I sometimes write
Of stories and fantasies
And these words spill from my fingers
Frighteningly effortlessly as they tell
Of passionate romances and crushing heart shatters and death of innocence
But I've never felt these things and
I feel fraudulent and cruel
Claiming feelings to which I have no right
And I wonder where these words come from that
Spill so easily from my finger tips
Because they aren't from experience
And they aren't true
Rereading them only embarrasses and confuses me
So should I validate them at all?
Mom peers at me worriedly as I try to convince her that I only used first person for form purposes
As I try to prove to her that this was (some bizarre) imagination and not some reality she wasn't aware of

I don't know how a kiss would feel on my lips.
Love and infatuation are strangers to my heart and mind.
I don't know how it hurts to be truly rejected or hated by someone I love.
To be so enraptured in someone else that the lines between us fade: a foreign and unfamiliar concept to my soul.
I don't know how hard it is to make mistakes in romances.
I've never come home giddy and unable to stop smiling because of a boy.
I don't know.
There's so very much I do not know.
And the absence of that knowledge feels like an object I don't have a place for inside my home of a mind.
Awkward and in the way and too obvious
But I don't know if I want to get rid of it yet.
It's oddity has become a part of me,
And it's absence would mean grieving a change
I'm not prepared for.

Whose woods these are I'm sure I know
My name is on the deed you know

My horse he does not think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near

My horse is of Korean make
Will stop and start and sometimes shake

Shake it did again today
Now I must call on Triple A

But I few promises have to keep
And pray for soon untroubled sleep

O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,
The ship has weathered every rack, the prize we sought is won,
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;
But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.

O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up—for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle trills,
For you bouquets and ribboned wreaths—for you the shores a-crowding,
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
Here Captain! dear father!
This arm beneath your head!
It is some dream that on the deck,
You’ve fallen cold and dead.

My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still;
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will;
The ship is anchored safe and sound, its voyage closed and done;
From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won;
Exult O shores, and ring O bells!
But I, with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.

Being your slave, what should I do but tend
Upon the hours and times of your desire?
I have no precious time at all to spend,
Nor services to do, till you require.
Nor dare I chide the world-without-end hour,
Whilst I, my sovereign, watch the clock for you,
Nor think the bitterness of absence sour
When you have bid your servant once adieu.
Nor dare I question with my jealous thought
Where you may be, or your affairs suppose,
But, like a sad slave, stay and think of naught
Save where you are, how happy you make those.
    So true a fool is love that in your will,
    Though you do any thing, he thinks no ill.

the best often die by their own hand
just to get away,
and those left behind
can never quite understand
why anybody
would ever want to
get away
from
them