will internalize
everything,
carve poems
into your eyelashes
instead of
kissing them,

she will analyze you,
calculate age
from the rings
your coffee cup
leaves
instead of refilling it.

she will memorize
the way your
lips curl around steam,
but not that you
take it
two sugars,
no cream.

she will read your
palm instead of
holding it
against her chest.

she will not
blink
when you leave,
because she is
already
romanticizing it.

She asked me what I wanted to be when I grow up

I told her many things

Like a fire truck
Something large enough to put out the fires we create
Glasses
Shaping things up and making them look better
Let me be an iceberg
Built from breaking down and re freezing

There are other things I would like to be as well
Like a father
A husband
Or a man
I want to fill in the occupations my father
never grew up to be