i just wish
that you
would seek
the same comfort
that i seek in you

I’ve been collecting you  
gathering up all your inkbled trinkets  
as if they were mine to collect  
as if you were whispering to me again  
the secrets of your blue-green skies  
like electric pillowtalk  
  
my soul slips like broken  
sand shards  
back  
into you  
into hazy eyed illuminations  
heartbeats rhythming through  
our pressed palms  
and you almost feel real  
  
until my eyes unsquint  
until all your splayed treasure  
has been treasured and  
I am love-lost all over

depression feels like heartbreak at sixteen  
perhaps that’s why I always think of you  
when that unyielding squeeze starts to roll  
around my stomach like a rotting stone  

it's strange to think that of all my stories  
yours is the one that always wants to be read  
we were just sketches and outlines and isn’t  
time supposed to be the great physician

it seems timing is everything Once Love and  
ours was always perfect in the worst way  
just right to wedge you between my newborn
ribs like a thistle that sticks to my bones  
  
so I chase you like salvation  
knowing you have none to give  
and I’m always running  
in dreams

did I love you first, or best or most  
only the wind knows  
  
can I track love’s course, measure  
its comings and goings in  
charts and pin marks or  
  
turn back my rotations to weigh  
all my heart’s prized indiscretions  
as if my balances weren't  
strewn with kissed fingerprints  

all I really know is that in  
those hazy dream days  
my answer was yes-  
the best youth knew how  

and when the wind tastes  
like summer honey sweat  
I still miss you

you always made it look easy  
to pry back your corners,  
carve out a piece of your heart  
and transform it into soulsong  
Your words and rhymes laying perfectly over your intentions  

snapshots of your soul  
painted in love and pain and blood,  
whispers in your synonyms and syllables.  
I saw your soul laid bare, and in my heart it was just for me  
each of your tomes a secret glimpse to savor  
so brash to see myself in some  
and cowardly to hope absent from others  

so I wrote.  
stumbling after your eloquence,  
fumbling and unpracticed  
without any of your skill or precision,  
clawing at myself for something  
I could offer, to speak to you  
in your own language  
as if some small piece of you still belonged to me  

which makes you my muse  
of a sort I suppose  
For truly every time that I wrote  
I wrote for you.  
not for you, but to you  
to read me and know me  
my heart pressed between the pages of a book  

and we communed  
as close as 1’s and 0’s would permit  
through lines on a screen  
never able to reach past our fingertips  
a call and response  
in codes and comment boxes.  
A secret conversation between us,  
that not even we spoke about  
until we didn’t speak at all  
but I can still find you in the lines  
and imagine you are talking to me

At the water's edge,
a discarded candy wrapper—
kiting upwards—flitting, flittering,
rising, rising,
falling, falling—
before dancing with the waves.

Waves lap their lullaby
along the shore,
then slip
back to the sea.
The shoreline breathing
with each wave's retreat,
this slow pulse
of land and sea.

In the distance
an orange sun melts—bleeding fire
into a waiting blue.
Minnows skip through the shallows—
sun and shade silvering the fish
in flashes.

A heron calls once.
Then silence,
as a lighthouse's white pulse
traces the rocky shore.

The candy wrapper brushes
against a figure,
a shape,
a shadow,
before floating away.

The figure turning—slowly, barely—
cradled in the rhythm of waves.
Gently pulled by the current,
softly pushed by the wind.

A seagull's feather falls—on pale skin.
Resting a moment.
Before cool water
washes it away.

Everything drifts…
bobbing,
bobbing,
slowly,
slowly,
out to the ocean.

And so it drifts—
this body,
this drowned man,
traveling slowly
to his new home.

What is it like to be a prophet?
To bleed visions the world calls madness,
to carry the storm in your lungs
and still be asked to speak sweetly.

I ran.
Through temples, through time, through the mouths of sleeping gods.
I ran, hoping to outrun the fire,
only to find my shadow already waiting-
etched into every horizon by hands not my own.

The gods marked me with knowing,
then stripped me of the right to be believed.
They call it a gift.
But it is a wound that sings.

Let the sky tremble at my silence now.
Let the earth remember what it means
to be cursed with truth.