I glare at it
During last period,
Jumping too high
But not high enough
To reach the swinging rope.

I'm in history,
And some glazed-over teacher
Is pointing at the
Chalkboard which has
Tiny scratches that look like words
Scribbled all over.

But I don't look at my notes,
Because my neck is craning
Too far back
To look at the rope
That is
My two and a half hours of freedom.

A single note is released into the halls
And the students chace it
And I leap into the air
Because the rope
Is reachable
And I grab it.

I begin to climb.

I sit by you on the
Dirt-dusted tile floor
Outside the gym
And we work on algebra
Or english if it's a good day.

And don't get me wrong,
I hate the familiar stench of homework
As much as
The next
Hunchbacked highschooler.
The rope stings my hands
While I climb.
You numb the burn.

But I have practice
And the rope is easy to climb
And I reach the top
In two and a half hours
And you get into
The yellow sardine can
That goes to your neighborhood.

And all of my muscles ache when you go.

I don't know the world just seems to be spinning to fast
Losing touch as time lose sense of future present or past
A child stood before a mirror filled with aspiration
A highschooler laid in bed his head filled by frustration
As he watches years of studying steadily fall apart
Trying to piece it together with nowhere to stary
An adult now looking back through the passage of time
struggling to find the answer to "Were those dreams mine?"

He cut his hair, 21,
because at 13, he thought
it would be the end of the world to
don a skinhead. In the end, though,
his scalp looked okay.
It tickled his palm, touching it.
It felt like a baptism
to have been wrong.

/

Books with no pictures started
appealing to him, 14, when he read
about a highschooler who played tennis,
and a fellow highschooler who attempted suicide
because they got to him, stunned him.
This book was lost one day,
and it felt like the world ended.
A language was embedded there that
seemed to belong to him exclusively.
But it was time for it to be somebody else’s.
Someone needed to own it. Then lose it, too.
It needed passing-around, so that it could evolve.
It might return someday, all tattered and shopworn.
Will it feel the same?
Maybe. But perhaps it would be him who isn’t.

/

He imagines, 25, a life somewhere else.
He’s tired of punctuality and order.
The older he gets, the more
it seems control is mere illusion.
It terrifies him to accept that
at some point, he would have to jump.
He would have leave behind everything,
everyone. A major overhaul of the self
is bound to hurt orbiting objects, but it takes
an explosion, maybe, to begin like
It was the first time.

/

The pain of self-hatred
will never leave. It has distorted
the way he perceives, the way he accepts,
the way he welcomes. Hugs
will feel like something he has to do.
Tears won’t come at command.
Excess will seem ordinary.
Horrors will be regular intervals of stimulation.
That is the burden of not knowing
How to save yourself.

/

He will wrestle with time one day,
argue, bargain with it.
But it’s not something
that gives, only occurs.
Maybe he has to stop thinking
he needs to give.
Like time, maybe he has to
let himself occur.

i sank into you so easily,
did I think it would hurt
any less?

i fell
so **** hard
i hit the floor
and shattered -
messy broken pieces
cradled by
copious coping mechanisms
and
erudite discussions of self-love.

Kiss the Sun
and
feel the fire
consume flesh
that weeps,
decays
for love,
starved and starving

so

willing to risk it all
for a future
that
feels far and foreign
like some forgotten
(or perhaps, mad?)
dream

juggle life and death
only to spiral
deeper
into the past
into the present
into emotional volatility
like
the withdrawals my heart endures
away from you
and
the pain of longing,
having longed for nothing more
than your touch;
addictive personality prevailing,
sinking further
into lovesick madness,
I turn to the past for answers:
memories attack like zombies
rising from dew-laden graves,
bursting
through time’s barrier
between the now and then...

i see myself
grasping someone’s thumb
i feel love
for the first time;

i see a girl
smiling at me -
she kisses me
awkwardly
next to a green ladder
and
i can’t respond
because
i don’t know how;

i see an arm around a shoulder
in the back of a Dodge van
and
a sweaty highschooler
asking for a girl’s
cellphone number -
did he save her life
or did she save his?
time slips
through them like
knives
cutting ribbons
out of clear paper
and
centuries rust
like the forgotten bike
in that groundhog’s shed;

i see a sweater,
hear a voice,
and my heart colours
the sky
with every shade
of the love
i cannot yet admit
i am feeling -
she is better than me,
of this i am certain,
which is perhaps
why it hurts when
she is so far
and
i already make myself
feel so small.

i see myself,
alone,
young,
afraid
how powerful my love
feels
when i let it go -
while no one’s watching
and
it has nowhere to go
but inward;
a tree falls,
hidden in the dark -

lay in the snow
and
cease.

my heart beats red:
blood-pulse-rhythm
beat beat beating

beating beating
beat

doomed
to love
and
cursed
to care

a fate
only human.

I don't know how I feel towards you anymore. I almost feel like I can hate you like you hate me, but something scratches at me, a million people tearing at my insides.
The naive highschooler, the little "man", the lustful *******, the vengeful ******* in me now, and the one that wishes you could just be okay.

I can't ******* figure out which one is me, was me. What I want for you, from you, or why it even matters..

I want to be sorry, I am sorry, but the vengeful ******* still screams ****** ****** in my head.
"It was all *******, she wants to believe she's any better when she used you. She wants to judge and not be judged. Blame you for everything she hates in herself."

I try to drown him out with noise, music, love.
But I can't stop the nagging that you were selfish, and even more so, you were entitled.
You've always been everything you hate in me, and now more.
A victim that always denies herself love.

i had a dream where i walked outside and it was the right kind of cold.
it was the kind of cold where you can take off your jacket and feel the air biting onto your flesh like sweatbeads in the summertime.
i looked down and i was 13 again when things were bad but not yet worse
and i realized the more i dissect my happiness the more devastated i will become.
and eventually i'll be a highschooler doing lines in bathroom stalls and drinking my dad's tequila
and nothing will feel the way it's supposed to.
my burnt fingertips will touch bodies and bottles and i will sit smelling of smoke,
and i'll only see two stars in the sky.
it won't be raining but i will feel water running down my back, soaking my clothing and the almost black dirt.
i woke up from my dream on the first day of the year and i sat in a hospital gown with the faint taste of blue raspberry on my teeth
and i wished i would've died a little sooner,
because tonight it's even colder and the stars are shrinking and i didn't give my body a chance to grow up before i did.
it's terrible that you don't regret it until it's eaten you whole.

The eyes close in discontent
At least I don't pay the **** rent
supposedly sobbing and suffering aren't sufficient
for a highschooler without serious intent