one, he has rosy red cheeks and doesn't
speak yet, he is too shy but his mother loves
him and his father already has dreams of a
baseball player in mind
three, his soft brown curls are becoming uncontrollable
and his aunts coddle him and sing praises about
his long eyelashes and he speaks with a stutter that his
mom thinks is adorable
five, he has a big birthday celebration and his father
buys him a puppy and the neighbors come over and all
of a sudden he is best friends with a boy named andy
who likes to play with red toy trucks and loves to watch sports
seven, his two front teeth have fallen out and he thinks
he looks awfully strange and his older sister makes fun
of him for it but it's okay because andy has a little
sister, she is six, and she thinks he looks perfect
ten, he is going to middle school and his father is already
practicing with him because he wants to join the baseball
team (he doesn't, not really, but his father wants him to so
he does it)
twelve, andy is the most popular boy at school and he still
hasn't made the baseball team and everyone makes
fun of him for it, but it's okay because andy's little sister
isn't looking so little anymore and she says he's better than
any boy at that school
14, high school has just started and he still has that slight
lisp from when he was younger but that's fine, he doesn't
talk to any one that much except her, hannah, who isn't just
andy's little sister to him anymore
15, he's in love with hannah and he doesn't think there's
anything more beautiful than her ballet routines and the
way she shakes her hips ever so slightly and everything in his
life is a mess because he's failing science and his older sister
comes home drunk every night and his father has started coming
to his room at night and he doesn't know what to do about
it but it's okay because he has her to make everything
better, his miracle was her
16, he finds out that she doesn't think she's as perfect as
he does and she complains about how ugly she is
and no amount of light kisses to her cheek make up for it
16, he sees the scars on her thighs one day and he asks
her what it means because he refuses to believe she would
do this and he beats up andy because he knew the entire
time and didn't care
16, he finally tells his mother about his father coming to
his room at night and she cries for her husband and her son,
for both seem dead now
16, hannah goes to therapy and she's finally getting better,
he thinks she's finally getting better
16, she's not
16, he attends his first funeral two months later, the girl he loves
being buried six feet underground and her brother isn't there,
he's at a party getting drunk and trying to forget her but he won't
16, he thinks about following in her footsteps
16, he tries
16, he can't
17, he does. he finds the rope his father used
when they would go climbing together and he wrapped
it around his neck and lit himself on fire, but no matter
how many times he screamed, it didn't matter because his mother
was in connecticut, knitting with her friends, and andy was
smoking and his older sister was at college and in the
end no one cared for the boy interrupted for he
was walking on an unfinished bridge his entire life and he was
bound to end up six feet under eventually,
all the good things in life were
(h.l.)

you still sleep with the same blanket you had
when you were five and sometimes when you get
scared of thunder you walk into your closet
and cry and i know because i stayed up all night
trying to find a way for you to close your eyes
and sleep
.
you smile at the corners of your cheeks
i never thought dimples meant that much to me
until i met you and i don't know if you can
ever understand that the butterflies will never leave
as long as you hold my hand and i'm afraid of the
dark and the way people are and
i'm still finding it hard to talk to strangers but
with you by my side it's not as complicated as it usually would be
.
you're the only boy i know who wears bandannas
and hates the smell of smoke and i'm still
trying to figure out if we're meant to be but i'm learning
that finding that out is not as important as it seems
because you still have to count 10 sheep before
you sleep and your eyes travel everywhere before
they close at night and i know because i stay up all night
with you darling and there's no other place
i'd rather be

(h.l.)

there was a storm today, it was full of thunder
and lightning, it reminded me of the way you smoked
cigarettes because even though i shook every time
the lightning struck, i couldn't look away
//
i think i'm supposed to reminisce about
you being gone, i'm supposed to cry and shake
and lose my will for living because you were my
miracle, the one good thing in my life that was
supposed to make me special and now you
are gone but instead i just stare at the
windows covered with rain and wonder if the
sky is crying because the earth orbits the moon
and not the other way around, maybe the earth
is sobbing because it knows that it
is no longer special for it was reminded today that
it is only another planet in orbit
//
it was pouring rain today, it reminded me
of you, hopefully wherever you are it is raining
and you can imagine the earth shaking and the
clouds sobbing so that you can see what you've done
to me and shake your head and try to come up with
another excuse
(h.l.)