To the friend I knew I'd never know that I had all along.
To my companion, my shadow,
though often it felt as if I were standing in yours.
Always there, wearing your mask of indifference and hate.
People tell me that they've seen your heart,
they've seen you cry, and defend the weak.
I know now that you're just like me,
more lonely, but that's because you like it.
Brother, I know that we may never embrace,
I know that I may never tell you how much I admire you.
I'll probably never play with you,
as we once did when we were only five and six.
Little brother, there's so much that I'll never do.
But everything I'll never do is something that would say
I love you.

I believe in a thing called
my raging inferiority.
It's the god that I sacrifice
the best parts of myself too.
In order to attain some solace
and some peace of mind
I pray to my inferiority.

I hope erasing me was easy.
I hope I didn't leave a smudge.
I hope your life is nice and clean now
and that your sheet is nice and blank.

I delicately tread barefoot
along this tightrope of barbed wire.
Too painful to go on
to deadly to fall off.
Eventually I will just stand still,
balanced, let my wounds scar over,
graft the wire to my feet.
Become a part of the human race.

"Stupid boy" my spirit says,
"that girl was your salvation."
"Too proud to bow your head,
too proud to do what's right.
And now she's gone and we're alone.
You stupid stupid boy."

Step out into the cold where no one goes,
where the night air speaks no words of hurt or hate.

The fog of your breath distills in moonlight,
and somewhere a dog barks at the sound of cars.

A wraith-like plastic bag drifts down the street,
a specter, like you, that wanders all alone.

You walk the lonely familiar sidewalks,
hopelessly attempting to forget yourself.

The silent stars above look so becalmed,
though tormented by the slow turmoil of space.

You tread along a crack in the cement,
just like it's a cord that bears you through the air.

In the end the cold reaches into you,
and freezes your wandering will to go on.

Though the cold, the moon, and the stars remain,
you happily crawl back to the place you left.

Sub-human and invisible,
ridiculed and scorned.
Shoved into a corner,
ignored and left alone.

Like an exile or a sickness,
a scrap of human waste.
A human, not a person,
excluded, turned away.

Forgive the melodrama.