I must have been at least eight years old
when I started playing doctor in my garage,
using long gardening tools as skeletons
and drawing scattered veins with colored
pencils on sketches of the human brain.
I used to set up little name tags on the floorboards.
My parents had a plastic bin full of sticks
to help the plants grow straight that I used
as pointers, attacking each ventricle
of this made up heart with detail. I'd examine
my imaginary person and tell the entire
classroom just how to fix them up right.

Now, I'm twenty one and I must have tried
to fix you up at least ten different times.
I molded you with my hands like soil,
nurturing you with soft kisses and coffee
in the mornings. I'd even try to pull your nightmares
out from the roots, tie up the frayed ends,
and throw them into the compost. I used
my own spine like those pointers to help you
grow up straight, grow up different than all
the memories you'd blurt out like bubbles
when trying to breathe underwater. Memories
like falling asleep accidentally on the bus
just to be awoken by the driver back at the station,
the way that pity candy bar must have tasted
as you waited in a nasty plastic seat
for your mom who wasn't even worrying.
I tried to dissect you from the outside in.
Read your body like it was directions, but
I'm still just a kid in a too big overalls
playing doctor out in my garage.

You are bigger than the pretend desks
with the broken pencils inside. You are more
fragile than the yarn that I would loop
around my neck like a fake teacher's badge.
You have way too many pieces for me to count
on a skeleton, but if you let me I will try
to memorize them all, label them
with sidewalk chalk, put them together
again with Elmer's glue. If you let me,
I will let you slip on my nostalgia
like a patient's gown, let you relive
a tiny moment of the childhood that was stolen
even if it's just for a little while, even
if it's just pretend.

the fingertips hurt
the best kind of pain
beautiful music in my ears
the guitar strings vibrate

word come wobbling out of my mouth
sometimes they make sense
and sometimes they do not
sometimes they're nonsense

feelings have no reason
just wants to be expressed
comes and goes with the seasons
makes me feel both sad and blessed

her heart is sweaty,
skin smells of anxiety
from all the lies she told
the boy that killed himself
with words hanging in his
brain.

It was the high water
brought her out.
Her and half the town,
standing, awed
by the rush and surge.
Though the rain had stopped,
the sky was heavy with it
Grey on grey
on swirling grey,
but she -

Caught unawares by the moment,
she had joined the crowd
in a dressing gown
the pink of parted lips.
A slight figure,
bare legs slender
to the dark wet ground.
She dazzled accidentally,
black hair careless
over slim shoulders,
arms wrapped round herself
against the cold

A vision
of such sudden vulnerability
it would lay a strong man low.

Across the street
I saw an old man gazing,
the flood forgotten
in the glare of her.
Flat cap
wax jacket
paused mid-step,
she with her back to him,
oblivious.

I averted my eyes,
not wishing to know
if his thoughts were fatherly
or something else.

The river rose
and gorged itself
and there was nothing
we could do.

I am so thankful for each of you, for each of you have inspired me.
I feel your pain, I see your struggles yet you still do not given up.
On this Life, nor on the one that has created you and everyone else.
You bless me with the strength of perseverance that you have.
So I want to thank you for being who you are an overcomer.
I know that life is tough , but its the things that we go through.
Then overcome that shall bless us, because then we help others.
Though our Savior, he sends people to us to help them as well.
Showing them his handiwork which is us my friends, family.