when I began to write
poetry
all those years ago

I was amazed to find
that I even
had a voice.

It was a gift
that I never
hoped for.

I only shared light.

There is too much
darkness.

And then
little by little
I had to write
about the monsters
in the deep.

And my writing
got to be
unrecognizable.

Those couldn't be
my words.

Don't bury me
in a grave
in a big old box
I've known too much
darkness.

And so here I am
trying to balance
injury
with hope for a new future

That may be called
healing.

I’m gay I’m gay I’m gay I’m gay I'm gay
it kind of
spills off my tongue
when I don’t want it to
an
impulse
a
burning choke in my throat
falling out of me when I wish it would stay inside
when strangers are around
when
they really don’t need to know

it’s painted on my face
it’s written on the backs of my hands
my collarbone is burning white hot with a tell
and my eyes watering every secret of it

can they tell?
can everyone see right through me?
I’m
too scared to ask
somehow
also too scared to keep it inside

It wants out more than anything
but
she wants to be safe more than anything

On Reading Yet Another Essay on the Death of Reading

Yet another essay beginning with “I”
Sophomore thesis: no one reads anymore
The power of books, the great ideas
The shared experience, the care of souls

The temptations of social media
(Really? No one ever said that before)
Escape, new points of view, humanity
Foundations of faith (but never the roofs)

If reading is dead -

If reading is dead, then who reads those essays,
Those many essays on the death of reading?

It was a graveyard and overcast sky
and I sat with book and accordian in hand,
hearing the world with its screams
swallow up around me.
The people whom I had loved and lost,
Papa with his silver eyes
Mama her sharp tongue and tough love
Rudy whose hair the colour of lemons
and questioned why, the living and dead,
worlds apart, yet both did not have a choice.
I stood and screamed so that everything shook
the burning rubble and ash and dust
willing my words to bring it all back
but it did not come, and my breath rose in gasps.
Death had looked me in the eye and said,
“It’s not time yet.”
I would shut my eyes to the world
only decades later.
I will understand that there was hate and pain
there was sadness
but even more so, there was love and joy.
I will know that the people I loved had reason
to kiss goodbye
whether it was their own hurt
or saw it as a necessity,
but they were never truly gone from me
always somewhere nearby,
in the thick and thin
frail and worn
of times.
I would learn
to forgive Death that day.
I will understand that
and I will be hurt,
but I will be okay.

~

Not all deaths are sad.
Some, meant to ease their own pain,
Are called freedom.
While some,
Meant to ease the pain of others,
Are called love.

© BT