Excuse me
While I melt here in front of you.

I don't need much,
Just your hand to hold mine.

Broken hearts and broken bones:
Things that never heal straight.

I grew up alone.
There were people around, sure,
but not the kind to talk to.
Not the kind to spill anything
that was really in my heart to.

I grew up alone,
in a world of stories.
My friends were all heroes
and never talked back to me.
In some ways, they existed
more than I did.

My childhood was an eternity:
the endless nights,
the endless loneliness;
so separate from my brothers,
so different from everyone I knew.
I wasn’t sad. Just alone.

I grew up alone
and I’ll never forget that feeling
of being a stranger
in a strange world
with nothing but books
to keep the darkness at bay.

How old were you
when it turned out
that we only grow to die
and how long did it take
for that to terrify you,
and how long did it take
for growing at all to
make you sick,
how long did you live
before you were ready to die?
Some people never live at all
before they’re swept away and
some people try so hard to escape
and keep on failing.
Living is so awful, so
mind-numbingly painful and yet
- and yet and yet and yet -
somehow its so beautiful too.
Somehow we live only to die
and somehow we survive that short,
confused, horrified, hiccuping existence,
and make it worth it. How does
love work that it takes something
so tortured and impossible
and turns it into something
almost beautiful?
how does that work at all

You used to laugh (and
    pretend my spiny sweet-gum
       words would cringe at the very
  brush of a lifetime), but
                     our seasons are changing
                (everything is all at once an
                  unwavering green), adopting
                      breadth of iceberg proportions
  
    (we dance around forever.)