I have this revelation—
like some eerie recurring dream.
It dips and cleanses my conscience
for a full five seconds of clarity.
A situation, short in stature, where
I can take slow breaths knowing that
I am able to walk away from this
bearing enough grit and grin to
repair all of my cracks and voids
with something stickier—
something I found on my own.

I have this revelation—
and in it, the boy is just a smudge
in the upper left-hand corner
of a yellowed photo
depicting a new me
and a new someone else
skinny dipping in some unnamed waterfall
deep in the secret folds of Appalachia.
In it, the smiles on the faces
are so incandescent
that the person holding the photo
doesn't notice
the charming tummy rolls, disheveled hair
or the smudge in the upper left-hand corner.

I have this revelation—
happiness should not be Rubik's-cubed into impossibility.
I have this revelation—
happiness should be simple.
Happiness should be simple.
            Happiness should be.
                                   Simple.

“Let it go,” he said.
So I release it all slowly,
like those 99 red balloons that saved
our little misled souls on bad teenage days.
Release it, and watch it float up and away
in 99 different directions,
in 99 different shades of ruthless red.
Let it go, and instruct yourself
to set fire to any and everything
it’s ever touched.
Burn the bridges, scorch the paths,
cauterize the arteries that
pumped warm blood for its purpose.
Set the fires, and let the light
from the florid flames
illuminate the corners
of your newfound smile
as you watch the embers
dance themselves
into white, meaningless ash
above your head.

drag my body through the traffic
to the cathedral to meet st. jude.
count my wounds in the tear drops on your shirt.
i cry glitter now,
chasing dreams like a sleep walker.

never tell your stories, the adventures you lived
to someone who doesn't bother to listen to them

he never wanted to steal my freedom or to make me mad
we were both obsessed with the kind of love me had

I couldn't stop staring at the pictures me made last night
how your heart skipped a beat when I touched your bare skin

it was like reliving all the things we lost in the cold ground of hell
the mermaids were done singing their songs when we met that day

true love was like walking in a forest were no trees were growing
finding my soulmate was like the moon waiting for the sun to rise again

everything was the same and everything was not the same

the little things that I adored about you were kind of fading, gone
it was the way you said my name what made me fell for you back then

but now your voice doesn't sound the same anymore..

i. ablaze
no canvas can hold your portrait
all fine lines and smudges, 
like this crumpled paper heart can.

no acid earth blooms sickly flowers 
so vivid and surreal, 
like your lips formed falsities
hollow insignificances, haloed in sickening silence

no song croons heartbreak
quite as heart-wrenching as
these words you leave unspoken. 

and nothing lights up this darkness quite like 
the dazzling glow of how 
i burned up for you:

                               
ii. fluorescent
at night these empty streets whisper 
rumors of embers stirring, rekindling
the remnants of a great fire.

out of ashes i rise, singed and searing to touch.
lights and cigarettes line the paths forward
and backward; i wander them aimlessly.

nothing lights up this darkness 
quite like the glow of how
hundreds of streetlights burn for me.

iii. ceasefire
nothing lights up the darkness
quite like the glow of how
i illuminate from the inside out again 

no longer an all-consuming blaze—wild and destructive,
or a fluorescent light—the artificial brilliance a borrowed comfort 
i cannot call my own;

i uncover my heart to find light again,
not an uncontrollable fire, or the reflection of a stolen light,
but the halcyon glow of a ceasefire.

iv. light up the darkness**
and nothing, nobody can light up my darkness
or line my street sides
quite like i can.

as the night quells, soft and gentle,
the incessant humming in my head subdues to 
a murmured hush, and the white noise is but 
a grey    fog  veiling hazy promises and barbed fears.

the darkness seems to hold its breath as you say: look 
       at the meteors,        they fall so heavily tonight!
it is because we all placed our wishes on them.

yet i only see your tired orbit
set in the horizon of your stony shoulders;
like shooting stars burdened by wishful thinking,
you bow under a burden of universes:
          phantom hopes and frayed strands,
          as if you were afire from within,   the moon
      alight in lining of your skin.

tonight the waning moon’s gentle glow flickers
as if in stop-motion, like confused blinking.
in a lingering afterthought I find —

in solitude time is all-consuming,
and i am in an hourglass; time, a thief,
creating a vortex beneath my feet
and in solitude i find myself wishing desperately again.


the darkness is so softly suffocating as you say: look
at the meteors, they fall so heavily tonight!