From always have my story books ever spoke,
urging me to live life with one phrase;
Memento Mori, a simple Latin phrase I had known,
from the beginning of my universe that I posses,
to the society I once slept upon, have I ever known,
that the sky is always sapphire,
the grass is always emerald,
and the blood is ONLY but ruby.

Whereas my storybooks told me, Memento Mori,
I will eventually whither away like the plants I was reluctant to plant,
to watch them die away,
so I could grasp it's corpse, and crush it's ashy substance.
I grin at that notion,
the concept of me having power, to crush,
my homicidal grin, illuminating malicious vibes,
only to feel guilty for I am enjoy their pain.

Although my storybooks, had always said Memento Mori,
they were books of a hero to zero, a man of a demon,
they had always spoken to me, their lustful eyes,
entrancing me from an angel's call, and telling me the phrase;
tu fui ego eris
"As you are, I was; as I am, so you shall also be"
They were right, for I had sinned like the killers in my book,
just like them, and they were just like me,
and we both could not avoid death, just as out gravestones had said.

I had refused to accept Memento Mori,
I refused to acknowledge the emerald that I had stood on, what it was I could never,
the sapphire I had not known, in the heavens only my piping plover knew,
and the ruby, has I always felt, warm, as it was around my feet,
only to be purified, and realize no one else was different.

We all murdered our complexities.

you and me both know that sometimes when something's beautiful
you want to touch it, even if you start to burn up
the beauty of that if precious above everything
(remember that time I wanted to kiss you in the rain?
it's like that.)
people never understand me
and I think that's part of the reason
I'm almost too afraid of touching the beautiful thing
for the fear of the beautiful thing being disgusted
by the shade of my eyes as they look at something
so wonderful
it's like smiling when you're sad
why would you smile to hide your feelings?
your feelings are your everything and yet
no one wants to share them with the world
I don't either, but I want to hear everyone's feelings
I want to hold them and tell them that just because
their feelings are lying, discarded on the floor,
doesn't mean that they're like spilled paint
that dries on the art room floor until years later
the janitor ventures in and frees
those hopes and dreams that died right there, on the floor.
I don't want to be spilled paint,
even though I'm already there
the only reason the artist keeps me around is too
comfort those aching paintbrushes and to
make sure they keep themselves neat and orderly.
You can't have paintbrushes having breakdowns when you're an artist, can you?
only paint can calm the paintbrush but why
would you make a paintbrush continue the same
miserable way if the paintbrushes only wanted
to paint in black and white
and I am a dark blue,
as dark as the ocean, but not like the ocean.
i want to be like the ocean.
too beautiful to touch, but touching everything.
how are you like the ocean?
I want to know how to be like the ocean
which has strength to go on everyday
breathing air into someone's lungs who hasn't breathed
by themselves in years.
everyone needs to breath sometimes,
so keep breathing darling
in and out is the constant cycle of the ocean,
and your breathing.
maybe it's not the ocean I want to be like,
i just want to be beautifully dangerous to hold you
at 5 am when you're breaking down and I don't know
what to do.
when you can't breathe those beautiful breathes
I want to be strong enough to pump the life back into you
I'll work through the night pushing you to live, for me
but then I'll wake up in the morning and realize
that you were never there in the first place.
just wisps of my wishful imagination floating through
the night sky.
anything can happen during the night air,
including finding a beautiful dangerous ocean to love.
perhaps one day I will wake up and
the beautiful ocean struggling to breathe won't be
a strike of imagination and you'll actually be there next to me.
but for now I'll be wasted paint on the floor.
if I can't have an ocean to love, I will be wasted paint
to help the paintbrushes paint a beautiful photograph of dangerous
oceans with beautiful, crashing waves.
I hope that they will all remember it when the world has
faded into dust and the only thing left is that
picture burning a whole in their minds and they, too
slowly fade into dust.

remember that time
I played your music instead of sleeping to keep
me from screaming at the flecks of dirt inside my mind
that remind me more of myself than anything
your music reassured me that I was alive and able to breathe
in and out, slowly, to the notes of the song
to the notes of the song that reminded me
that I was worth more than a boy
I'm worth more than a boy that uses me just
to have a laugh and tells me I'm hot when I am ice cold
and hiding in alaska because I don't belong in summer
when he's there looking for more snowflakes to burn
you shouldn't burn snowflakes,
all they want to do is fall quietly
they want to fall but they don't want anyone to see how
they fall or what they're falling on, becuase they
fall into oblivion before you can notice
well usually they do, but sometimes a boy will catch them and burn them
so he can laugh and make himself smile the only way he knows how to.
it's hard to make yourself smile if you're him and don't understand
the nature of snowflakes.
but your music will pull me down a road
i'll walk along it happy to forget about the tears I had just cried
and I'll stop at all the potholes admiring how they line the road
and all the grass growing in the little cracks
the yellow lines breaking them all up
did you know that roads are like arms?
they carry suffering with them and are
scarred in ways that is both natural and unnatural
they're essential to you and I's relationships
yes, our relationship is built up slowly by roads and arms
inching us closer and closer until we are too close to touch
and all I can do it look at your face and wish that
you'd noticed how the roads are like arms
and how they'd both made our relationship as real as it can be
(which is to say, as real as my heart or as real as your
gorgeous eyes that I can see as I stand this close)
I wish I wasn't this close, I wish I was close
enough to touch, to hold you in my arms and kiss away your
tears that are sure to be there sometimes, maybe
you could even hold me? you did say that
you were better than the boy who burns snowflakes
but that doesn't mean I am better than just a snowflake
that needs to make that boy happy before he does something
stupid to himself and I blame myself
perhaps it is best if I let him? it's only one snowflake
among one million, what do I matter compared to the life of one
boy who's life has gone terribly wrong and the only release he
has is burning snowflakes that aren't worthy of kisses?
besides
it's not like you would
really miss the way
the roads and arms built up the hope that
you could someday love me because
we both know that's not the case
because you're somewhere far away playing your guitar
and thinking of beautiful girls who resemble
the fairies and mermaids of disney movies
while I only resemble an ugly stepsister who
tries and tries to get the guy
but falls short because the
shoe is too short and she is too selfish
to even care that it belongs to another.
and you, you are peter pan
you are everyone's dream
why would you even look at me?
this writing is rambling
it means almost nothing but the words keep coming
and I can't stop them because I don't know what to say
so I say everything.
and I am a rose, but who likes roses?
roses have thorns, and they die
dandelions are beautiful, and they fly away
roses are nothing compared to all those beautiful dandelions that surround me.
now please if you remember anything about me,
from the way I breathe to the way my perfume smells
or the shade of my eye or the taste of my lips against yours,
remember that roads are like arms,
and that is what makes them beautiful enough to have held up our relationship against the tornado.
remember my love, that roads are like arms.

The little kids we used to be,
still play like the kids we were,
but now it’s graveyards instead of a playground.
Instead of dress-up costumes,
it’s makeup lathered to our faces,
we must be like those perfect pictures in magazines.
We play boyfriends and girlfriends instead of hopscotch,
anorexia instead of basketball.
Instead of storybooks, it’s facebook posts telling us
we don’t deserve to live.
We used to wear those colorful sillybandz,
and trade them with each other,
but now it’s scars from a razor
we wish we could take off.
It was always begging for seconds of ice cream,
but now it’s sneaking away to throw up the
little amount of food they make you eat.
Instead of staring at a summer campfire
waiting to roast marshmallows,
we stare at the fire waiting to burn ourselves.
Instead of angry first graders getting into a fistfight,
the anger now directs the punch to ourselves.
We used to sneak Halloween candy,
trying to stuff ourselves,
but now you sneak pills,
trying to overdose and hoping for death.
We used to play so freely,
we thought it’d always be like that.
But now we run among graveyards,
the bones of the ones we left behind
clutter the passages.
And we’re still children playing games
with the worlds, but the stakes are higher,
we wonder if we’ll make it.
It’s just a roll of the dice on this graveyard
playground.