A new flower only blossoms with water
and rigorous concentration.
Good intentions just aren't enough these days.

You're in bloom,
your pistil rises and grabs the sun
like a new promotion.

Mine lies on the top shelf of my closet.
And sharp mahogany corners
don't bring me closer to any answers.

My kindred, my barren love
some meaningless God,
voided by logic and chemicals-
I have been told to plant my roots
within their soil.

They have been told to reach for me
just outside of arms length.

Absence doesn't make use weary-
it reveals to us the vast pastures
within mahogany boxes-
it manifests the bittersweet drought
I have swallowed like a jagged pill.

I watch you bloom in violent meadows.
I concentrate by daydreaming.
This way,
when blood fills all the small spaces,
the guilt won't **** the minerals
from vibrant, naïve roots.

I can't say
my voice has been stolen.
Only frozen.

Somewhere between
the solidification
and the crystallization
was a frigid realization.

Sometimes the magic just doesn't happen.
at the 32 degrees.

Sometimes sciences takes a back seat
to  the once-broken, since mended knees.

The mind will fight
but the pen still scribbles a right,
or a wrong,
or something recyclable taken away yesterday.

Now-parallel incomprehensible darkness.
with a voice once frozen.

The light will relentlessly hide
as the rain will inevitably fall.
The frostbite will blacken,
but
you
will
stand
tall.

She stared at me and said "it's all right"
but she was not right.

She told me about the haze.
She told me about darker days.
She told me about my terrible self-esteem.

She doesn't know.
Push and flow
and gregariously go.

She doesn't know
Push comes to shove
and I infinitely disappear.

We all long for a disappearance.
So a companion will exit,
but I will self-medicate.

We all long for a disappearance
So I'll keep the safety on
and remind myself to wait.

Green eyes
and velvet pastures
just weren't enough.

My greatest surmise
is that faucets
just didn't emit the right temperature.

The puzzle pieces
were just some false expenditure-
some meaningless adventure.

I don't know why roses sting.
There's just always a reason
to ignore the sun.

You are a bird flying near.
A simple graze of my arm
a feather kept, a loss of fear.
And this is not temporary.

You are a parade.
Your trumpets, your drums
reinventing the copyrighted charade.
It's not a trick-it's rudimentary.

You are fresh squeezed lemonade.
When the sweat cannot be quelled,
you forge trees for shade.
But speaking of you is just supplementary.

You are the long drive back.
Every worm in the miles of dirt
can hear this counterattack-
especially those four days of January.

You are my trustworthy veins,
our frivolously necessary games,
and the smell of relentless rains.

These senses, put blunt yet gently,
manifest nothing less than your infinite trajectory.

What shapes do you think of
when you sit under trees?
Blunt corners, forgiving curves-
a fluctuation that never seems to ease.

Do we circle in repetition?
Or is self defeat
a mirage of an inhibition?

The lines sometimes will never touch.
But this lack of closure
does not discount your right
to an ameliorative crutch.

I wasn't born ready
for a faulty diagnosis
or bare shoulders.

My hand was born unsteady-
sweating like a prisoner tortured,
and always forgetting left from right.

Just like you
I was placed here.

You with a broken spine,
an affinity to wine
or a love lost too soon.

For me,
it was less.

A spine mended,
some superstition suspended,
but wires that have never connected.

I don't know
if we'll ever be ready.
But that won't ever stop me
from attempting to keep my hand steady.