I don't think winter
Was ever meant to be
Who can live when the cold
Freezes your soul?
I want the warmth of the sun
To kiss my skin
I want the delicate flutter of
A butterflys wing against my cheek
But nature plays this cruel trick
On me every September
It cajoles me with red and gold leaves
The shades of amber and burnt orange
Delight my eyes
All the while the leaves are dying
And I will never behold them again
Bare branches will reach up like skeletal arms
Against dull gray clouds
Snow will descend and a hush will fall
Like death, but not quite
And I must wait so long for the first bloom
Of color to push up through the spring snow
Promising the warmth of summer to follow
I don't think winter
Was ever meant to be

the sun in me must be heavy
because waking up is getting harder
i am practicing for the real thing
if we're being honest, i don't
want to see my 17th birthday
because since somewhere after
my 13th one, i have been restrained,
arms behind my back, while he
sucker-punched me in the jaw
i have spent the last 4 years
spitting blood and teeth onto the cement
and saying "thank you, thank you,
this is all i could ever want."

Beautiful is you,
Your beauty shines brighter than a million suns,
You fill a room with smiles every time you walk in,
You don't realize how beautiful you are,
And every time I see you you fill me up with excitement,
I wish to hug you and I may,
But for now just as a friend,
No matter how sweet and loving I am,
Your beauty, your life, your past will not permit a kiss of love

have you ever believed
in something so blindly
so genuinely
that the moment you realize
it isn't true, something inside you
changes forever?
i wanna tell you a story, see
seldom do i ever
go swimming in drinks
deep enough to drown in
but when i do
i speak in tongues
about things that none
of my memories
are allowed to talk about
like that christmas
at the isthmus
where my girlfriend
plucked a conch shell
whiter than gods teeth
out of the sand
held it to her ear
and stopped time
that day she was a shade of blue
the could've made the ocean sick
see, she loved to play jokes
when she held
the sea shell to her ear
she gasped, called my name
and said "i want you to hear this"
i said "yeah, right, everybody knows it's just the same old sea"
she replied "no. not this one. this one is special. listen. theres music in this one"
she handed me the shell
like a promise she couldn't keep
and i held it to my ear
with all the potential
of seeing shore
after being stranded
at sea for years
only to hear
a tired dirge of silence
spill from its emptiness
i guess she didn't know
how desperately
i wanted to hear it too
because ever since
something inside me snapped
now sand pours out
of every post card i open
i hear seagulls
in telephone static
sometimes i have dreams
where i bury my hands
in every beach
i've ever been on
and exhume this graveyard of noise
every time i try to sleep
i spit up fishhooks
and i guess i'm obsessed
but maybe
if i hold my ear
to enough vacant things
then i could have back
the time stolen from me
since it happened
maybe they would get it
if they knew what i wanted
when i blow out birthday candles
maybe they'll find me
face down in a wishing well
i watch eternal sunshine
of the spotless mind every day
pretending i can forget too
because this sea sickness
has followed me for years
because yesterday
i walked into a music shop
and all the pianos broke
but the only thing
i can think to say is
*do you know how bad
a memory has to be
that you fantasize
about forgetting it?

if you could see me right now,
you would ask me if i have slept in the 9 months that you have been away
you would tell me that i look like a store that won't close
you would tell me how different you are now and how much you've learned in your shaved head and caged windows
and when i reached to touch your face, you would say that you aren't there yet
you never belonged to me and you never will
but you still keep the guillotine in your bedroom
and the skeletons in your closet still have skin and hair and eyelashes that bat when you make a wish on one of your own
your laughter still doesn't travel like it used to and you don't smile unless you have to
and *******, i used to lay with all of the smiling parts of you
what a foreign memory

i sleep but not as well as i used to
i keep the lights on in hopes that they might catch your attention
and you're no different than you were
the last time you didn't belong to me

here's how it happens
the morning after
you reach into the drawer
where the your t-shirts live
to find it austere
you'll shrug because
you're still drunk
& you can't remember
when last it was
that you had something wet
or how long it's been
since you made the floorboards blush
or why the carpet is upset
who wouldn't be
the contents to the upended ashtray
strewn around the apartment
resemble the aftermath
of the smallest war
to ever take place in norfolk
some midnight thief
must've made off with the lighter
because it isn't in
any of your favorite spots
maybe you chucked it
along with a hundred other things
that make noise when they land
in the neighbors yard
you won't remember putting
the refrigerator's belongings
in the bathtub
or scrawling a buzzard
on the bedroom door
but then again who would
you'll pretend it's spring again
before putting on your winter coat
to go out front with a cigarette
in your mouth
you'll hope for a passing stranger
to *** a light from
or drag yourself to the corner
with couch cushion change
to buy a new lighter
and on your way
you won't bother looking back
this is just another day
on eggshells for no reason
another november
choking on birthday candles
on your way home
you step over beer cans
the kind you fell in love with
and wonder who
had the last laugh last night
or if anyone said a word at all
it might've been another
moment of clarity
it might have been some idiot savant
any adjective that feels like home
anything that keeps you thirsty

i write all day like an adult,
i am learned and i use big words
and i know how to accurately craft
a metaphor about pain and harm.

but at the end of the day
i return to childlike phrases,
“it’s not fair,” and i feel more
of a release from that than
a composition notebook
filled from cover to cover
with a million different ways
of saying that i still,
despite everything,
am not happy.

maybe it was just bad timing
maybe 10 years from now,
we'll meet again in one of the most cliché ways.
maybe I'll be sitting on one end of a coffee shop
and you'll be sitting at the other
and I'll be drinking coffee
and you'll be drinking anything that keeps your eyes open.
I'll see you but pretend I didn't,
I'll take the napkin that was once sitting under my coffee and place it in front of me,
I won't write down my number.
I'll write about how my coffee matches your eyes,
dark brown coffee sweetened with a little too much sugar.
I'll write about the last time I saw you,
and how you said you'd never grow any ****** hair
but now you have stubbles resembling cinnamon bun crumbs swept across your face.
Maybe, just maybe, I'll look up from my napkin, and see you looking at me.
Maybe I'll see you looking at me the way Gatsby looked at Daisy.
Or maybe you won't look at me at all.
Maybe I'll just crumple up this napkin and throw it away.
(But I kind of hope I meet you at the garbage can, seeing you throw away a crumpled coffee shop napkin with scribbles all over the back.)