I hear you had an affinity to ink.
As I did
to whatever laid below
the creaky kitchen sink.

The first words
filled with the highest crescendos,
the blurriest jokes,
and an indifference
that connected archipelagos.

Your open pastures came sooner than fit
and all the cows were shocked by it.
The foundations your tendons
helped meticulously construct
were but a marvelous crack
in his narrow-minded speck of dust.
(And how it pained me every day to see the rust.)

But there was always a chrome polish
waiting patiently where you least expected.
And the kindling revealed your shine.
And your sentences naturally rhymed.
Your shores,
full of plastic bags and
oil-stained rags
had found miles of red rubies.

I would freeze for her infinite summer,
but I stand here motionless-
oozing self-doubt
miles away from her.

Am I nothing more than a plateau?
Rising in exuberant expectation,
gliding with excessive perspiration,
and then decaying like past-due precipitation.

Let's return to where I was when my tongue wasn't so hollow. Where the pills weren't nearly as hard to swallow. To think so deeply is both a curse and a blessing, and there's no wound dressing for nostalgia in negative space. But when I scrape my knee again can you lend an ear? I think I feel it coming. I feel the past flowing through my veins like a sharp shot of dope under a dimly-lit causeway. The grass of the lawn that I used to play on is starting to grow on my back and seep into my scarce serotonin, and I really need someone to regularly attend to it. Mow it on an altruistic sunny day with the kids running around you and laughing. Pull the weeds out when I end up staying past midnight working on the file reports for all the others that can't seem to find their authentic reflection either.

I'm back there in the woods. There was something about the fragile, half-broken branches lying on the ground that made me feel understood. I don't know if it was the demeanor or the distance. I couldn't hear the angry screech of an eighteen pack or decipher the blue from the black. It was the furthest thing from my favorite noose or the truth of the love around me cut loose.

It was the days that my brother and I would congruently comply. We'd go into the backyard and have no foreshadowing of tissues scarred. We'd run and we'd laugh and we never looked back. We'd continue into the night because we didn't care that we couldn't see the grass stains anymore. The obscurity of the look on my face could perhaps explain why I have always blended into the background with such effective camouflage. When mom did call us in to shower of the dirt, there wasn't yet blood on her shirt. She smiled, and I remember her smile so well. So little to say and so much to tell.

The funny thing is that he wasn't around back then either. He was trapped in a time long before the doctors detected my first pulse. Somewhere in this streak of gray hair and emotional despair was a feeling so strong that it was drinking itself to death to reveal its true colors and stillborn brothers. But oh God, how I loved Christmas morning. Under the array of strings of lights and the daytime not seeming as lonely as the nights, there was not a hostile bone in the human body. There was simply a long forgotten innocence filled with cinnamon buns, coffee that stayed a little warmer than usual in the Kureg, and the cats rolling around in the piles of wrapping paper like they were the ball-pits at the McDonald's both ways down the street. It was the clack of a controller. My favorite friends beating games in one night and sleeping over. It was wiffleball  games right after the nights where I'd two whole boxes of Mac and Cheese. It was sledding down the tallest hill in town on the days where the ice held your head up high and didn't need any praise, or even a reply. It cared nothing for the size of the nails on my feet, my favorite band on repeat, or the broken wooden bridge between my amygdala and frontal cortex. r

But then I remembered that those days exists only in two places: my memory and my dreams. Was I in a hopeless daze in the middle of the street or did I have my favorite fleece blanket for heat? As the crust in my eyes slowly broke away at the seams, I received my answer. It was a fate that seemed equal to a vicious and malignant cancer.

I was awake for another day. The humidity of my dorm room danced across my skin like a bead of sweat anxiously running down the back of my neck and spine. I remembered the concrete line drawn between this world and the one in my head, turned my body so that the morbid did not seem fully dead, and connected my foot with the frigid ground and didn't make a sound. I had two grocery carts and a porcelain tub full of responsibility, yet I found myself frozen and void of mental mobility.

I didn't know what to say when I started my days anymore. So I brushed my teeth, remained mute, and walked out the door.

She marches to no beat-
a purpose seemingly incomplete.
If she challenges her every breath,
is she not obsolete?

I can't say that I don't understand.
Weaving  bruised patches on a quilt
with a jagged stone in each hand
is enough to fill a riverbed with blood.

With such an affinity to this bed of rocks,
who am I to judge?

But you.
There is nothing more to hate
in agreeing that you hold such a fate.
If a smile is the only emotional currency,
how can you not shine brighter than gold?

She marches on against the current.
She wades in the winter wanderlust.
She is a beacon of cerulean light,
and a cup of warm coffee
on a red eye flight.

The ice sheet that covers your bones
is the warmest blanket
on a winter night.
If the gate is ever open,
I'll never cease to highlight
your tranquilizing, infinite light.

If you asked me what I missed,
could I say anything at all?

Homework
and lost words.
Homeward.
and Route 12,
northbound.
Your smile poking its way through.
The tight black skirt,
more cleavage than tee shirt.
A walk or two,
and a view, straight through.
A meticulous routine to undress;
the wood-pellet stove keeping it hot.
The butterfly that was never caught.
Every box of Mike & Ikes bought.
An arbitrary laugh, a foreshadowing sunset-
a neck full of bruises and sweat.
The mocha-chip Thursday Nights at eight.
All the way back to a single Ferris wheel-
an ironically fatal first date.

If you asked me what I miss,
would I say anything at all?