As a child I always covered my ears
whenever I started to hear my
parents fighting about whose weekend it was
And I hated that term
Whose weekend it was
Like they owned me

As if I was nothing more than some
quarrelsome barter being habitually swapped between living quarters at the end of every week
Sometimes I wished nothing more than to be
invisable, camouflaged along the wall
of dusty old antiques
Because the only ones you ever saw
fighting over them were old people who smelled
of pastries and lilacs

But I got tired of waiting for that
And I got more tired of the *******
small talk and forced awkward smiles
and when push came to shove,
At eight years old I was tired
of being handled with kid gloves

I grew up feeling like a token of fair trade
And in school I learned that fair trade
really wasn't fair at all
Some were taught to run while others
are forced to crawl to cross the finish line
but even that can't buy you time

Because at the end of the day
I still find myself coming back to that
original thought of the antiques along the
wall of items that nobody bought
And when you see that your only
company is dust and stale air,
life finds another way to remind you
that nothing is fair.

One time
I asked you if we could have a mirror installed on the ceiling above your bed
You laughed and then said,
why would we do that?
I felt only slightly embarrassed as I answered
that I wanted to see you from a third person perspective lying next to me
Because at times it felt almost too good to be true
Like when you say all these things you thought that you knew
And it turns out you never really knew anything at all
Like that it actually is possible to spend the better part of your entire existence trying to identify with the freckles on his back
or attempting to keep all of your sanity intact when you find yourself avalanching in love as you run your fingers along the track of his spine
At which point I pointed out how nice the mirror would be
So at any time I could glance up and see our bodies intertwined like the waves in the sea
And the absolute guarantee that there will always be stars in the sky
Even if you can't see them
The same way that in every goodbye there are words left unsaid and tears that aren't shed for the simple reason that we are all just trying to somehow keep our **** together
And so whether or not there will ever be a mirror above your bed I'm not quite sure
So I suppose, for the time being, my other senses will have to assure me that this will suffice
But that's quite alright
Because the feel of your skin on my hands is more than enough to ignite my own imaginative powers of the beautiful way you must look next to me at night

If I had to define the word love
I guess I would start with the way
after so long has passed two people
are able to converse by means of
squeezing hands or sharing glances
But maybe a better place to begin
would be how for as long as I had
known you, I could count the number
of times I had ever witnessed tears
fall from your eyes on one hand
None of those times including when
your older brother left to go over seas,
or as you held a pole on your
grandfather's casket
But today I watched your eyes fill
with tears as I spoke your name
and told you that I loved you by means
of nonsense metaphors
and ammature poetry
So I guess in the end
it doesn't really matter where i begin
to define the word love
As long as I have you by my side

Constantly,
over and over and over again
I find myself tripping and
breaking my back for people
who would never even think
of doing the same for me

And I realize that life really is
a never resting sea that takes
no mercy at all in beating the
best of people down
Down
Down

But then I look at you,
mid sentence and in full rant
about how none of this is fair
and and I realized you were actually
listening to me
A real live pair of working
human ears listening to me

And I didn't know how
and I didn't know why
but it didn't even matter because
when you kissed me I felt alive
in a way that made me forget
all of the times I had sworn I
wished I was dead

All I knew was that life
wasn't fair but I didn't even care
because it wasn't fair that
you loved me, because I didn't
deserve it, but God ****** I swear
one day I would earn it

You told me I would fall asleep much faster if I would just put my phone down at night
Count backwards from one hundred, maybe
While thinking about little Bo peep counting her sheep
Or a cow leaping over the moon
But what you don't understand is that every night before I fall asleep
I have to look at a picture of you before I close my eyes
And if I open them again
I have to look at another picture
Because I want you to be the last thing that I see every single night before I fall asleep
And if words like these just so happen to be crawling up the back of my throat
Flying through my fingertips dying to be told
Then that they must
Because when our days are all sold and the air has turned cold
I will turn to the page that my brain somehow holds
And shout from the rooftops a love that's too old
And so off I go to sleep
As you count your sheep
And my love for you will not go untold.