I want to believe in steady things,
but even my own reflection changes
when I look too long.
Are you here?
Do you love me?
Will you stay?
I ask without asking,
watching for the answer
in the way your hands move,
the way your breath hesitates before a word.

I know I feel too much,
ask too much,
but the silence between us is louder
than anything I could say.
So I fill it.
With words, with fear, with love—
all spilling over,
all too much,
all at once.

And still, I wonder, if it’s enough.

I fell for a poet
An expert with his words
By night a whisper,
By day unheard

I fell for a poet
A hazy, giggly dream
A little boy in a teenager's body
A life ripped at the seams

I fell for a poet
Who's writing love poems I'll never read
For someone else in his life,
Anyone but me.

I fell for a poet
So I'll wait, quiet as the sea
For this feeling to fade
Or for him to fall for me

Lawrence Hall
[email protected]
Dispatches for the Colonial Office

                                                         ­   Merch

What, then, is merch? Tchotchkes and souvenirs?
Gift shop gimcrackery from a day at the beach
An airport tee on the way home from London
A Canadian flag stamped on a made-in-China cup?

No

Merch is now the livery of submission:
Politicians selling you your own souls
Entertainers fondling your credit cards
If you give them money they will be your friends

Don’t follow them; for you are good and true -
Wear, read, think, sing, and honor the nobility in you

The moment
I look into your eyes
covered in midnight skies,
I realized I started
to feel alive again—
You get it?
Neither do I,
don’t know where to begin—
Was stuck for a while
with suicide blinding signs.
Scared, restless, lost,
feeling like imma die,
yet I survived cuz
I get to see you
through wild nights
that bloom—
Wishing I was
in the same room,
holding onto you,
Loving you…

****, I think
I love you too much—
Too addict,
crossing my mind
like a crosswalk.
Yet too much
is never enough.

I love you