you will die this way.

trying to handle all of this mess,
trying to keep it all even though it is too heavy to hold.

it will seep into your soul
until it becomes too much to deal with.

it will bleed
and smear red onto the walls.

and you try to clean but
really you are just pushing it
further into the crevasses.

and you try to organise
but really you are just moving things around.
moving them into their new graves, to gather dust and to rot.

and even though you have hidden it,
it is still there,
the decay is still happening.

the mess it still
buried and decomposing
behind a curtain.

you need to cull, and burn.
throw out and throw up all of the things you are carrying.
rid yourself of the weight you hold so tightly onto.

let it go,
set it aflame,
laugh at its ashes as they settle into the fabric of the curtain.

you don’t deserve to be confined to a life
carrying it all.

it is not your job to carry the universe,
you are not atlas,
you can put it down.

i promise the world will not end.

Love was when she fought me
and we ended it by
hugging each other tightly.

If you touch me
Do it gently
If you hug me
Do it tightly
If you leave me
Do it quickly
If you stay with me
Do it forever.

This terribleness. The blur of traffic lights and puddles paints Los Angeles on my face at night. It's so hard to know who will doze in my blind spots. Sunflower seeds and ******* lining the carpet. I sat on the front porch for five hours gutting the wolves from my appendices. Usually the headaches go away with the squashing of the lights. Fluorescents are the worst, halogens second, and 60-watt 120-volt light bulb the bane of my existence. I look at my phone but I cannot summon a quirky 120 character quip. I need excedrin but all I have to grape flavored children's aspirin. I should have asked for the water. How many unfinished glasses of water have I left around this world?
     Maybe Bruce and I will squash after work. I can hear his weekly catalog of two night stands with those married transient women who drive from Santa B. I hate golf, I could have made carried a career in this resentment. Maybe rolling down the window will alleviate some of this pressure. Maybe it's barometric pressure, The Baby is here in time to drag the houses out to sea. It feels like Michelangelo is carving The David in my head and it's the chiseling I've never wanted. It's Tuesday and the drugs were horrible. They killed five of them today. We wrapped their heads in blankets from the Thrifty, and had to have the interns find clothes that would fit for the Christian caskets. Two days until Giving Thanks Day.
     I am wrapped in copper and stuck in amber. I am acquitted by nonsense and stipulation, sick with nausea and pushing my forehead into the steering wheel. This is all terrible. The lying I've never told myself. The people that don't even know it's lying. Her and I always seem to escape with our happiness and pleasure in tow. The odds are slim, but our clothes have never fit too tightly.

I wish I could ask you to stay,
but that wouldn't be fair to you anymore.
So instead,
I'll ask you to hold me closely
and tightly to your heart,
and to guide me the entire way.
So that in the end,
we may be together again.