At cross roads once again
No idea where to go
Lost in space, drowning at sea
But, whatever flows flows

The mighty winds
Used to carry me well.
Now like a leaf from above,
I struggled and fell.

Second star to the right?
But there isn't one star in the sky.
Will I ever find my way back?
There's no other choice but to fly.

the road to hell is paved with good intentions
when do i begin to forgive myself from those i have done wrong
was i a blind youth or am i truly evil
i can only blame myself but i've only followed teen impulses
my heart is not my brain but when do i get to claim separation

can i blame it on my youth or is my youth blamed on me

When I was a child,
Watching a wayward world through a lens of wonder and possibility,
Bound to an unusual captor of bats and gloves,
Reaching towards the rest of my life,
Over the head of the life I was already living,
I fell in love.
Not with a person or an object,
Nothing but a symbol of everlasting youth.
A team,
A place,
A game,
It was baseball.
Not just the game but everything that accompanied it,
A family,
Brothers becoming brothers.
A world,
The smells of trees and rain and concession stand hotdogs,
The sounds of a ball thudding into a catcher’s mitt and cheering fans,
The tastes of early morning Starbucks and corn nuts and bubble gum,
All of it stuck between basepaths,
Sitting on a bench in a dugout,
Spilled on the seats of my father’s car.

All of these little things,
All of the memories,
Just moments passed,
Lost in the depths of my mind,
Taunting me as I wish to return to them.
Although not yet old, I am older,
Reminiscing on the good and the bad of my youth.
I can still remember the veil of paralyzing loneliness,
Pierced by the family found in my brother’s team.
I remember the tears shed as I watched my father devoting his life to that team.
Those bad times were outshined by the good,
Team dinners in faraway towns,
Sunsets over outfield scoreboards,
Driving back to hotels in the dark with the windows down and classic rock blaring.
This is the way that I grew up,
Lonely but free,
Unhappy but secure,
In love with a thing that took so much from me,
Lasting Stockholm Syndrome bleeding from my life as it was to the life that I have.
I have lost this love,
No longer experience the ups and downs that can only be described as the reality of life.
I cannot weep over this lost love,
Cannot wallow,
Knowing that this is how it must be.
I must let go,
Grow up,
Get old,
Move on away from the family I found and the world I discovered,
Life doesn’t slow until it stops,
Barreling towards a hollow canyon,
Disappearing over a cliff to be covered by fistfuls of dirt,
Watered by the tears of loved ones left behind.
I must leave my love to rest before I lay in that hollow canyon.

Why must we grow up?
Grow out of our innocence and naivety, careless inexperience?
Why must we take for granted the memories of our youth?
Where do we retrieve them when our age returns to us and we miss the forgotten beauty of the world through a child’s eyes?
I wish the softness of the summer breeze would return to me,
Find me again in my days of regret,
In the sea of sorrow following me from my youth,
Sending waves crashing over my head.
I am not yet old, not yet wise,
But still, I mourn the loss of days past,
Loss of sweet summer softness,
Of the relentless rain ruining the chances I had of forgiving my father.

I have forgiven him since.
I forgave him like I forgave myself,
Regretfully.
I often miss that swirling storm of emotions I felt,
The loneliness, the worthlessness, the heart sickness.
So young and so filled with pain, balanced only by the Children of the Sun radiating from my chest.
Views of the maple-*******, the leather-launcher, the grenade-catcher,
Smells of earth and freedom,
Sounds of gentle violence, drawn-out intellectualism,
Overwhelming my senses and filling my days.
Those memories will follow me into the reaper’s grasp,
Rest with me in my eternal cradle.
Despite the storm, the pain, the sickness,
I dream of that cradle where the memories, the bitter and the sweet, will come together in the storm,
Meet like lightning and thunder,
And follow me into peace.
I am not yet old, but I long to be,
To once again feel my love and its infinite reach.

You watch time pass by
Seeing your friends getting married, having kids, and owning homes
While you sit in your childhood room cheering them on
As you envy them because you want to be there.

You look around at your childhood room trying to make it feel more you
All you are doing is avoiding the issue at
But you're scared
Scared of stepping out into the world.

You try changing your style from the emo phase to the boho kings/queens
Spending all your money to see what calls your name the most
Questioning everything you wear
You cry looking at the little white dress you're wearing
Wishing it was the dress that was saying the words 'I Do.'

Hoping that the feeling of insecurities leave your body
It doesn't
Not until you are ready to step out into the world
Until then you cry while you wear a little white dress.

my mother shoved words into my mouth
she fed me whenever i cried
and as the obedient kid that i was,
i learned to nibble on every word
and swallowed them as i should.
now that i'm older,
my stomach has ran acid
ーit burns my chest and i would still feel them
foam inside my mouth as if
every word were told just yesterday.
how can i truly love my mother
if she couldn't feed me
when i was hungry for something else?
i cried again with my heart wide open
as my knees wobble in fear
of how exposed i was in front of her.
but this time,
i guess she couldn't hear me enough.
it was silentーshe couldn't feed me anything,
for not a single word left her mouth.
she watched me intently
as i detach the cord from both of our bodies.
     i wasn't the daughter she loved anymore,
     but she was still the mother i loved.

the house i grew up in
festered with a body—a garden perpetually filled with weeds
the rainwater refused to fall
the roof caved in
stricken with a sense of unending
discouragement

i miss the poor girl i used to be
who smiled after she tasted her salty tears.
she tried to seek the positive out of situations.
the chains in the train yard wouldn’t dare shackle to her.
she stayed locked—unwillingly—in a strangulation cage meant for wild animals.
she couldn’t scream or thrash
for the danger she faced was inside her own home
grappling with the concept of his nature
bound into his fibers of being
chasing a reason for such cruelty that was instilled on me

when these songbirds are trying to explain to me
the own reality that confronts me.
like a shark to its ****,
eating so slowly, so monstrously
without a care.
anger is a ghostly emotion—apparently—and i was told that my entire life.
you can’t make mistakes for things you can’t help
or you can’t hurt someone because you didn’t mean to.
you didn’t mean to hurt me, so the stain on my mind doesn’t exist, right?
the pain i have endured, it doesn’t mean a thing.

nights staying up
praying for a difference
praying for deliverance
scared to wake up the next morning
scared the beast would crawl in between the walls
and plant itself into a vase inside my room.
woke up to crashing, banging, screaming, flailing, falling, yelping, sobbing, screeching.
living in an intricate world faced with devastation.

left me alone in empty bedrooms
arms around my kneecaps
clambering about for stability
for refuge
devoid in a void
clumps of hair collapse onto the floor
with a sore scalp and arms
spit on weeds to stir growth in them
no seeds, no roots, no living things
sprouted from the rouge colored fluid

police sirens would go off, thinking they would finally take you away
instead it was brutal beating and
no one came to save me.
the world i felt was icy cold, with icicles plopping down from trees onto the crystallized ground where my tiny feet stood.

the beast would shred the tapestries,
drown the happiness,
banish goodness.
claws as sharp as razor blades—attached to my skin and it wouldn’t free me.

came upon purgatory with tears blamed on allergies,
weariness blamed on tiredness,
fear twisted into nervousness.
do you think the inhabitants believed me when i watched the garden soak up with water?
no, they didn’t.
and i didn’t want to believe either.
the neurons inside my brain painted as façades, shapeless and blurry
for i could not worry if i left my mind in an alleyway
bound to be found one day
by a friend; not isolation, not consternation
but something that could bring forgiveness.

but violence—it’s red and unavoidable—
haunting every cell
like a tornado whooshing along a path
paved with fresh cement and bright bloomed roses
ripping up piles of dirt
flinging it around every corner.
it knew i looked up every night to find Heaven,
gleaming in the blanket of night.
from the gold gates to the strikes of my enemies.

the mind i knew grew cold
the situation was dense, kidnapped in the notion that suffering was forever—in certain circumstances it can be—finding fault in my own soul
instead of in the soil in the battlegrounds of a labyrinth

a corpse unlike any other.
shell of an aging body
built on the foundation of red violent tendencies.
flesh of an unidentifiable creature
alone in its reality
doomed to linger.
for forever.

The apartment is messy again.
A never-ending pile of clean underwear,
stained laundry,
and in-between pieces
toeing the line
between passable and gross.

it's not that it's bad,
it's fine.
it's enough to get by.
like wheat-based cereal
and watery coffee.

I guess this is our life together
jumbled and messy,
with piles of good intentions
and tomorrow projects
but that never quite find
their way
into a proper time
or place.

I look out the open window
for an answer,
a sign,
some kind of assurance
that this time is different
and this place is where
I'm finally supposed to be.

But all I see is grey.
No thunderclaps
or burst of lightening
or enlightenment
come to me.

You blow out
the lit candle
on the coffee table,
its smoke
curling itself
into question marks
that dissipate
as quickly as the rain.

Maybe tomorrow
will hold more answers
or more sunlight
I can use to see
our path forward.

But for now,
we'll go to bed
in crinkled sheets
and warm promises
for the day yet to come.

it's dusty, i swipe grime off my skin
my memories piled up in stacks of
knick-knacks, yellowed notebook pages,
and drawings from when i was twelve
i haven't cleaned my room in a year
too scared, anxious
to touch anything
the fear of breaking my fragile sense of identity
that i've clung to

it's desperate, lonely
sleeping in a dusty room

i wipe the sweat from my forehead
cobwebs weave through my strands
clinging in clumps as i
rummage through my belongings

i hadn't seen these things in a while
remnants of when i was
happier, even though i said i wasn't

i'm a year older again
and soon i will be years and years older
and i will leave this room behind

for now,
as i stay for
a little bit longer
let me revert back into
the child i was.