I wonder how deep I can bury myself
Before my breath begins to thin
I’ve been looking for ways
To shirk my skin
At the bottom of this pit

Then I wonder if I can exist
Just like this
Every time I hear my name
My gut creates a crooked twist

So I wonder who will still be here
When my voice corrodes like tin
In some watery, choked collision
Of the body that I’m in

There’s a secret in heaven
In the vines weaved through the overcast
Of a leafy canopy
Someone sleeps in the gathering
Of rain puddles and
Drips like the liquid
In an IV
They say,
Someday
We will be free
From our lost ideals
And speak the last words
We can muster
Someday
We will hear them floating in the
Particles of the wind
And become the stories
That the earth
Tells to the stars

My lover goes traveling with a backpack of things
Her eyes are always on the distance
She is a wanderer at heart and a sentimental hoarder
I wonder how she walks invisible and still takes up the room
But she doesn’t wonder at all
When she leaves she cleans up after herself like it’s the scene of a crime
Sometimes I think I don’t know her
And I am just the things she carries
When she leaves she will clean up after herself
And there will be nothing left of me to see

To my old love
I know it’s hard
Do you get tired of carrying
The weight of my poetry
On your shoulders
Until I have something better
To worry about?

It’s the weight of the world
And nothing at all
Really matters

To my friends
I really feel like
I’m starting to disappoint you
And then
It starts to feel like
You are too

It’s the weight of the world
And nothing at all
Really matters

To my parents
I know you’re afraid;
I am too
But I’m really
Much more tired
Of running

It’s the weight of the world
And nothing at all
Really matters

To self-help
To patience
To glasses of water
To deep breaths
And better drugs

I promise,

It’s the weight of the world
And nothing at all
Really matters

There is a god at the bottom of the swimming pool. Whirring, he wakes me from my sleep. He scuttles like a crab across vinyl. Some nights, I stay up to listen to the song he scratches into the tile.

It’s a somber sound, settling unearthily on concrete. It wasn’t meant to be enjoyed, I know. But I do.

I close my eyes and imagine it’s the sound of the earth turning on its axis. I imagine it’s the sound of time moving, year after year. It turns and turns and I follow suit, casting shadows behind me.

I imagine the god is lonely and far away from home. I imagine he is just as lost as we are, piecing together maps from soggy, fallen leaves and clumps of hair from the filter.

He cried himself into his containment. He misstepped once and fell into this hole. I hope he curses himself for being created without wings and arms and hands that could climb out of this.

I hope he catches his reflection in bubbles every now and then, and stops to consider how his face grew so hard.

He cries out and causes waves to rise and fall, splashes around, drags the moon close and pushes it away.

I hope he knows he can do anything, believes he can do anything, except help himself.

Each morning, I clean the pool. I dissect his well-laid plans with a skimmer and make his world clear and beautiful again. All for him, of course.

I imagine he is building character, struggling in a world that was not meant for him to live in, a world meant for someone else to enjoy. We built him in our image, to do the job we don’t want to do.

I hope he wonders at the unprompted responsibility and grows frustrated each time I insist that I would not give him a challenge he couldn’t overcome. I hope he’s beginning to learn.

There is a god at the bottom of the swimming pool, learning how to grow old and tired of swimming.

I carried you with me
All this time
I held your hand with
Weathered fingers
All clammy skin
And cool composure
I carried you with me
And last night
When you sat on my chest
Weighing down my breath again
I imagined that you were an anchor
But
You are only as stable
As my patience
You are airy and insignificant
I give you matter so you can breathe
And you
Give me purpose

I have this way of waking up
I fill my senses with the scent of spring time
I wonder if, left alone for a while,
I will begin to grow flowers from my skin
And if they will be as beautiful as my memory is
I listen to daybreak’s sweet delusions
Blurred in a rose-colored candor
And cultivated in a cooling soil

I open my eyes

It is not springtime
It never will be, again
I rise from my grave and I walk
Phantom petals falling in my wake

Speaking over coffee
Shooting at the breeze
I smiled at her softly
And loved her more than me

Reflecting back on time with you
As difficult as it seems
It’s so hard, my love, I never knew
Anything as easy

I set down with settled fingers
A cup of clouded dreams
That tastes like fresh carnation
In simmered down caffeine

Tell me all your stories
Sing me songs to sleep
For a moment, I’ll taste the confidence
That you could love me more than me

Curious little hoarder
With stacks of bottle caps
Sitting in my old kitchen drawer
Forgotten in the past

There’s a spotless old report card
And a smoothed-out try-out number
And a dulled-down, hidden razor blade
Buried in the clutter

Here’s my first acceptance letter
Tie-dyed with coffee stains
And a random transit ticket–
I don’t remember missing that train

And seven bottle caps
From seven empty bottles
Downed to allow myself to picture
The life that I’d once modeled

I sip from stolen promises
It tastes like alcohol
Beside some crumpled poems
My anti-adderall

Why did I keep you?
What purpose do you seek?
Or do you just exist to be there?
Do you just waste time like me?

God, I really wanted to be something
When I didn’t want to be at all
I found the greatest height
Looking for the fall

I really made a mess of this
As I looked into your eyes
You said, "Bury me in fiction
Or give me truth I can't deny"

The truth is all I had was me
And a thousand little lies
I almost wish I told a few
Before you said goodbye

I grow more tired than you,
who's always running
And loves life's sudden dips

And you'll grow tired too
Of waiting
For me to jump this rift

There is a place for us
Where the grass is always green
I chose to take your hand and walk with you
inside this dream

Oh, how the calamity of our ending
Caressed my frozen cheek
As we tried to deny the truths
inside the depths of our beliefs

Heal the wounds torn from the wreckage
Upon this calloused stone
Card through the callings of an animal
That pulls the skin from bone

Show me the truth, that I do love you
But sometimes love is not enough
And for everything I want for you
It may not even be so much

So if we were never meant to be
It's fine, if I must set you free,
If the cold is setting in,
Then wait a moment here with me

There is a place for us
Where the grass is always green
And my love stays here, eternal,
Inside a moment's infinity

You may have nothing but kind words
But I
Still shudder away at the intrusive suspicion
That I must study your cadence
For any inflection
To find a truth
That caters to
My worst imagination

Let's play little word games
If honesty's so obscene
You can pierce a soul with icy prose
And still claim your hands are clean

Well I've created monsters
More harsh than your deceit
Forget the cold, my pen will bring
Words burning at your feet

So let's play little word games
I know that you know how
I've seen the disasters spilt
From tremors in your mouth

If it's "only words", then fine,
Let's smoke each other out
You say that you want sparks,
I'll be the fire in your house

Giving you my love was easier
When I had love to give
Now I'm echoing the sentiments
Of moments long since lived

And I promised you the moon
I know that I did
But lately the stars have been so blinding
And I simply just exist

Among the shadows that befell us
On a night more dark than this
You point out a shooting star
It must have been one that I missed

I must have begun writing at some point
But by now, I’ve lost track of my own wayward thoughts
And I’m starting to lose the point of my words
As my pencil’s dulls down
Like it knows that we are simply
Speeding up time
And dragging it out
With the lead on the paper
And maybe a period would be good here
So even if I can’t continue,
“Should I end it now?”
“Should I end it now?”
I ask but I
Find myself mesmerized
Or desperate
At the thought that I might find what I’m looking for
Somewhere in these scribbles–
That if I carry on,
These lines will make a picture
And tell me what to do–
That all of this will mean something
And not just augment the confusion
In every passing line,
I play editor in my mind,
And to avoid that final point,
I place some commas in my life

With my head in the clouds
I promised myself no more
All the dreams that once embraced me
Were lost in this greyscale haze
Of memories of the dark days
Diminished by the light
Like a reel of film
Exposed and muted
And I–
Might let myself fall in this

              I'm not so good at writing happy thoughts
              The unfamiliarity paints a stranger in my mind
              That feels so strangely like home

              But you hold out your hand to me
              And I think I can see it–
              The kaleidoscope of colors
              That burns from within

                            It's chaos, confusion and carelessly crude
                            The fear and excitement's a belligerent blue
                            Blood red wreaks havoc on knotted up seams
                            To break through the barriers I've built up for me

                            It heals all the wounds with a lilac calm
                            It assembles a mural on ivory walls
                            It murmurs a secret in marigold scrawl
                            Of the colors you discover inside of the fall

                                          You smile and I melt in a rose-gold twist
                                          And I think I–
                                                        Might let myself fall in this

I told you that I'd always love you
In the last text that I sent
That I was grateful and I hide
All the ways I circumvent

So you would think I've got less poison
Than my memories of you
It's so unfair I held you close
And now you're all I want to lose

Running through my veins
Running through my veins
I'll always love you, darling
I hope you feel this all the same

I'll cause all the breaths you bate
Every time you hear my name
I'll always love you, but...
I hope you suffer all the same