I love you
not because
you're good looking

I love you
not because
you're caring

I love you
not because
you dote on me

I love you
not because
your smiles are sweet

I love you
not in lust
of your crevice
or orifice
or skin

I love you
because
without you
I feel

incomplete within.

What I love in talking to
you are the subtexts. Constantly running
around all the words we speak, roads
support me when others fail, hold
when others will crumble, you stand.

Darling, when I try
and write to you, all format
flies from my grasp. Haiku and ten
always too little, and prose
I would have to fill with beauty-
words I do not have to describe us
anymore. You see, unlike the family tradition, I was
never a good Scrabble player. Always
only 100 tiles and short, obscure
words never enough to tell a
story that should be rich, not sparsely
populated with only 1 Z, or
2 Ys or 2 Cs. With you I feel
I am playing scrabble with my words. As always,
my darling, (with) you I am losing.

With. Every. Single. Pound
of his fist on the door your
Liv.ing.room. Compressed and I
started glancing around just
Looking. For. A. Way. Out these
walls will not contain me now they
Are.n't. Big. E.nough to try
and hold in my fears they
Ri.pple. And. Shake. Like
my shoulders try to do but
I. Am. Stron.ger. Than. This. Fear.
(I wish)

Jagged little pill
smooth little pill
soft little pill-
           fill my head with cotton
                 but make everything clearer.

Square little pill
round little pill
oval little pill-
           paint the world in shades of binary
                 a collection of dualities
                       a simplification of choices.

White little pill
brown little pill
orange little pill-
           fuel the fire inside my belly
                 but exhaust me
                       take away my hunger for life
                             outside of the lines you have drawn.

Nexium
Jarro-Dophilus
Aderall-
           of all the little pills every morning
                 the ones the doctors prescribe and question
                       the ones I am never sure if I can feel
                             the ones whose effects are dubious and enigmatic
                                   you are the most quantifiable, and the only one
                                         with whom my relationship is Daedalean.

Softly, softly
we step into your mind
quiet and reverent
in our solemn intent.
- words I wrote for you
- books I have read
- places I have been, both
with and without you
- a drawing of my happiness
- your words, to encompass
my pain
I find all of these
where you reside, and as always,
as you are, so much
more than I will ever understand.
when I step out, pieces of
you, cotton-soft, cling to
everything I touched you with. Though
I would love nothing
more than to have stepped lightly in
and out, to not leave a mark
to not sully the purity
of what was before me, I know
this is not possible. The shreds
will cling to me, and I
will cling to the shreds, because
even though I would rather take
nothing, change nothing, be
as inconsequential as nothing, circumstances
have led me to the great
and terrible beauty
of the honor to carry with me
pieces of you.