They call it depression, but it's an addiction to something that's not there-
It's an expression that we wear; it's repressed need-worn mentally.

And torn entities are born, but big men scorn with forlorn identities.
Ungentle mouths sending free telegrams to stop everything stop.

Want masquerading as need.
An embedded seed we tried to prune one day, but grew instead.
Weedy tendrils that push out my head.

Bleeding temperamentally internally eventually until it grows aware:
Despite hiding it or changing it, we carry on:
Recognizing our own ambiguity in another person's stare.

As you reach a mountain’s peak, your weight slightly decreases as you get further and further away from the Earth’s core and gravity loosens its hold ever so slightly. If you have ever felt this tiny change in more than a physical sense, then this is for you.

This is for train tracks and box cars, this is for every road we planned to trip but never departed, this is for the difference between August and October and the first snowflake on my sister’s freckles a whole week before Halloween.

Because nothing is as sturdy as uncertainty. Nothing is more constant than the ever changing blues right before dusk in the summertime, where the deepest blue is just over your head. It’s the untruth of the moving target and the integrity of the unlocked window and driving through mountains during a snowstorm on Christmas morning to be home in time for my brother’s favorite joke, but I take the turn too quickly and spin my mother’s car into the woods.

Because I can only trust something viscous and permeable, and there’s this moment when you first see someone push their hair out of their eyes, or take off their glasses that is so identifiably human that I can’t get it out of my head.

The arrangement of my mother’s garden isn’t one I remember because I want to. I remember it because it held her hands when I couldn’t and the hockey game on the car radio wasn’t important because my father said it was a playoff game, but because it was a place we could exchange our thin ice for someone else’s.

This paralysis of analysis lives in the heart of transitional phrases.

How am I to know
when it's okay to surrender?

My body begs me
for sweet relief,
to let my limbs, my digits,
all of my organs,
to let them go numb,
falling deep down
into a dark place
where I have vehemently
refused to
stumble
for many moons.

I keep my carcass
a hollowed shell,
swearing off any inclination
of relaxation,
of letting down my guard,
forbidding myself
to wander to the place
that frightens me most.

My beating chest,
it fights back
with fierce vigor
against my head's resounding no's
as your lips,
soft and succulent,
beseech my own,
our tongues
exchanging salutations
in a hushed, velvety
vernacular
that seems completely
of our own creation.

As my brain runs hurriedly
a million miles in a direction
somewhere southwest of here,
my figure melts,
      oozing
into your muscular hands
as they caress my face,
sweeping my hair
behind my ears.

Panic sets into my mind,
my breathing grows heavy,
but instead of bolting for
the door,
I draw your frame closer to mine,
wrestling a copacetic convulsion of angst and jitters
as your fingernails
gingerly
scrape
down
my
spine.

Hush now
In this pain
There’s a broken bone
Felt on me
Where we’ve been
Fascinations
In the faithless age
Guess again
At your fingertips
As the lake
Flows on away my friend
Men grow old
Every child knows the end
Drive fast
While we stand here
Someone help
Get me out of here
Our spirits name it
And it’s so huge and wide
I’ll make it great
Go back
Dot the I’s
Darling
In the sea air
Liar
Kiss her
Shine against her
It’s hard to tell
Get off
Tired games
Goodbye