She wore a yellow dress the day that he picked her up in his truck for their very first date. Her hair fell in loose curls and gentle waves upon her shoulders like the low tides of the ocean on a warm summer day when it was just the right temperature for sun-bathing. She had a smile as careless as the high grass swaying in the wind around the telephone poles that they passed on their way to the lake that they were planning on picnicking at. Her hands danced like shadow puppets on the dashboard to the rhythm of the country songs emitting from the radio. She crossed her thin legs and tilted her head towards the sky, allowing the breeze sweeping through the cab to kiss her neck as it passed by. Every now and then, when she wasn't looking, he'd steal a glance in her direction like a heads-up penny that he would slip into his pocket for good luck for later. When he pulled off the dirt road and removed the wicker basket and blanket from the truck bed, she ran ahead of him like a gazelle yearning to quench her thirst, searching for a spot near the lake for them to sit. She fell to her knees on a soft patch of dirt that filled the creases like puzzle pieces, as though she belonged to it. As he made his way to her, he watched as she tangled the grass in her fingers like strands of hair before looking up at him and smiling.  He never knew what love was, but he knew this was as close as he ever needed to be in order to be happy.

She wore a yellow dress the evening that she crawled through his bedroom window to spend the night with him, without his parent's consent. Her hair was tucked behind her ears like every reservation he had until he met her, that now dangled out the window. He removed his guitar from behind his bed and watched as she twirled around in circles in the center of his bedroom, as though the angels were strumming on harps just for her. Every now and then, his fingers would slip from the strings, because he couldn't remove his eyes from her pink lips as they lip-synced their very own love song. When the melody ceased, she fell into the carpet like a cloud that she could float away on top of. He put his guitar back in its rightful place before fitting his body behind hers, holding her and whispering their love song as they both fell asleep.

She wore a yellow dress the afternoon that he pushed her on a tire swing. Her slender fingers gripped the rope the way she held him, as though she never intended to let go. He pressed his hands against her back and pushed her into the heavens, wondering how he was so fortunate to receive an angel when it came back to him. Her hair blew behind her like the physical manifestation of the sound waves of her laugh whenever she went too fast. He couldn't remove the smile from his face, even if he tried, although he never would whenever she was around. She was the high, higher than the tire swing could ever take her, that he never wanted to come down from.

She wore a yellow dress the night that she was riding her bike, alone. Her feet pressed down on the peddles and her hips balanced the frame as she spread her arms out beside her like a bird in flight. Her mind was still racing with thoughts of him, his soft breath against the back of her neck and the feel of his hand against her stomach, when a car sped around the turn too quickly. She felt the headlights illuminate her skin like the sunlight that kissed her the way he did on their first date, but the blow that followed didn't quite resemble that of his kiss.

She wore a yellow dress the morning that they decorated her casket. Her hair was stiff as it framed her powdered face, and her hands were cold as they were crossed on her chest. Her legs were covered by a silk blanket and daisies were laid upon them. A forced smile was spread across her lips, appearing grotesque, which was the first thing he noticed whenever he entered the funeral home. At the sight of her lifeless body, he fell to his knees and began sobbing. She was now nothing more than a metaphor for the good dying young.

She wore a yellow dress the twilight that she walked into the sunset to greet him. Her hair fell delicately down her back like a waterfall cascading into a heavenly pool. She had a smile as warm as the sunbeams that blinded him whenever he first opened his eyes, after he (what he thought might be) permanently closed them while lying on the cold tile of his bathroom floor. Her hands reached out to hold his, as though she desired to place twinkling stars in his palms. She wrapped her arms around him, resting her head on his shoulder, holding him like she knew she failed to do the evening that she left him. Then she lifted her head towards the heavens again, allowing the wind to kiss her neck and the sun to sweep her into his arms (along with him) and her yellow dress.

Tears of the seven dwarfs
Drowned the casket made of glass
Where Snow White lies lifeless...

Prayers of the seven dwarfs
Ordered god to stop the time
Be it a hundred years
We'd wait for Snow to open her eyes...

You open to me
a little,
then grow afraid
and close again,
a small boy
fearing to be hurt,
a toe stubbed
in the dark,
a finger cut
on paper.

I think I am free
of fears,
enraptured, abandoned
to the call
of the Bacchae,
my own siren,
tied to my own
mast,
both Circe
and her swine.

But I too
am afraid:
I know where
life leads.

The impulse
to join,
to confess all,
is followed
by the impulse
to renounce,

and love--
imperishable love--
must die,
in order
to be reborn.

We come
to each other
tentatively,
veterans of other
wars,
divorce warrants
in our hands
which we would beat
into blossoms.

But blossoms
will not withstand
our beatings.

We come
to each other
with hope
in our hands--
the very thing
Pandora kept
in her casket
when all the ills
and woes of the world
escaped.

The casket was coming up, swaying and wobbling
Like a novice skater’s layover spin,
The workings proceeding apace,
The stillness of the August heat
Punctuated by disinterested growl of the backhoe,
The occasional out-of-place jocularity by the excavators
The creaky jingle of the chains holding the muddied box
As it proceeded skyward in its clumsy poor-man’s Resurrection.
The affair was being observed by an elderly couple,
Old enough to be of no particular age.  
Their car had Carolina plates,
But their inflections, their casually-tossed idioms
They noted that ruefully The grass needs mowed)
Marked them as natives.
They’d returned (Last time, most likely,
The wife uttered mournfully)
To take their son with them; he’d drowned when was five? six?
(The years will do that to a body, apparently)
In Kinzua Creek some half-century ago,
Back when little boys weren’t under a mandate
To be safe from themselves, as it were.  
He was our boy! We’ve never forgotten him!
The old man said, the words snapping off
In a manner that spoke of something else altogether,
How the whistle at the Montmorenci
Went off at three and eleven for second shift,
And your *** had better be there,
As those were good jobs that didn’t wait for bereavement leave,
Because there was always someone
Just itching to take your spot on the line,
And anyway life went on,
At least in the sense that television screens went all to snow
And tires went flat and fuses blew
And eventually a dead child
Is not always in the forefront of your thoughts,
Only tiptoeing in when the Press ran a picture
Of the Montmorenci Area Class of whenever,
Or there was an item about some other family
Who opened their front door
To a grim sheriff’s deputy with his hat in his hand.  
Eventually, after some time
And in defiance of both the odds and gravity,
The casket was settled into the back
Of the undertaker’s huge old black Caddy,
And the couple cane-toddled back to their car,
Following out the through the old spider-like gates
And onto the main road.
The brief procession fading from sight,
Until there was nothing left to see
Save the hillsides covered in old growth pine.

Disney didnt lie
You just haven't found the right guy
And I don't mean that "nice guy"
You know the one
That always wants to have fun
But always expectin sumin'
And sleeping beauty lyin in bed
Rattlin her head
Like Disney said i was a princess
But I feel like a Pauper instead
Because I havent found that kiss that opens up my eyes
And all these players out here are frog just tellin lies
In disguise
But I want a prince eric that goes into the ocean
I want me Aladdin that knows how to fly
But ofcorse Disney didn't lie
And I just haven't found the right guy
3 days to find love
But that ain't enough time
And im tryin to find a healing flower
That heals my broken heart
A genie in a bottle that would set me apart
Maybe one day I will turn in to a mermaid and live a life with music and art
But thats a farce
Maybe I will end up like elsa
Queen of the singles
Not needing to mingle
With the common folk
Sometimes I feel like Disney is a ******* joke
But I keep hearing that Disney didnt lie
And I just havent found the right guy
The guy that will give me all his time
The guy that isn't in it for the money
Or the glory
Or the crown
But im looking around and all I see are these clowns
And John isnt around to save his Pocahontas
Theres a long list
Of reasons I get ******
That flynn's not out here trying to give me a kiss
And I feel like my opportunity was missed
And I'm on the ground in some mist
Waiting for the dwarves to put me in a glass casket
And i just hear the same fact
****
That Disney didn't lie
I just havent found the right guy

life is just an open casket
death will never let us hide
we take turns walking past it
veil of black, someone died

time is only here for now
tomorrow, we might be gone
we keep going on somehow
hoping not to be the next one

life is just an open casket
death will never let us hide
there's no way to outlast it
sooner or later, you're inside

Oh, sad Poet,
cartographer
of the heart,
mapping the geography
where sadness
is the topography
of your soul.

Oh, Cousteau
of the changing tides,
like an oceanographer,
an admiral  spying
the enemy on the horizon.
Your sorrow comes and goes.

Oh, builder of sad dreams
in your house of many rooms,
but one door. Like a grave,
a casket shellacked with
black paint, a mural
of a shadow on the wall.
Architectural sorrow.

Oh, you sad Poet,
open your eyes,
paint us a poem of a rose.

Explaining My Depression to My Mother: A Conversation
Mom, my depression is a shape shifter.
One day it is as small as a firefly in the palm of a bear,
The next, it’s the bear.
On those days I play dead until the bear leaves me alone.
I call the bad days: “the Dark Days.”
Mom says, “Try lighting candles.”
When I see a candle, I see the flesh of a church, the flicker of a flame,
Sparks of a memory younger than noon.
I am standing beside her open casket.
It is the moment I learn every person I ever come to know will someday die.
Besides Mom, I’m not afraid of the dark.
Perhaps, that’s part of the problem.
Mom says, “I thought the problem was that you can’t get out of bed.”
I can’t.
Anxiety holds me a hostage inside of my house, inside of my head.
Mom says, “Where did anxiety come from?”
Anxiety is the cousin visiting from out-of-town depression felt obligated to bring to the party.
Mom, I am the party.
Only I am a party I don’t want to be at.
Mom says, “Why don’t you try going to actual parties, see your friends?”
Sure, I make plans. I make plans but I don’t want to go.
I make plans because I know I should want to go. I know sometimes I would have wanted to go.
It’s just not that fun having fun when you don’t want to have fun, Mom.
You see, Mom, each night insomnia sweeps me up in his arms dips me in the kitchen in the small glow of the stove-light.
Insomnia has this romantic way of making the moon feel like perfect company.
Mom says, “Try counting sheep.”
But my mind can only count reasons to stay awake;
So I go for walks; but my stuttering kneecaps clank like silver spoons held in strong arms with loose wrists.
They ring in my ears like clumsy church bells reminding me I am sleepwalking on an ocean of happiness I cannot baptize myself in.
Mom says, “Happy is a decision.”
But my happy is as hollow as a pin pricked egg.
My happy is a high fever that will break.
Mom says I am so good at making something out of nothing and then flat-out asks me if I am afraid of dying.
No.
I am afraid of living.
Mom, I am lonely.
I think I learned that when Dad left how to turn the anger into lonely —
The lonely into busy;
So when I tell you, “I’ve been super busy lately,” I mean I’ve been falling asleep watching Sports Center on the couch
To avoid confronting the empty side of my bed.
But my depression always drags me back to my bed
Until my bones are the forgotten fossils of a skeleton sunken city,
My mouth a bone yard of teeth broken from biting down on themselves.
The hollow auditorium of my chest swoons with echoes of a heartbeat,
But I am a careless tourist here.
I will never truly know everywhere I have been.
Mom still doesn’t understand.
Mom! Can’t you see that neither can I?

twelve

         If i could write a letter to my twelve your old self, i would mention the pain your about to face, with self loathing and mental health is far worse then the years before. I would mention how when you wake up wipe the sleep from your eyes and read this letter and find two people you loved gone from your life forever. When you leave your plastic car framed bed you will find an empty room in the basement. The first loss is not death but abandenment leaves no answer to the sting a heart can feel when your older sister meant to guide you has ran away.  She has left, and to what you shall soon find out, left you to your death. The second loss has less thought to the idea of why? but still i did cry. It was my great grandmothers time. Her slow pace death lead to suffering till one week to the day after i turned twelve.  Emotional asking questions why, three days later i tightened my silk tie putting on a suit and ending the night seeing the casket of one of you. To think of you as dead eased my head for a while but still have to replace my frown with a fake smile. After all i lost a sister, when i needed someone to talk you were never there. Instead i just found myself cutting and dyeing my hair.  This is the year you feel your fathers strong hand as you tremble below it. This is the year you tremble in fear this is the first year you want to die

Thirteen

      To my thirteen year old self, im sorry life doesnt get better. im sorry that this is year your parents admit they don't care.  Im sorry this is the year you hear the three words no one wants or deserves to know their pain. Even though the words "I hate you" Were uttered in vain. Im sorry no one was there to hold you in there arms, im sorry of how when looked in the mirror every morniing after you showered  telling yourself its a new day and the pain is past. Im so sorry of how you found out how long the pain really lasts. Look at what you have achieved though, this is the year you win first in all categories invited to Kick Canada to again win. You achieve a bronze as a group, silver in your weopons, and gold in kickboxing. With you feeling weighed down your still weightless, with your amazing place and the smile on your face to look in the croud hearing the aplause. Somethings missing though your parents no where to be seen. Im sorry they wernt there to say good job im sorry your dads hand still strikes strong. This is the year you say enough though, you say no and strike back your foe. He stands stunned for a minute and walks away, the bruises faded away from the surface, but inside i still see them.  It is the night of my birthday i fall asleep praying tomorow will bring a better year.

Fourteen

     Im sorry this is not the year it gets better, your father never lays another hand to your dismay doesnt matter for his and your mothers word fly freely. This is the year they make you cry, only to insult you further "your nothing, your trash" there tounges did lash me. Til  i crashed under hate to my untimly fate, your mother is sick and you walk into the room as she slashes the blade across her wrist, you watch her bleed amd scream for help but she pretends u dont exsist she  spends the next year and eight monthes in psycitric care. Left in a house with nothing fair in the air my invitation ti nationals came and past i did not go in fear of leaving my mother would effect her more vast, past her yelling at ke eberyday i walked in the light blue room with the curtains always closed filled with gloom . While my mother on her last heartstrings looked for strength from her groom . Only to be filled with hate she saw me as a reminder he exsists and how he doesnt visit but i did. I walked the long path every **** day to see my mothers face still i wasnt good enough but that is just my luck. It is my last night of this age. The house is empty amd quite but still remains okay just praying thiis new year brings joy to the now broken boy.

Fifteen

     This is not the year it gets better neither, but this os the year your mother is released. It took a week for the smiles to wear away. Then i saw once again the skin tare from her flesh. Soon hate took over the tone under her breath and malace mixed with spite is the only thing left of my mother i once knew. This is the year you once again face death, you and your mother are in a car driving counting breaths singing along to eminem, reciting robert frost. when suddenly a car passes us and my mother is crossed the mid age lady on her phone swirving around, not paying atention to anyone or anything i still see her frown. She ran a stop sighn without a thought hit by a garbage truck in front of our eyes now i know the cost of when her cellphone conversation stopped. This was the first time i watched someone die. Still shocked  my mother had to call the abulence as i and the garbage man saw the damage in case she still did breath. In the end blood filled the scene as me amd the garbage man covered the front window with a sheet to protect what is left of this womens dignity. This is the year you fond a little blue pill that not only eases your pain if snorted aslo goves you a thrill. This is the first year that you almost sucsessfully kil.l... yourself going to sleep for this living hell praying next year could be better aswell.

Sixteen

     This year is a self medicated blur, this is the year you forgot who you were. T3s replaced with perks and shots only to be soon replaced with oxys in your black box crushed and lined one at a time up your nose the powder glides. The first night you try an 80 you overdose nearly comitoce as you spew a frothy white  fluid from your mouth but my freinds saved me to this day i dnt know how called said i passed out and cant drive home so my parents could never figure out how i lay on the tiled floor back from death after this a pill is never again accepted that is your debt 2 days to your birthday that cursid day your sober but that was just babby steps and i promise little soilder babby steps you would not regret.

Seventeen

      This is the year you stopped praying for help thinking you did this to yourself i promise it wasnt you. How could it be your still just in youth. This is the year you watch your father fall. You find the trail of debt 100 thousand dollars owed mine aswell of been a million for we can barely live so how would you like us to pay it back i finfd him stealing money from my backpack. This is the year you find out your dad is the same worth of a rat and you dont have to take his crap. This is the year he snaps and instead you help him back up. He was in achoma five days as you stayed never slept jus sat beside his hospital bed praying this did not mean death. Death came in a different way with your cousin brit stabbed to death by her husband on febuary fith.. this is the year you wished you diddnt exsist.

Eighteen

     This is the year.... you found the courage to see you will always be...good and thats enough for me.

After my mother died, my room was filled with roses.  When the flowers died, my room was filled with their sweet, rotten stench for weeks on end; it sunk into my pores and into my DNA and years later, I still smell like dead roses.
                                                 My sister confuses this smell with dead lilies.

A bouquet of red roses was placed atop my mother’s coffin as it lowered six
feet down into the earth.  After the roses died, I wonder if my mother could
smell them like I did?  I wonder if she still smells them, or, more likely, how long it took for the roses to disintegrate into dust like her?  

We don’t talk about the body after death because we don’t like to be reminded of how vulnerable we really are. In high school, a boy asked me to prom using roses and lilies that were all different shades of reds and oranges and yellows like fire.  Lilies like funerals and tombstones and formaldehyde.

I don’t think he meant to remind me of death.  I don’t think his intention was to place me in a casket similar to my mother’s with its pink padded walls.  I don’t think he realized that’s where I went when I saw his basement covered in bouquets of hellfire.  I think he meant the roses to be romantic,

but I looked at them and saw my mother’s putrefying face, saw her intestines eaten away by savage bacteria and bugs, saw her eyelids drying out and peeling back like black and dead and withered lily petals.  Embalming does not prevent decomposition, only prolongs it.  I have embalmed my mother's
memory in the shape of a teal notebook.  I cannot tell if it has
                                                                       begun to decay or not.

Bon Fire Stories for Around My Tombstone

The bells toll to signal the end of a life characterized by failure.
A failure to reach ascendancy and win over his hero’s favor.
A failure to shake the darkness plaguing his broken soul.
A failure to break the suicidal habit that lead so many others to burn in the coal.
A failure to maintain a healthy relationship long enough to find a wife and produce an heir.
A failure who was never able to pull himself out of the pit of despair.
A failure who never achieved a decent career.
A failure who never figured out God’s plan for his life that the good lord laid out right in front of him o so clear.
A failure to rediscover himself and build himself into a proper person.
A failure who pushed everyone away and allowed and disease in him to only worsen.
He failed his entire life, from birth to burial.
A failure who drove his parents hysterical.
A miserable failure, isn’t he just terrible?
This will be a small, quiet memorial.

Only family members and a few close friends gather around this *******’ casket.
They shed a few tears, say some kind words but deep down, don’t feel bad for the rascal.
He was the black sheep of the family and not really loved by anyone anyhow.
There is an overall sense of relief that he’s gone now.

Everyone ignored his please as he cried out for help through is art.
Everyone ignored him as he walked around slowly dying of a broken heart.
Everyone ignored him even after multiple books were published describing his pain and inner turmoil.
Ignored he no longer will be as his body rots away underneath the norths cold soil.
As the bells toll to signify his end, a few close friends gather around his tombstone to say their final respects.
They understand the fallen man to have been complex.
They don’t judge him for never practicing safe ***,
or for losing his invisible war and getting ****** into a vortex.

The men and woman begin a bon fire and set up chairs.
These a sense of peace tonight in the chilly spring air.
They crack open a cooler and pass around the beer.
This is how the fallen would have wanted it, just to be clear.
They begin sharing stories of the man he used to be,
Hoping that now, from his inner pain he is free.
They share stories surrounding his dark times dating Autumn,
amazed that from his downfall there, he was able to climb back up from the bottom,
but was unable to do the same here today.
Everyone has an expiration date and his just happened to come out and play.

They share embarrassing moments he thought they had long forgotten,
and share time’s where his greatness really blossomed.
They rip on him for never using a ******
and say be belonged living in *****,
but *** wasn’t meant to be contained,
it was meant to be raw and natural, like he always explained.
The group shakes their heads at his crazy theories.
He had so many unnatural ideas he could have written a book series.
They shake their heads and laugh at the discussion of his strangeness,
always shaving his body when no man was meant to do so.
His feminine traits when he claimed to be a real man.
He lived a strange existence during his short life span.

One friend, his best one of all, takes out his books of art and begins reading them aloud to the group.
They all share their thoughts and opinions openly on what they think.
Twisted, tormented, genius, freak, he was all of them.
An outcast to many, but a hero to some.
His words are laced with venom and strike hard.
In person, you could never tell, he always had up his guard.
His friends don’t care; they are here to celebrate his life and do him one last solid.
After all, it’s the least they can do, it was a group promise.

As the group laughs, drinks and celebrates, a man watches on from a distance.
Even in death, he is still facing resistance.
His soul is charred, beaten and worn down,
but he’s not sad, his face isn’t even supporting a frown.

With the angels above him in the sky calling out to him,
and the demon’s below him reaching out for him,
he’s just happy to see his friends celebrating who he was while he was alive.
He wishes he could go give them all a high five.
Sharing campfire stories around his tombstone is how he wants to be remembered.
Drinking beer, sharing laughs all for him, it warms his soul.
Reading his art out loud, it how he wants to be remembered.
At least his death wasn’t all in vain.