The hour I knew loved you
Was not in late morning when you pulled a chair up for me.
It was not in mid afternoon when you brushed my hair out of my eyes.
It was not before sunset when you say goodbye and pulled away.
It was not at 3 am when you whispered “I love you” as I fell asleep.
No, it was not during any of these.

The hour I knew loved you
The sky was on fire.
The sky bled of the secrets you had so desperately crammed into your veins.
The sun tore through the clouds--
Blazes of orange, red, pink, purple, yellow streaked across the horizon.
Your desire was written in the unfathomable distance from where I stood.

The hour I knew loved you
The world was in a flood.
A torrent of rain pounded against my frail windows begging to be let in,
“Hear my story. Hear my story.”
They reverberated through the halls of my lonely house.
It was frightening and dangerous and yet the most beautiful sound my ears had ever heard.

The hour I knew loved you
The earth broke open.
A great divide tore between from where I stood and where you longed for me to be.
The dark abyss contained the great monsters of time,
Clawing out to drag another victim to his grave.
My bones shook and my body ached as I stretched myself across the gap.

The hour I knew loved you
My heart broke into two.
I broke my ribs to make room for your beating heart of loss and love.
I straightened my spine to carry your burdens;
I crushed what little I had of myself to give you a place to stay.
& what a great privilege it was to have you take refuge in this broken body of mine.

You will be my greatest heartbreak.
You will be the reason why I hide from the rain
Why I sleep early on school nights
Why I avoid numbers.

I'll never look at stars the same
Since you'll be looking at the same ones just a block away.
This school
With its halls
     Lockers
          Desk
               And doors
Will never be my second home
Because my second home will always be you.
This hill-
This sweet welcoming hill-
Will just be a reminder of how far apart we really are.

But the worst part
The worst part
Will be reaching for another book,
A story that I had loved
A story that you had loved
A story that you will never read.
You will always be there
Etched
Woven
Embroidered
Between the lines of each turning page.
You are the boy next door,
The unexpected ally,
The hero to the story.
You are the twist and turn of events,
The cliff hanger,
The conflict,
The resolution.
You are the emotion held between the quotation marks,
The cliche phrases,
The words that break the reader's heart (just like mine).

You will be my greatest heartbreak
But also my favorite.
Because at least for a moment
You held my heart in palms of your hands.

Feeling fail.
A shallow discontentment
only brought about
by the success of others.
Challenges conspire.
Everywhere I look
beauty and joy
laughing
mockingly.
My poor body,
weak and restless,
struggling to breathe
under the pressure.
Water surrounds me,
pounding in my ears,
and it is done.

Outside in a clearing, mere feet beyond the treeline. The bonfire crackles and spits, punctuating conversations fueled by cheap ***** and raging hormones. The stars are bright in the clear country sky. The scent of roasting wood mingles with freshly blooming trees. Spring is finally here.
Tuesday's Gone begins to play. Fitting, seeing as the evenings events seem to be winding down.I gaze out over the scattered clusters of classmates, some familiar, others, un. That's when I see you, sitting away from the group, staring up at the stars.
Your ginger blossom locks fall in folds around your collar. The burning, emerald eyes set deep in your tiny, freckled face widen as a shooting star passes overhead. The moons glow reflects faintly off of your snow white skin.
I rise from the group and move to sit next to you on the log by the riverside. I don't say anything. I simply sit beside you, and stare at the stars above, millions of miles away.

she hates me.
she doesn't know me.
she took him away.

her eyes are brown but they're tinted green with the scales of the monster that lurks beneath.

her fingernails are short but they grow sharp into claws and take him away from me because of the green monster that lurks in her fingertips.

her words are sweet but they cut me with the teeth of the green scaled monster that inhabits her tongue.

and he lets her.
and he lets her.
and he lets her.

This is what I'm a part of
High school band
Very different from middle school band
All mature teens (most of us)
Coming together and making the most amazing thing in the world

We make love and hate
We make peace and war
We make red and white and yellow and green an blue and purple
We make tears and smiles
We make laughs and screams
We make.

We are a band.
We make music.

i thought.

you tasted like lust and you smelt like wintergreen and your hands were feathers and tickled my skin.


i know.

you tasted like skoal.
you smelt like smoke.
your hands felt like regret.