A friend asked me
how to be a writer.
I wanted to say,
lock yourself in a room,
scream until you have
a poem and no voice.
Open your veins and bleed
until you know that your bones
are pure words and sorrow.
Act as if you slit your own throat
and all you can bleed
are your own regrets
and all of the darkness
you boxed up for inspiration.
Write your mom a letter,
tell her you're leaving
and you won't be back for awhile
Because being a writer is traveling
through all seven layers of Hell
and denying anything is wrong.
Forget loving yourself
when all you have is a pen and paper
fused to your wrist
and Jesus is tapping at your skull
saying turn back now.
Warn the neighbors that if they smell burning
It's just your soul
clawing at the front door trying to get in.
Learn how to be alone.
Learn how to lose everything you have
in order to feel release,
learn how to only feel deceased
from now on.
A friend asked me
how to be a writer.
All I said was
don't

I guess I’ll never understand
      Why you cry yourself to sleep

Why you look in the mirror
      To see one missing piece

What must I do to help you
      Sleep sound
            When I’m not around...

You are complex, hard to read

But,

You are

perfect

to me.

You’ve spent your life afraid
that you would never be enough,
or that you would be too much,
but Darling, my love,
you are just right for me.
Balance, perfection, completion,
connection.
We were made to fit into each others missing pieces.

if I could replace all the
words in every book
with your name
I would,

but no amount of words on a page
could ever compare to what your heavenly
father calls you:

His daughter.
His most prized possession.
The one who took the nails
so that you may live.

so dry your tears
and dance with Him.
for He dances beside you even
on your darkest nights.

Why is it that you
Only appreciate them
After they are gone?

You,
Are my brother.
You,
Are my sister.

You are my tribe,
My people,
My Family.

To see the day,
Witnessing the ways we hate each other,
Thrusts a knife through my heart, and out the other side.

The weight of the world falls upon us when we see the loss of our brothers, our sisters,
Born of the same blood,
As you, and I.

I am not scared,
I am sad,
I am disappointed to see the ways,
The walls we build that separate us from the other.

There is no other,
Only Us.

You,
Are my brother.
You,
Are my sister.
You are all my family,
And my Blood.

To see the blood spilled for the sake of nothing,
Forsaken are we to each other.

Come together,
You and I.
Come, my sister,
Come, my brother.

We shall stand,
Hand in hand.
until the day we fly.

~Robert van Lingen