We’re gathered here today to put to rest the words I didn’t mean to say.
The thoughts I tried my best to suppress, but slipped out anyway.
Delivering meanings that I didn’t have planned,
And messages she just can’t understand.

My acid tongue throws out its poisonous whispers into her ear, containing words she was never meant to hear.
But she cancels them out with her alkaline replies that don’t align with mine.
She’s the one who starts this game every time.
Throwing in the truths that bring me shame,
But when I claw out her flaws from beneath the dirt out onto the surface,
They impregnate her hazel eyes with rain.
And I’m always the one to get the blame.

I check the weather where she is to know if she can see the dark clouds leaving,
Unveiling the blue skies that lie beneath.
Hoping that one day she will open her hazel eyes and realise we’ve been through wet and dry seasons that continue to replay like groundhog day.
But all we can do is keep believing that there is a reason why we can’t let the storms blow it all away,
Just because of the words I didn’t mean to say.

I'm young,
and I don't really know
much about anything
I love my parents,
but let's be honest
genetics didn't give me
too much of a choice
I've thought that I'd loved girls
and maybe I did
how the **** do you ever know?
but I've been thinking on the subject
for some time now
debating if it even existed
and I think it has to
It's the only thing between us
and the end of all things
But it exists in simpler forms
love is the feeling you get
when you are so mad at her
that you could lay hands on her
but you never would,
you just don't have it in you
love is when
you come back to him
time after time
regardless of the ******* mistakes he makes
time after time
Love is when
the thought of them
spending time with somebody else
being consoled by somebody else
being loved by somebody else
makes you feel absolutely
sick to your stomach
but I think
that all love really boils down to
is saying yes
even though,
you know you should say no,
that is my understanding of love

Turn the shame
Into art
They love nothing more
Than a broken heart

We round the corner of that dilapidated building next to the highway
And I see her walking, hobbling, home
carrying a small backpack.
I want to walk over there
and off to walk her the last block
but I don't
and I continue on.
But I look back for a second
when my dad stops to talk to the directory of the funeral home.
She stops, thirty feet past where she had just been
looks at me
and gasps.
I want to ask her why my face shocks her so.
All I've ever been to her
as far as she knows
is a customer in the store for two seconds.
My face is not able to be traced in her memory
as her daughters latest ex,
an occurrence I'm no long bitter about.
I am nothing to her,
even though she had the potential to be a lot to me.
So I stand there
wondering what about me made her gasp.
I wave, smile and continue walking.

I'm walking down the cafeteria hallway
holding a laptop that took twenty minutes to fix.
I spot her packing up her possessions from the table,
everything too spread out for her not to have eaten alone,
but she's smiling as usual
and it spreads to my lips.

I hear my name and I stop
not because someone was talking to me
but because they were talking about me
something that never happens
or never used to
until they started to see who I really was
and fall in love with that-
Clapping me on the shoulders,
sending me emails,
adding me on Facebook
congratulating me publicly
giving me hugs
stopping me in the hall
turning history into a discussion about me
being a superhero for those in need of help.
all because I have developed the guts to say something
or rather, write something
nobody else admits to being able to say.

My name comes from that table on the left
up against the lockers
first seat on the far end after the bar
my old seat, for two years.
It's those memories that have allowed me to say what I've said-
those memories of losing everything
of rebuilding, from scratch
of having my lips bleed because they are so unused they crack
of finding the darkest emotions
and recovering.

I walk five more feet and turn right.
She looks up as I approach.
I hand her her laptop and charger, smiling
as she is.
always is, always has been.
"It's done, it works"
I say, enthusiastically.
Her eyes widen in surprise
"really?"
I nod
"it only took a few minutes, it should be better"

she scoops up her stuff
and we walk away from that place together
as we always used to, freshman year
when our round table sat in that exact spot.

But three years have changed a lot:
she's smiling in my presence
and we split, heading opposite directions.
her to her locker
me to the library.

I hear the faint words
"merci beaucoup"
as I pass the 3rd post

And for a second, I want to turn back.
To walk with her like I used to her
but actually talk to her.

I continue walking.

"Four years change a person"
I think as I climb every stair
as I have, for four years.
I stop for a second,
three quarters of the way up
and watch the way the sunlight drifts in from the door window.
A beauty I never would have seen then.
I would have been too entranced in her
and now I walk alone.
I would have been far too depressed by my own problems
to say what I have.
I may be a stronger person
a better person
than sitting there at that round table
but I always someone then.
Now I stand in stairwells alone