We were misfits
the neglected *******
of a backwards world
that rejected us
not because we were sick
demented or dangerous
but because we didn't prescribe
to a preconceived notion
of what a functioning citizen was.

Not rotten enough to spoil
behind the bars of a prison
just competent enough
to work menial jobs
and drown our sorrows
at the corner pub.

We swallowed this hard truth
the same way we drank our shots
with no chaser
and at times it burnt
maybe even made us tear up
but we never let it beat us
(too strong for that)

We were beautiful
resilient beasts
that could carry the weight
of the world upon our shoulders
and it was heavy
but we would tell ourselves
"doesn't every world need an atlas?"
so we went on holding up the sky
when no one asked it of us.

I awake to my tired hands holding your body tightly against mine. The smell of you is something I will never forget, pleasantly refreshing almost like a hot shower. It's funny now to think that this moment is the last, the last time I will ever touch you affectionately. The last time I will gaze upon you with an infinite stare so deep that it still shakes me like the first shiver of winter; catching me off guard because I thought summer would never end. I can feel your heart beating against mine and I want to cry, what a terrible feeling to know this was fading and the reasons were all mine to hold. You drift back from your dream and into the daze of the living, you realize where you are and you ask me to drive you home. I get dressed and you do the same. Though we wore little, there was no passionate *** the night before. Just two bodies side by side seeking shelter from the storm that brewed inside of us. This is the end, we can both feel it but neither of us has the tongue to speak it.
I turn the key in the ignition and we idle for a short time in silence, now strangers again living different lives. This driveway in my beat-up Mazda on an early Sunday morning, this place is my purgatory. I make a stop at the gas station,  the E-light is on again. I ask you if you need a water or a coffee. You disdainfully say no. You hate me again, you have remembered I am a cheater, worse a liar and no matter how many times I apologize those truths remain evident. On my walk from the car I imagined you hopping in the driver's seat and driving off; if only the tank wasn't empty. I buy you water anyway because though you have declined it, I know that you need it, I always knew what you needed and it wasn't me or at least that's how I felt. I hope those feelings give you a little clairvoyance into my behavior. I never thought I was better than you if anything I thought you made me more. I pay the gas station attendant for pumping the gas, I hand you the bottled water and I drive you home.
My car pulls into the dirt driveway; I keep it running even though I want to turn it off, just shut up that loud lousy engine for a couple of minutes and tell you how much I hate myself for being such a miserable *****. Instead there is an awkward goodbye, do we kiss, do we hug, do we shake hands; I don't ******* know. You open the car door as to leave; possibly forever and you stop. You turn to me and ask a simple question. "Why didn't you do this when we were dating?" you hold up that plastic bottle now half empty "This is all I ever wanted!" I knew what you meant and it had nothing to do with water. I stutter for a moment and all my ego allows me to whimper is "I did". Wrong answer. I watched you walk up to the front-door and then I drove home; where I wept, quietly so my roommates wouldn't hear me because I was ashamed, not of crying but of who I was. Looking back I am glad that night wasn't about *** because it was always your innocence that melted me to my core. It was your smile, a cheerfulness that often left me confused. The world was a terrible place and yet you smiled when you looked at me. You were so beautiful and I so ugly, and because of that feeling I did ugly things. Today; I can say I forgive you. I forgive you for never forgiving me; leaving me behind was probably the best thing you ever taught me.

With love, always,
Jonathan R. Potts

I feel like a black hole
when I sit at the bar.
Like there is no amount of liquor
that could fill this bottomless well
and people keep falling in.

I can hear them cry sometimes
finger nails clawing at stone
until the tips are rubbed raw.
Ghosts wailing in the dark
a throbbing in my chest,
Poe's Tell-Tale Heart.

I spoke to one once
at a queer hour in the morn
she said "It's beautiful down here"
even as her body was being torn
into billions of subatomic particles.

"It's beautiful" she cried
"I've seen the end of time
I've seen galaxies form
I've seen star's collapse
and again be reborn
I've seen life emerge
and I've seen it destroyed
I've seen it all with my eyes
and all the bad you've done,
all the guilt you carry
it isn't helping anyone
it's ok- it's ok-- it's ok---
to let yourself be happy"

I so badly desired
to have faith in her words
but I've never been one
to believe in ghosts.

I live with all the women I've broken
in a cottage in the country
and in the evening we drink tea.
We talk sometimes of love
but mostly we speak
of how much we hate me.

Come to me woman
as creatures of light often do
float into my arms,
dig your talons into my chest
exposing what lie beneath
my muscle bound flesh.
Lay kisses upon me;
in such succession
that they burn my skin
like lightening
and make my heart pound
like thunder.

Undo these buttons
with nimble fingers,
remove from my body
this disguise I wear for others
and see me,
I ask that you see me
as I refuse to see myself.
Touch me with soft hands
until I am a statue in your grasp,
bite my neck, as your palms caress.
Each stroke shortening
my every breath.

I will take you like this,
disrobe you, see through you
and your eyes will come alive
shinning upon me like great stars.
I bury myself so deep
that the lines between
what is yours and mine
become one in the same.
Now my darling
as my hands clinch your hips
And you ****** your body upon me
like Cato Minor  upon the sword;
call out to me, cry my name.

I never understood how both
a self-obsessed egomaniac
and a hopeless romantic
could inhabit one body;
perhaps it is the reason
I have spent so much time
in front of the mirror, hating myself.