There are few people I enjoy beating
Quite like myself

A missed period at the end of a sentence
A different data point on a graph
The wrong email to send
The incorrect setting on whatever it may be

It all hits you suddenly like
A putrid wind and lodges
Deep in your chest
Where it forms a solid mass that
Breaks into jagged pieces that
Permeate through every
Pore of your being

But don't worry
The wind will pass and
Jagged pieces will meld into
Skin

You will learn from your mistakes

The path to change
And in effect learning
Is hard and rigorous
And the victories at the end of each path
Will be brief

But they are necessary

And then
When you finally get it all
It will all be over

But

Hopefully you will
Have spent some of your time
Leaving trail markers for others
Bright paint on a trunk
A stack of rocks
A brightly colored piece of fabric
As they traverse the same paths.

My dad shouted up that the
Space Lab was passing overhead in
The next few minutes

I put on my adidas and a hoodie
And stood in the snow and mud
Of the front yard trying to find the
Passing station as it traveled past
Hundreds of miles up

It was more excited than I had seen
My father in a long time
And I was glad to be out there with him

We almost missed it
But I caught it in the chalky
Luminescence of the moon
It glided past easily
And my father shouted excitedly
I stared straight up and took all the air
Into my lungs between the passing station
And my body on the ground

Until it was lost
In the sanguine of the night sky
Like my father's excitement
It passed too quickly

And we ventured back inside
To watch TV in separate rooms

A most deceiving mask
A coiled contemplation
A look of despair and woe

The grimace of pain
The coming of rain
The stubbing of a toe

My sweet love
I am ready to confess to every sin
The rumbling of the gut
The raising of the ****
The flatulence's raucous din

But lo!

This is not a measly prairie wind
That passes lazily through the tall grass
This is a grinning of the devil
A demon's carefully constructed bevel
A hell fire that rips from your ***!

From what I thought was my own fault
To cause you such a look
Twas' a stalk of broccoli
A sprout of Brussels
A miscalculation by the cook

So white knuckle my dear
Hold tight for life
As your intestines come trembling out
Whatever you ate
My succulent date
Is making your **** shout

But bless the heavens
And all that is eternal
That this has come to pass
What I thought was the end
The loss of my friend
Was just a spot of gas.

I imagine death
Is like snow blown from a branch
Upon hitting the earth
There is a rapid loss
Of color and form

The sound of a plane
And a robin's egg blue sky
Peppered with pink clouds

Unexpected warmth
The sun hanging comfortably in the sky
Porches hidden in the shade of their roofs
The smell of damp earth
The high green hedges hiding it from
Everyone on the root raised sidewalk

I find you everywhere
In a bird's song echoing down a brick laden alley way
In the pitter of rain on a slate roof
In the cold sting of an abandoned bobby pin stabbing the sole of my foot
Left from your last visit
But I feel you most of all in the cold spaces
The empty indent in my bed
Makes me realize how empty my life is
Without you