I could feel the powder on your skin
The absence of your soul
And the lack of life in your existence

You looked like a doll of wax
Posed and examined by strangers who barely cared
Placed in your casket by unforgiving hands

I shan't forget the juice stain across the front of your hat
The spot of blood on the back
Or even the clip you attached all those years ago

I'll return to you someday in the future
And when we touch, I won't allow your skin to seem fake for even a second

We stand at a funeral, hand in hand,
under a sky bleeding glorious light.

The year is dying but we are
here to remember. To celebrate and to cherish.
To laugh and sob, reverently, as one.

We stand circular around a cavernous well,
and in this well, we place bouquets of memories.

There is a door rattling off its hinges. Daffodils picked in a hurry.
A boy, a girl, and two hands finding each other
in the darkness of
a cheap movie theater.
There’s a dying woman telling her sister to
read her favorite book to her one last time
******* it. Two boys shucking off
clothes and leaping into the ocean, shouting
and gasping as the frigid waves lick
their bug-bitten calves. A gun held
to someone’s temple,
ruthless. Desperate mouths
meeting in a train station. An I Love You
written on
torn notebook paper and passed
across the aisle. An endlessness of
January snow.
There are fists on jaws
and pennies dropped into fountains
and meals that taste of loss.
Little girls
standing hopefully
in front of their mirrors, looking for
evidence of approaching
womanhood. Hangovers and weddings.
The stunned pause
after a kiss. Old men in
baseball caps joking at diners.
A boy stepping numbly into the
path of a freight train. Things said
at three in the morning and regretted
long after. Snapped pencil lead.
A scraped elbow. Soup on a
misty night. Want.
This is what we have left.

When the earth turns, as it always does,
this will be the past.
When the earth turns, it will carry us
into a new year
and we will burn, hats in hand,
for what was.
But when the earth turns, all will be fresh and flagrant,
naked and breath catching.
All will be ours.

We stand together between death and dawn. We wait.

They sing for him,
Swinging from heel to frail heel,

Growing earth between the ground and,
his casket,

Bleeding love into the air
Like orchids,

Humming,

They rise again
And again their gently swaying busts,

Move the air to and fro,
To and fro,

Intending that mother be comforted,

Intending that her wet eyes,
Smile at new wives, that

though her son was gunned down, the
Rhythm of the occasion,

Brings life.

We are gathered here today
In memory of me.
The girl I used to be.
The one with all the love.
The one who the world made soft
The one who fell in love.
The girl who was so innocent.
We are gathered here to bury her in the past.
We are gathered here to put her to rest so I can join the world I long for.
Dearly beloved
I cannot ask you to forget her.
But promise to accept me.
With all my faults.
With all her scars.
Dearly beloved I ask you not to think differently of her.
But I ask you not to compare.
Dearly beloved,
Do not miss her.
She may be dead but to those who turn a blind eye to me, she is very much alive.
She is the fake smile and dead eyes.
The razor that calls at night.
Dearly beloved
Do not fear.
I am not going anywhere.
Dearly beloved,
I **** the person I used to be
In fear of killing the person I could.

When we die,
Will I feel you
One last time
Pull the hope
Out of my veins.

Will the heart
Cease to believe
In chances,

When there is
No more me
Or no more you.

I admit, in writing,
I like my work read
Aloud.
So why do I cower
In dread,
When I hear it read
Before family and friends
At celebrations
For the living and dead.

I've daydreamed of my burial day,
I've thought about,
who I want to come,
If anyone would come,
and you understand,
if you've been on death's end before,

but if what's more important,
or adequate,
is the music performed,
then we get our ends,

and as the soulless bodies glance down,
as I'm buried in,
there will be a concert,
I'll hear,
six feet underground.

I will,
Just
hear,
Sound.


*R.I.P.

On December 21, 2012
The world was supposed to end
Obviously we are still rolling in motion
And most of us are okay
Fast forward two years
On December 21, 2014
You finally kissed me in the midst of a crowded complex
And I was just thinking about how it was a coincidence that a few years back,
The world was supposed to end
But when you fast forward,
My world had just begun
On December 4th, 2014
I let go of someone else,
So that way I could truly be yours forever
We could finally start off right
I can remember that, clear as day.
We went on and I can remember when you first told me long stories about how your parents went from nothing
To successful
How you held my hand tight
But knew I liked you to hold me a certain way
And kissed me when I least expected it
How you always complimented me on the way I looked
But after awhile
I looked down at my hands
And I noticed the blood dripping down my wrists
And you'd secretly been stabbing me
While you ****** her
I noticed how angry you were with me
And I couldn't stop the sadness
I apologized for you being angry with me
I apologized for you ******* the life out of her
I apologized when I finally broke it off with you after coming home from the hospital
I didn't want you to leave
But I suppose it's better to leave the ones
That make you feel so empty inside
Like they've taken something out of your bones every time
And they won't return it, in the way you won't return the records I bought you.
I can't remember much of what happened that day
I'm good with dates, I swear.
I can name off the day we first kissed, the day of our first date, the first time I met your father.
I can remember your birthday, our anniversary, the first time you took me to that art museum
But I cannot remember the day I let you go
It's.. Like Ive blocked it out of my memory
I thought you'd come back
I thought you'd say,
"Baby, please. Let me fix it."
But you didn't.
And that's all I can say I really remember..
Well that and some of your words
That did more than just bruising my skin
The words you used to cause
Dents
And punctures
And words so sharp it took my entire flesh off the bone
I remember those
Like,
"You say I am selfish, but you are the one wanting to commit suicide."
And I am pretty sure I apologized for that too
Because it was something I always said to keep you from leaving..
That's wrong isn't it?
My apologies became as sweet as honey
They always danced off my tongue
And you were a bee,
Collecting it
Absorbing it
And taking it back home
But instead of putting it to use
You abused me with it
Kept doing the same **** things
I only made up excuses for you
When my friends asked where you were when he passed away
I said I'm sorry
This is something I said later when I was crying over him and sad that there was nothing I could do to stop my grieving.
I apologized
When you couldn't make it to the funeral
My god
You didn't even make it to my own
Because I had been dying inside the whole time
I said I am sorry
The date was March 17, 2015..

There are bells here
Silent bells
They seem so out of place
Surrounded by the immaculate stonework
And accompanied by righteous statutes
Stilled angels

Their silent echoes
Reverberate off of the people
Who stand in perfect mockery
Of the stone figures scattered about the church

All of them here to partake
In an obsolete tradition
Of grief

An unmistakably deathly feeling
Fills the air
However the feeling is foreign to me
And I cannot comprehend
This ceremony of antique sorrow

For the breathing statues Morn
As if their tears were rehearsed
and what I feel is so raw

A silent moment is called for
and as if on cue the bells toll
three times, just three

Silence, sorrow, death,
All marked by
The tolling of the bells

I will be there when you need me
and when you don't
I'll be a dream.
I'm  not the past
not the present
but something in between.
If anything
I'm sorta just a broken gift,
that can love you for the all of it
cuz I just learned forgetting.
You wouldn't believe the luck
that I'm not getting.
My funerals now look like weddings
I don't care about my caring
just a tragic story playing...
so you know I won't be noticed