I dreamed of love
A drowsy girl
Awakened my sleeping thoughts
With burning memory
And the inertia of hope
Unexpected,
This sudden pull of gravity in my mind
Has sent me tumbling back to consciousness.


Gasping,
Cold plastering clothes to skin
Wondering
Where did my warmth go?
I miss those imaginary arms
That kissed me easily
More surreal than our fantastic surroundings
Less beautiful than her trust in me
Just as perfect as anything dreamed

Her name was Erika
My name was a blush and a hello
In the beginning.
But by the end,
"I'm so happy."

We climbed through windows and laughed about nothing
We played with wolves
We walked, we walked,
So many hills and not an unsure step.
I met her mother, she met mine
Both were so proud of us.
She made me useless things that I treasured more than practicality itself
And I could feel her pride when I hugged her for them.

Shy at first,
Sitting on a bed,
I asked her
"Where are you from?"
She mumbled,
"I don't know."
I said "that's not from around here."
She hadn't taken her eyes from mine. Now she managed two words:
" I'm lost."
And suddenly, I knew I was lost for her too.

We met for the first time in a hotel with no purpose
But meeting her has become the only purpose.

Though I wish so badly to go back to sleep,
Something vital inside me is more awake than it has ever been
Now I will keep my eyes forever open
Until I find her warm embrace once again.
And when her smile buries itself in my chest
I can finally close them.

The older I get,
The more I understand

How little I know

So why does it feel
Like I'm already much too full?

I miss the person
Whom I called many things
None among them,
"Mine."

Never quite naked.
Never quite close enough,
Because we were never
Comfortable enough to be either.

All because from the first collapse,
I had no problem calling myself
Any terrible name
Any thing but
"Yours."

So I reflect,
My ancient mind
Clinging to the time,
And the change,
Confusion,
Eruption!

The only thing I have ever felt
Wrench my heart
apart
And pull my head together

And the only way to define my youth.

The only word to describe


A tragic emotion;
The only thing I ever got to call
"Ours."

How we reflect
To construct eternity;
Gazing at stars.

Street lights
Building the same obsidian glimmer
To light the world.
Not so we can see,
But so when the stars gaze upon us
They can see how gloriously bright they truly are.

Don't worry.

I'm here to tell you what you need to hear.
And it's not what you thought you would hear,
And it might not be what you deserve to hear.

Don't worry, it's me.
You don't know me well, but
You should know that I am kind.
I am gentle, and I think about you in that fashion.
My thoughts are not barbed wire,
Nor clear sky.

When I think of you, I think this:

You are foolish.
But so was I,
For years
For the same reasons as you.

And nothing can judge you
But the years,
And the years are nothing if not judgment's mirror.

Lonely years.
I would write poems of hate.
I tattooed my life onto the skin of so many notebooks.
Letters only exist on paper--
How badly I wished my depressing poems would be emblazoned proudly on my soul for all to read.
How cold I felt when I realized nobody wanted to get close enough to see them.

The only tattoos my mind bore
Were freezing outlines of emotions
None of which could burn hot enough to melt the ice they were etched into.

Then something magical:
Neurons. Synapses.
I realized that my mind is not a metaphor.
My mind is not a tangled mess of hyperboles and adjectives.

My mind is not poetry, and life is not scripted.
Nobody's brain is made of prose,
Much as some would like to believe.
Depression is not more noble because it is written well.
And if you have written it, believe me when I say that the way it flows when it is read aloud makes no difference either.

Do you understand?
Here it is, simply:
Step back if you find yourself a step too far into the world of the over dramatized.
Burn your depressed poetry.
It serves no purpose but to remind you of the state you are in.
It dwells in your long-gone years without thought of any future unless that future is your past relived until your future's end.

Poetry is not a coping method.
Poetry is an excuse to linger,
And "coping" is a very poetic way to euphemise that fact.
I have found this out the wrong way.
Poetry is as addictive as alcohol, as drugs, as depression.
They all go together well.
And they don't like to let go once they've started to hold hands.

What I'm saying isn't "stop writing."
What I'm saying is that if poetry is an excuse to linger, you have a choice.
What i'm saying is I hope you choose to linger on joy before you dwell in sorrow.
Because the longer you stay somewhere,
The more it feels like home.


Try to grasp the idea of just stopping,
Letting every idea go
And leaving.
And not coming back for a long time.
And doing it right now.

Realize:
1. The longer you stay sealed inside your mind, the longer you'll have to live with only words as company.
2. Words make terrible company when they're written in sadness.
3. The stars don't give a **** about words anyway.

Be like the stars.

Be with your friends. Make yourself laugh. It'll be hard at first. Then it will be easier. Then other people will be able to make you laugh too.



And one last thing to you specifically,
To you, the person reading this,
The person wondering silently,
The person I've been writing to this whole time--

Realize:
I don't know you.
But I love you.

This is not a joke or a ploy.

I love you.

Somewhere out there, there is somebody that loves you, and it is me and I am not afraid of it.
Find me,
And I will love you openly.
Because if you have the strength to find someone you don't know, you have the strength to find yourself too.
And then you won't need a stranger's love anyway.

My friend
I wish you could know my mind, but
Understanding you would push away
Keeps me from letting you inside

It’s quite the mental irritant
If I get close you’ll grow distant
But even if it’s not your intent,
It’s enough to force my mental defense

And I know you don’t want me to be far
But I can’t get close just to watch you fade.

I’ll stay a phantom
So you don’t have to be one.

Perseverance will not work this time
Because time is in short supply
Departure will soon arrive
Absence will slowly invade my life

Embrace never felt so desperate
Though desperation isn’t a word that fits
No, it’s a quiet determination that makes us stick
An unwillingness to part without this.

I’ll always miss the nights
You were burning in my life
Like the incandescent indigo light
That kept me company when I would write

Every moment slides like a dream.
Your gaze floods me with memory
Our first words float back like a distant melody
Singing all the reasons I’ve ever had to believe in anybody

Your smile brings a strange solace.
Your simple happiness
Is the push behind my lungs as I think all this
It makes you worth the cardiac risk

You won’t read the words I wrote
But somehow I think you already know
As long as my heart beats in this world
You will always have a hand to hold

I had a dream about a mask
It was terrifying.
The mask, I mean
I don't remember much about the dream.
The masked man ran around,
Tearing through town,
Taking vengeance on those that had cut him down

Everyone knew he wouldn't
Couldn't
Maim another
Because though through his mask
He became another
He was still a person
Just a person with his soul scared silent
His spirit sealed shut

His mask's mouth was sewn up
Like a doll that had misbehaved,
Said,
"I love you"
"You're my best friend"
Without having its string pulled to say it

The man,
Or rather the mask,
Was chasing a group of kids
Who had threatened a girl
That was very dear to him.
He pinned them down but couldn't speak,
So he bit off his own lips

Suddenly his speech wasn't deformed
And his vendetta didn't matter anymore
He threw himself to the floor and
He wept
He wept tears of unfathomable joy.

Then I woke up
Knowing as I gasped for air
That the dream had passed.
But when I reached up to my face,
I could still feel that mask.
So I started,
Layer by layer,
To peel it back.