every time my candle flickers,
i think to myself,
                             maybe this is God, maybe this is God telling me that he    
                               is real and i am not alone
                                                          ­             but then
                                                                ­       the flame stills
                                                                ­        i go back to work
                                                            ­            and i think to myself,
                              *i knew it was too good to be true

This book is for her, because she deserves more than just some gaddamn letter that my shaky hands could barely finish. Because she believed that we were all more than a few scribbled sentences on the inside cover of a notebook that has already been filled with pain (that's why this page is in the middle, and why this whole book is yours to keep or destroy or write about). I hope this is more than a couple of paragraphs pieced together on mismatched napkins, accidentally written while making a grocery list. You mean so much more to me than some **** book that you will one day write on a searching-for-happy afternoon, and your insanity makes more sense to me than anything else I've ever seen or felt or imagined. You said to leave something great in my absence and that, my friend, is why I am leaving you.

I've always hated my bony fingers
a skeleton
I've been meaning to ask you
if that's why you used to shiver when you held me.
it must've been awful holding something so lifeless
knowing I was little more
than bones.

I don't feel the shivering anymore
and when you
hold me, you
hold me like I'm the one who
needs to be steadied

and I think that's what happens when someone dies.

you will finally grasp that I'm gone
that the skin and bones you used to hold
which distressed your heart
and whittled at your brain like a knife
with aches and tears that
begged for your help
left
for good.

you do all you can to fix this
all in your power to bring me back.
the knife I have made will cut inside and out to
search for anything
anything you could've done to save me

and I'm sorry.
I'm sorry that I have ruined you from the beginning
but all I ever wanted was to see you steady
standing alone
and I know you couldn't do that with
this skin and
these bones
laced between your bony fingers