it feels like i lose blood each time
like the pastor's daughter once told me
(a wide-eyed ******)
that each man we give our hearts to
keeps a piece in their pocket
and that if we give too much
we'll have nothing left.
and maybe that was just christian *******
trying to make me fear the loss of my virginity
more than death
so that when i was *****
when i was 20
i was silent
and ashamed
and the blood i lost
came from between my legs,
not my chest.

but my heart is different after this last one,
so maybe she was right after all
and after him
every time someone kinder
is intimate with me
i feel like my hands are covered in gore
and when he takes them
they slip
muddy his shirt
his hands.
and that's something i'd never want
to inflict -  

i grew up being told
my sins
were covered
in blood
as i grow older
i am convinced
it's true.

neither one of us knows how to be angry quietly
we learned that from our parents
when things got bad it was hurricanes in the living room
or the front seat of your car
but when things were good it was magic
because neither one of us knows how to love quietly either
we learned that from each other

tower up into the night like a young tree-
fragile but wild.
uprooted, i forget
i forgive
burn out every piece that lingers
every word that isn't love
there's glass in my heart but i feel nothing
i can leave but have nowhere to go
a life lived too open
a half lie and i am bleeding again
i know you don't love me.
i know you don't love me.

can't decide if the river ran me past something i've no control over anymore
i can't decide if this is what love is
my phone tells me that there are so many other boys with better traits
but i don't want to bother to get to know them.

i would rather spend a summer away from you?
afraid of what you do behind my back?
in your
phone?
what about what i do in mine?

cheating takes 10 seconds now
one snap and all evidence is gone
it doesn't even feel wrong
it took no effort
shouldn't evil
take effort
shouldn't we feel
wrong?

too easy, too quick to catch
as soon as i pick up the hammer it tells me what to hit --
(everything)

my phone? --
the same.

I GIVE the undertakers permission to haul my body
to the graveyard and to lay away all, the head, the
feet, the hands, all: I know there is something left
over they can not put away.

Let the nanny goats and the billy goats of the shanty
people eat the clover over my grave  and if any yellow
hair or any blue smoke of flowers is good enough to grow
over me  let the *****-****** children of the shanty
people pick these flowers.

I have had my chance to live with the people who have
too much and the people who have too little and I chose
one of the two and I have told no man why.

over two thousand people have jumped off the Golden Gate bridge
and I don’t think a single one of them thought about how weak
hydrogen bonds are.
I don’t think a single one of those two thousand plus people
thought about the fact that it was water at the bottom of their drop.
to me, it seems common knowledge
that hydrogen bonds are the weakest link that elements can make.
people overestimate the strength of surface tension,
even from such a high place.
hydrogen bonds will always break,
just like me and you.
just like mentality
just like sentimentality
just like reality
just like knowing that i’ve only got a year left with you,
cause god knows we aren’t gonna stick it out after high school.
we’re a hydrogen bond in which
i am the hydrogen
because in every situation i find myself to be the weak link,
like everyone else is better off without me.
the problem is, i don’t know what other people are thinking
when they think of me,
because i’m no mind-reader and i’ve never been a good guesser,
so maybe some of those two thousand plus people who
jumped off the Golden Gate bridge actually did think about the weak link,
the lack of strength in hydrogen bonds, the possibility of water
giving out under their weight and their survival rate.
i read somewhere that no matter how you try, your body will do everything
it can to keep you alive. maybe it’s not just your body,
but also your mind manipulating situations to best advance your
survival probability.
because maybe, just maybe, no one really wants to die.
maybe, but it’s a big maybe, because i can’t read minds.