My tears would soak my face,
eyes red from the tiny veins busting inside from strain
my laugh was the loudest, my love was all in
my heart was running a never ending race
I felt a constant weight lay on my chest and my stomach never felt full
A deep emptiness engulfed me, a longing for life like I could taste it if I wanted to
chances waiting every hour, every minute things could change
goals upon goals and dreams upon dreams
I could take on the world, the doubt of others only a motivator to my next step
a powerhouse of life, love, movement and strength I was
a butterfly in the sky just out of reach
I really felt like I could fly back then
I felt guided by my spirit,
Like Frodo I had a secret weapon in my pocket to find the light, even in the darkest of places, unafraid to use it when all hope was gone
I was sassy, sarcastic and quick
always on the ready to jump, scream, laugh smile or run
It felt like me against the world and I was on the greatest team
I had a knowing that I was not going to let myself down, I would not be like them
I would be different

but I wasn’t
all the poems that I wrote, all the feelings that I felt, all the love I poured out, all the dreams I wasted and achieved, all the trying, kicking, screaming, joy, sorrow and peace, all of it
and yet I still became the one thing I spent so much time disowning
I still became me

Did I **** myself for you
Just to lose you once again
Did I become a different person
Once I pushed you to the edge

This was not what I expected
When I told you I was spent
When I gave you everything I had
To where there was nothing even left

You abandoned all I was
But this isn't what I meant
When I whispered in your ears
To ask if this was the end

If there was something I could do
Some way to make amends
Because you were my everything
And I loved you as my friend

I mean

When the puzzle pieces fell everywhere
We would pick them up again
Place them all back together
Until we reached the very end

We pushed through the hardest times
Just so that we could get ahead
When we were fighting our depression
We'd be supportive amidst our distress

We played all our weird retro games
Just to see how far we'd get
Maybe beat our latest score
And then do our little dance

We raced to see who was faster
Until we'd both run out of breath
We'd make all these little promises
For things that hadn't even happened yet

But as time went on
We began to forget
Who we were and what made us fall in love

In the first place.

I’m rocking back and forth against the hull of my loneliness,
Stuck in knowing it’s goodbye
But not being able to say I love you
or I’m sorry.
I’m crying with joy and longing as I lie in the love and conversation around me,
Wishing it were my own.
I’ve been high so long my heart rate stopped going down with the sun.
Going over it all all over and over all the time.
I feel like a child again, terrified by the world, the dark, the wind.
I’m breaking down in the line at the gas station.
Looking out the glass wall at a Lovecraftian highway,
Flickering florescent lights like the ones from The Exorcist.
On my way to a cavernous husk of a family dinner,
Most of them gone now.
Just me, my mother, and my widowed, bereaved, great aunt.
There’s a stupid old cardboard cutout of a mascot next to me grinning too widely, holding up its product.
I scream and tear it’s head off it’s body
In my mind.
I have work on Monday.
This is life.

You have traveled thousands of miles
From East to West

Resting upon times
Blindly heading toward the future
The times you've taken those fives
It'll bloom even brighter

Now you can run as far as you want
Till you lose your breath;
but not your pace
Fear not, you have paved your own way then

The future is gonna be okay;
and I'll still be here to stay
Till you have reached your destination

Scalding my palm
On her rosy skin.
We are young, with a love that's warm
In it's infancy; honest, open, and giving.
I burn for her,
A wildfire of desire
With no forests' end.

I yearn to be the
One she does, when
She learns to love again.

She is now all elbows and bird limbs
Eating her ever smaller
Hearing her cry in the night ****** nails on a chalk board
I want to hold her help her
Be the rescue swimmer in her ocean of tears
Holding for I am soft
Her daughter no fine specimen
A coward
A softy
Not once did she hold me
In seventh grade when I had my first kiss and he broke up with me for the girl with blonde hair and bangs
She said I was just too young
In eighth grade I fell in lust with a high school boy for the first time and ended it when I got bored but not before I gave him what i thought symbolized love.
I didn't tell her
In 9th grade I fell in love with a boy that would never be able to love me the way I wanted him to. But I stayed  for four years until I couldn't find any more of myself to break off and give to him.
She told me I would get over it.
I have a mother who the world made cold
And she had a daughter that felt too much
who she taught feeling was a waste of time

Attic lily,
Crafted from Michelangelo's  hands,
a gem eyes fumble to adore.
Shapes, lines, curves perfectly placed on her body to sing harmonies that echo perfect anatomy

Attic lily,
a dazzling dream,
but her soul hugs a dead sun.
She's a sculpture of fair marble
built with a jungle of thin strings to fill her entirety, like a cat's cradle adorned with twines of roses to mimic completion.

Naive,
she thought losing a few petals for the happiness of others was kind
A rose for him, a rose for her...

Selfless,
she is all but a mirror,
for her smile has always been a reflection of others.

Hypocrite,
she wears a face with printed traces of happinesses to shadow the gloom breeding under her own.

Attic lily,
strong built independent woman
but secretly prizes to be caressed in hands with a feeble touch,
...to be pursued with a genuine smile
..to be treated worth more than an art piece in a gallery that eyes dart on and forget about it, the second they walk past.
to be checked when her soil dries out.
Attic lily, she is,
for no one notices her unless they need something from the attic.

As a child, the 80 acres seemed like the whole world, with its ponds and streams and sunlit meadows.
It looked like Eden to my young eyes.
I chased the lambs and dragonflies, caught tortoises and toads.
The banks of the streams looked like cliffs to me, as I watched the suspended shadows of the bluegill in the water below.

With July's on broil, I found shade beneath a black locust tree, and tried to figure out, how I could use the thorns as fish hooks, to catch dinner for the night.
Evening set the sky on fire and the clouds were all a blaze.
Passion found me early, so much land, and nothing but time.

Then dusk turned gently into night and the summer Moon looked sad, like a giant porch light left on, for a lover that's never coming home.
As I lay in bed the cicadas buzz tucked me in, and from the pond came to bullfrog sad song, and I knew he was lonely like me.

The under shell of
the tortoise looked
like a sunset.
Blasts of color:
orange, maroon, burnt sienna.
I caught them in
the garden at
sunrise, eating a
tomato or chewing into
a head of lettuce.
They always looked so
serious.

I was just a
sunburnt boy, with
cutoff jeans and a
straw hat.
I caught toads too.
But when they peed on me,
I let them go.
I loved that land.
Ponds and streams,
fishing and climbing trees.
oh,
sweet, green
youth.