There was a time where I believed that friendship didn't flicker like a waterlogged outlet. Where standing up came before standing out. I never understood what growing up was for a long time. I remember when I was 15 and I saw a man at starbucks spill coffee on his white dress shirt and thinking "**** that I'm never growing up" and then when I was 18 I draped a plain white polo over my heart and watched everyone I thought cared about me redefine caffeine from waking me up to putting me to sleep.  I insisted that success and money didn't go hand in hand and positivity is easy when the only thing you're paying for is young cigarettes and blindfold mints. When we grow on the  outside, we shrink on the inside to a certain extent. We watch death like a ****** sequel. We fear the inevitable and watch the hands on the clock until they clap and your lights starts to flicker. We live in a sea of inconsistencies that drown our livelihood and when times become consistent, monotony sits in our throat like drying cement that cracks until we can't even breathe for ourselves anymore. Can anyone define happiness? And can you tell your kids that growing up is a breeze? Cause that gust of wind can blow the half empty cup of coffee on to your clothes and really **** your day.

I thought, "holy **** man, look at yourself". The only change I ever witnessed for 3 years was the scrapings left ringing out on the bar rail. Always reaching out to a pocket for god and finding nothing. "I guess you can't refund the drinks, right?" She didn't laugh. I watched my circle get smaller, tired of the antics and my drinking became the **** of a joke. I watched my circle get smaller, my vision blurred like the future lining with a black viginette and with every drink I watched the bartender familiarize. Another? tap tap an empty bottle uses its manners and mine, with a painted smile. Until close she would become my therapist, and the salary was almost the same for the two after I left. After close the cooks offered sympathetic invites and lackluster conversations at the ******* next door. They laughed and drank and like ***** hawks watched their prey scale a poll like the fire they were fighting was inside. I saw no spark, no love given, no love received. I found it hard to love, when hating myself was the only thing I loved to feel. The grease stained fries were tickling the back of my throat on the last night I went. I found myself puking next to a coke head doing key bumps and I asked through hiccups "does the smell back here not bother you?" he said "what smell?". I wiped my mouth and stumbled home somehow. I kicked broken pieces of pavement and scoffed at the curb-sides hugging garbage. I realized through the streetlights that my shadow wasn't the only darkness following me at night. Out of cigarettes and out of my mind I resented this city for having so many bridges. The screaming trucks below gave some sort of comfort with my feet tangling with the breeze. The stretching hands from out-of-place highway trees grabbed at me and I felt the world rotating. The night that changed me, a three am crosswalk flashed its hand at me, but I kept walking.

I remember the feeling
of ****** and sleep
or sobriety and insomnia,
it was one or the other,
a back deck stained
with eggshells and
whiskey candles
strapped to my tongue
and a flame burning
my throat,
eyes like like lungs
inhaling a ****
and tearing with
black spit,
too ******* stupid
and fried to look at
a knife with malice
and then it was
only with butter
to smear on a sandwich
or uneven bread like
**** water in a glass,
in the microwave instead
of a toaster for some reason,
too ******* fried
too ******* dumb,
I felt better and quit,
no cracking eggs on deck tops
now it’s beer can rings on desktops,
like a marriage to dizziness,
I remember the feeling
of ****** and sleep
and paranoia,
depression
and anxiety,
and now a green smoke
is a double sided mirror
into the past of what
I used to feel,
and I’m spreading butter
on my conscience
and wrists
and neck now,
instead of being lifted
I’m planted with dead roots,
no turning back
no speeding up.

you wrote acrostic
poems in grade school
and thought it was pointless,
finding more than
one meaning in a
seamless word
whispers to you
and tells you that
it's not your fault
you were cheated on,
or why your
parents divorced,
sometimes instead
of 20/20,
a kaleidoscope
is the best way to
view yesterday's
circumstances.

She tears through
her insecurities
on fridays and saturdays,
shameless small talk
with bouncers,
and she dresses to ****,
railing lines at pre drink,
and talking up free drinks
with ***** hawks
circulating the scintillations
of spotlights for victims
of a cockcrow regret,
she picks and chooses
and it’s easy for her,
finding a jawline
in a haystack seems
almost inevitable
when she did her make up
in front of a mirror,
not 3 hours prior,
she fills her empty
bed with cheap cologne
and sweat and gel
to only empty again
not 3 hours later.

pouring another glass  
is peeling a hangnail
down with your teeth,
a monotonous ****
will only draw blood
to surface,
waking up is now
a monotonous signature
on a death certificate,
a tedious magnificent
and I’m still here
and my calligraphy
is becoming magnificent

I read the dancing steam
above my coffee cup,
and I still drank it,
the wax hardened my tongue,
and my glands exploded,

maybe that’s the story you’ll tell
when they ask us how we met.