it doesn't quite make sense but
i liked what we had, when we had it.
i've always had an issue with rejection,
but this time, this time is different.
it hangs around my throat, tightening,
choking me out until my face turns blue.
["so wear me like a locket around your throat,
i'll weigh you down, i'll watch you choke.
you look so good in blue."]

i settled so comfortably into the routine
of hidden messages and even more clandestine meanings
that i guess i forgot how to operate the english language.
your fingers settled so comfortably into mine,
with your lips on the back of my hand and mine on your jaw,
that i guess i forgot how to use them to hold on.
["i love you so much that it hurts my head.
i said i don't mind you under my skin,
i let the bad parts in, the bad parts in."]

i guess this is just how it has to be.
i can't say i'm entirely surprised;
after all, we are soul mates. cut from the same cloth.
honestly i'm not sure what i miss,
because it was never mine to start with.
but i do miss you. i miss you. i do.
["and the saddest fear comes creeping in:
that you never loved me, or her, or anyone, or anything.
i knew you were trouble when you walked in."]

I wish you'd understand how
deep this truth runs

maybe then you'd open your
heart

they slide my shirt up over my head
and i hide my body against them.
praying
that their eyes,
which hold such capacity for judgement,
are fooled by the touch of my skin.

the honest fear
stands clear in my heart.
unwavering in the face of its own impossibility.

in that second,
i feel as if i am being stripped
of the feeble illusion that has granted me access
to thier desires and passions.

i'm truly ashamed in that moment
for having tricked them
into thinking
i am so much more
then i truly am.

cleaning up the mess of documents
on my hard drive
I find one titled
"secret message"
double-click
it reads
"i love you."


wish they'd signed it

I was sitting on my fence post,
Chewing some bubble gum.
Playing with my yo-yo.
When along came Hermy the Wormy,
And he was thiiiis big.
And I said,
“Hermy!? What’s up with you, man!?”
And he said,
“Duh, I just ate a bug.”

my first memories of you are from
when we lived together when we were
young. we would be power rangers
and pokemon and a number of other
things. that was the summer your sister
broke her leg on the trampoline -
scaring us from climbing on top.
we were afraid of sharks in the pool.
clear water to the bottom, but we
were scared of the monsters we couldn't see.
no matter how many times we looked,
we couldn't shake the idea that something
was out to get us. wanted to hurt us.

I was sitting on my fence post,
Chewing some bubble gum.
Playing with my yo-yo.
When along came Hermy the Wormy,
And he was thiiiiis big.
And I said,
“Hermy!? What’s up with you, man!?”
And he said,
"Duh, I just ate a cat.”

you moved away that year.
you left for florida and took your
sister with you. you were gone for years.
in that time, she came to visit me.
she told me you were fine.
i heard from your mother that you
were struggling in school -
her straight A student,
crumbling before her eyes.
i didn't know what happened.

I was sitting on my fence post,
Chewing some bubble gum.
Playing with my yo-yo.
When along came Hermy the Wormy,
And he was thiiiiiis big.
And I said,
“Hermy!? What’s up with you, man!?”
And he said,
“Duh, I just ate a dog.”

you graduated top of your class.
you left your house for reasons i
didn't find out about until months
later. you moved back here, back
into that old house, pretending to
be the innocent boy you were.
the boy that hated to smoke ****.
the boy that drank his summer away
and regretted it.
you were the boy that let his girl get away.

I was sitting on my fence post,
Chewing some bubble gum.
Playing with my yo-yo.
When along came Hermy the Wormy,
And he was thiiiiiiis big.
And I said,
“Hermy!? What’s up with you, man!?”
And he said,
“Duh, I just ate a car.”

but we both know that wasn't who you are.
not deep down, anyway.
that boy that cried to me on my couch
gave me half-truths and spun stories
until i didn't know which way was up.
i told you that i was ****** up now.
i told you exactly what i did, and you
told me you'd done the same.
but what i didn't know, was that one
of my worst nightmares, is what you'd
become for someone else.

I was sitting on my fence post,
Chewing some bubble gum.
Playing with my yo-yo.
When along came Hermy the Wormy,
And he was thiiiiiiiis big.
And I said,
"Hermy!? What’s up with you, man!?”
And he said,
“Duh, I just ate a whale!”

when everyone found out the truth,
you fled the country.
when everyone found out the truth,
you left us all behind to
deal with your messes.
when everyone found out the truth,
i was the only one left
seeing sharks spin circles in my swimming pool,
swim circles in my heart.

I was sitting on my fence post,
Chewing some bubble gum.
Playing with my yo-yo.
When along came Hermy the Wormy,
And he was thiiis big.
And I said,
“Hermy!? What’s up with you, man!?”
And he said,
"Duh, I just burped!”

when i was born,
you cried to our grandmother
because you wanted a brother
and got stuck with me, instead.
and what a turn of events that became.

when i was a baby,
i busted the back of your teeth out
with a bottle of perfume,
most likely contributing to your
repetitive dreams of your teeth falling out.
sometimes i think of this when you say your "th"s.

when i was a child,
you would pick peppers with our dad
down the street and hold eating competitions
while i squashed berries in my little tyke car.
we played mouse trap on the floor.

when i completed my first decade of life,
you packed your bags, got on a bus,
got married, and were deployed for the first time.
i don't remember much of those days.
i only remember the first phone call,
"yours truly, from iraq."

when i was eleven,
you came home, war torn and ragged
and divorced from an army wife
who was never really a wife at all.
you moved on, in some ways
more than others.
you were different, changed.

when i became a preteen,
i met a girl, and looked at our mom
and i said, "he's going to marry that girl."
and marry her, you did,
and had your first child, too.

when i was a teenager,
you taught me important life lessons
like how i act when i'm drunk
and how to do sake bombs like i belong in asia.
you taught me to eat with chopsticks.
through babysitting, i learned to wait to have a child.

and now, at twenty years old, everything is different.
living down the street from me, then in the old house,
and finally in our mom's house with me,
the dynamics changed.

we became the best friends we'd
always tried to be, but were too distant
to maintain. we gained trust and inside jokes.
you finally gave approval of my boyfriend.
we wreaked havoc and stayed up way too late.

but then you moved five hundred miles away,
and every day my heart feels ripped into pieces.
i miss all the jokes, and you waking me up
to our favorite songs.
i miss my brother. i miss my bubby.
i hope one day one of us will go home.

now i know why twenty-seven
is the age where
people bleed out in bathtubs,
or asphyxiate in the attic
swaying from an angry beam
with a face as blue as
the gown their mother wore
when she introduced them to misery
in a hospital,
or put a bullet to their busy brain
leaving a red Rorschach reminder
of their final moments
on the hotel room wall
that will only be seen
by a 42 year old maid
amidst a guilty type of jealousy
she doesn't understand,
or standing with shaky hands in a kitchen
emptying a bottle of aspirin on the counter
& greedily swallowing the little white teeth
following by gulps of water that feel like boulders
tumbling down a throat
with nothing left to say,
or even spreading their arms wide
like jesus on the cross or like a relative
at the airport waiting for a delayed hug
& jumping from the highest bridge or building
they can find so they can feel weightless,
once.