everyone's always walking around
with their own Big
Sad (and we're so young)                                                        and everyone's
Sad                                                                                      is bigger
than everyone else's: she's got her
Blood Sad
and she's got her Sister Sad
and he's got his Drunk Sad  
and they're all tangled up in their own so much
they don't even have
Sad Eyes for each other, anymore.

i'm still tangled in you--
but just down by my ankles-- stepping on Sad,
that little resilient ant
hiding in the treads                                                                   in my shoes
to survive.  that"s my own personal
Sad, and he's not Big,
just Powerful:
i don't think i could lift
even my own weight,
anymore

Bathed in the shade of
a rubbery rhododendron,
I sway imperceptibly,
Lulled by nature's rhythms,
A silent, sleepy visitor
splayed on a ropey nest,
Serenaded by an aerial orchestra,
Chirps and trills
and throaty warbles
spiral downward,
Atomized in the languid breeze
like a Roman candle,
A staccato riff,
Jack-hammered into a dying birch,
Urges me back from the edge,
Where dream and dreamer part,
A gauzy memory of a melody lost,
Performed for the oblivious,
and a dozing, grateful
audience of one.

From a platform, he was pushed
down onto the ground.

There he landed with a great cry, a lonesome sound,
where the beasts took him with teeth;

molars and canines in the form of sticks and swords for sheaths,
beat him till his lungs gave in, until they no longer heaved for a breath.

Collapsed sacks of skin in a broken body
on a broken roof
somewhere without a name,
just a news channel hook
and gambit,
theme tune and a corpse laying bare on a video screen,
shield your eyes, place a blanket over the body and boy.

i can't really write about the way
your skin feels against mine
or how i feel when you look at me
because i haven't experienced them yet

i can't really write about how
your lips slowly curve into
your signature smirk
because i haven't gotten to see it in person

i can't really write about when
your blue-green eyes
flicker in the lights
because i haven't seen them do it

but i can write about how
it makes my heart pump twice as fast
and makes my cheeks turn pink
when i get to hear you say my name.
or how repeating "its okay" in your voice
keeps me up longer some nights
because it seems to sound so real in my mind,
or how it made me feel sleepy and cuddly when i heard you say i love you for the first time
as if you were there with me in that moment,
arms around me.



there are a lot of things i cannot write about;
i cannot write about what most people can -
but that's okay
because their truths are different from mine

instead of putting together bits and pieces of things i have read
and making my own version of you in my little world,
i will write about you
from what i know about you
and not what i think i may know.
i will write about how you make me feel
despite the distance

i want to experience you
(more)
i love you