The boy went by Samuel and the girl by Beth
He planned for his future while she awaited her death
Never a likely couple, they put romance to the test
She had cuts on her wrists and a void in her heart
Still, he thought she was gods finest work of art
There were years of love, of picnics and fun
Never would you guess their romance would be done
But he thought he could fix her, rid her of her vice
When he couldn't, he felt his love couldn't suffice
Beth's cuts were deep and Sam's patience, thin,
One more slice and his temper would give in,
She tried to stop but still resisted the change,
She found his love exceedingly strange
It couldn't be taken, and alas she cut
He began stammering in rage, screaming, "WHAT"
He ran to the shed, knowing what he'd find there
And hoisted the axe, high into the air
Sam ran her down and looked her in the eye
And brought the axe down, screaming,
"If you want to die, die"

Write everyday.
Write everyday no matter what.
Write even at a loss for words.
Write down the sounds.

I make notes of the plane crashes
I've never heard, the brook trout
that never shook pond water
onto the brittle grass when I didn't
catch it, or the thunder cup coil
I keep kneeing trying to give the overcast
over the mountain something to compete
with.

And I'm not sorry.
       I'm not.      I'm not sorry that my
reborn Christian best    friend    has   seen the    light,
and I still scoff when people pray over potatoes.
And I only believe in plastic Polaroid postcards
from last decade timestamped in the white space
with Bic black ink.
I'm not sorry for that.

And truth is, I've never washed this black shirt;
just hung it hoping that moths' would ****
the sweat spots and leave
the fabric.

I clenched the gold cap beneath
my ring finger from the glass green
bottle occupying my lips driving
down the Marsh Creek bridge.
I wanted to relate / to be relatable /
relative to the sedans, and seatbelts
too tight to breathe, passing me.

At the end of the bridge, where there was no chance
of drowning and the road color changed, I parked
in the driveway of a wooden house. Its blinds
were up, shades pulled apart with two hands
like gas station freezer doors, leaving them
vulnerable to the hiss of semi truck tractor
trailer high beams slicing through fifty +
raindrops per second going a few miles shy
of sixty-five, yet the people inside moved so freely.
I  sat Indian-style—a term I learned at four
then learned it to be racist at fourteen—
in their driveway, and ate the gravel
they walked on trying to taste security
because all I'd had in the last few hours
were plates of refried fear.

Fear of audit, of my teeth breaking off,
and of ending up like Eric Garner
when I heard that wailing
Voice of Justice
coming for me in the distance.

A shoebox of letters
hand written on yellow looseleaf
pages upon pages of promises
written in red ink,
a coffin in need of a burial
a reminder of a life
and a love denied.

February 14th, 1989
penned within my first year
the name at the top is not mine
but she writes to him
the way you will write to me
only two decades later.

I shiver as I read each draft;
to realize our failed romance
was but an echo of the past.

Fear is a mask that I wear by day
Hiding my face from words you say
Pain is the name of the armour I wear
A contortion of sweat that fills the air
Malice is the look in my twisted eyes
The vision of apocalypse in disguise
The emotions in which I dress
Are the clothes in which I die
The things that we suppress
Are the truths we claim are lies