I think this year I’ll get you
A box of diapers
Because you never grew up.

(Dork.)

I care not for your “darling buds of May”
Nor the rough winds that howl at their expense
For the sea that is vast as they hair’s fray
I find your mind to be as vastly dense.

As the ocean is brimming with fresh catch;
Bellowing waves to the longing shorelines
Each hermit to shell in a God-made match
Unlike the way thy thoughts seem to align.

But in every shell exists a new creature
No matter what this shell may seem to be
Spontaneity exists bare in nature
As it was so it will remain to be.

As the brilliance of thy words come to a light
I find them burning longer than the night.

How could I count the nights you stayed awake
envious of the moon’s glow?
As midnight traced its serenity
into the quarters of your mind,
the deep earth bellowed to you
begging a return.
Remember how you wanted to rest
intertwined in the mangled roots?

You sat on the shore
while the waves tugged at your legs
cradling you back and forth
tempting you into the blue
as you grabbed at the sand
but could not find a rock to hold you steady.
Remember when the wind sent howling blades
that hollowed out your chest
and the saltwater dried out your voice?

With hollowed eyes,
as deep as the shadowed caverns you seeked refuge in
you searched for blooming flowers
in dying fields.
Remember how you refused to walk
even while the weighted sand
pulled you deeper?

They say when you think about someone you “like,” you get butterflies in your stomach.
When I first heard that, I laughed.
I don’t feel butterflies with you.
I feel a wildfire.          
Every word you spit is kindling to the scalding embers in my throat,        
welding my words into bars too heavy for my tongue to lift.                    
I scream fire yet you wouldn’t **** to put me out.
Sweet suffering;
The sickness in my stomach
Like eating too much ice cream at once        
And your heat is inescapable.
Why?
I don’t know
Why?
I don’t know.        
Why?
I don’t know!
Why?
I can’t!
Because the truth is: you could burn away every string of flesh in my body and I would still find 206 reasons to stay carved into the marrow of my bones.
You are not the exhilaration of the fall,
You are the sweat in my palms before I jump.
You are not the volume in my voice,
You are the way I bite my lip before I speak.
You are the finish line on a hot mid-day
And I am the last runner to finish.
If you are a wildfire,              
Then time is a pile of dead Autumn leaves
And we didn’t know any better.
One day I hope you look back and see all that you’ve burned.
There will be people who are rivers and streams and men in yellow
Who will drown you with words and water                
Because they’ve never seen red
And you will always be the only force in existence they cannot touch.
I think you will always be a wildfire
Even when I become a storm-cloud
And you are a timid flame.

If I lay on that big, white bed for along time,
will you help me find my Father?
If I put tubes in my arm
and didn't eat for a week,
would you show me where he is?
Will the robot standing next to my head feed me
coordinates through rhythmic beeps and blips and red flashing lights?
I will do that.
I will shrink in my bed
and let my hair shed off like snake skin
and let my skin wrinkle like I had been in the bath tub for too long
and leave the windows wide open so my children can watch.
My lungs will burn out
and you'll put a mask on my face
and add one more tube to the collection
in the crook of my elbow,
adding more weight
as I lose mass
just like my Father.
And after countless times of being told,
"You have his smile,"
I will truly know what they meant
when my lips become sandpaper
and my tongue becomes parchment
and my teeth hollow out in gradients of pale moon yellow.
The iron from my blood
will add zest to every wheezing hack
and trickle down my throat like the morning dew
watering the growing weeds in my lungs.
I will do nothing but blink my crusting, glazed eyes
when my family cries at my bedside.
I will not flinch as their shouted cries echo the hallway
or look up as they throw their hands to the sky,
begging to a name I had long turned away from.
Would I find my Father if the flesh of my cheeks sunk into its bones
and my face was contoured by the ugly shadows in its
every crevice?
Even then, I would not find my Father.
I would not find my Father
until the white coats stand over my bed,
prodding me with pens and magnifying glasses and stinging needles,
and finally tell my family there is no chance.
I would nto be my Father until I refuse to cry
or scream
or become angered
or say goodbye.
I will be relieved that after countless months of being dead,
they finally declare my pulse gone.