We are open wounds with closed minds
And no one has to know what hurts inside
But why would we care anyways.
Just like why would we care if someone won the lottery
Or saved a life
Or fell in love
and the stranger next to me can win or lose
and its none of my concern.
The only concern I have is numbers under 21
And the somebody with the cards
And an ace of spades and a black jack.

I am only doing my best.
But what is my best?
What is my fault?
Sometimes I don’t have a club
and sometimes I don’t have a heart
and sometimes I don’t have an eight
but that doesn’t mean you can call me crazy


I don’t think.


This is a different kind of game
And there isn’t a boneyard to choose from
But sometimes I feel so alone inside I think maybe
all the advice Im hearing is just the bones rattling with defeat
and any second now they will shatter
like the memories we forgot to keep.

I hope that my luck hasn’t run out
Now that Ive lost all of the jokers
But maybe theres still a little crazy left inside me
Because sometimes when I play solitaire
I think there is someone else there.
But when I look up its only me and the deck
So I shuffle and hope
But most of the time
I don’t win.

So give me chess
Or dominos
Or dice
But its all the same.
We have chance
And luck
And statistics that tell us don’t do this and don’t do that
Like don’t eat too much meat
And get 8 hours of sleep
But even though I try
I still don’t get enough protein
And I don’t stretch after I run
And I cant cut the sugar
And I stare at the screen to long

And I tell mountains of lies.

The point is I’m tired of this game.
I am tired of losing
Against
Me.

Tired of making my own rules.
And breaking my own rules.

And beating myself up for the hands we are dealt
And the bets that we make
And the money we lose.

But Im learning.

Learning sometimes you get lucky
And sometimes you don’t
And we all get our share of luck and unluck.
Or we can hope so.


As a way of believing life is fair.

There's a big difference between
I LOVE you and You LOVED me.  
I am still hoping
But you left me hanging..

Last night I dreamt of you
And it brought back repressed
Memories of shedding my skin
Beneath your cigarette
Stained fingertips

It makes me wonder
About the difference between
Falling apart
And
Falling into place

You showed your teeth
At me in that sly smile
And I cringed

My nerve endings
Were fried
Beneath your fiery palms
And ashtray lips

It makes me think about
Your hands and my blood
Your hands and lighters
Your hands and gunpowder
My hands and your neck

Last night I dreamt of you
This morning I woke up
And washed it away with hot water

I was so ready to leave this place
I only realized I loved after I'd
decided to go
but then you stared at me
like there was nothing you'd rather see
then you held me like you meant it,
like no one in my life had been honest
until that moment when you wrapped
your arms around me and I felt safe
for once
for once calm, content
then you wrestled me to the ground
and blew on my stomach like a kid
and I kicked and screamed and
laughed like I was
like I am
then you kissed me
and kissed me
and kissed me

now I don't know
if I can let go

From your Father,
When I grew up I lived in a small brick house that was cold in the morning no matter how many times your grandfather yelled at the fireplace, the world never let him dream, he had to earn it.
You will never meet him.
You will never be the small reminders and the soft tug on the bottom of my sternum helping me sleep at night, I will give you string and yarn asking you to weave silk and save me from the winter.
Your hands will be overflowing with apologies, the sink will always be filled with water that looks like it is pulsing at an open wound, and the gauze from your mother's gentle throat is never going to stop you from leaking out how sorry you are.
I was not raised to be what you need.
I am not going to love you the right way.
When you are 7 I am going to tell you that the way you carry yourself isn't tall enough, for your 9th birthday I will give you a mustard seed and a pocketknife and will ask you to grow cherry blossom trees throughout our back yard and in all the pastures of the city, and cut each of them down the very next day, and THEN I will tell you how to be a man.
When you are 17 you are going to cry so hard that God mistakes your mouth for the trumpets that were used to tear down Jericho and when your walls come apart I am going to color your heart with footsteps leaving the room.
I will show you how to miss a warm shower, how to pretend so hard your head cracks and your skull looks
like the coldest bowl of tomato soup I ever gave you.
You will not see that this whole time I have been staining your windows to see things in a better light, even if it is not clearer in the afternoon.
This is my blessing.
From your Mother,
I was raised with ***** hands and the only person who I ever looked at in the morning and loved back was the sun.
Your grandfather taught me how to ride a horse, and cover up a bruise, how to scrub blood stains out of my white blouses, and a whiter conscious, and how to grieve.
Oh how he taught me to grieve.
You will never meet him.
When you are 10, I am going to write down all the sins of your father on a piece of paper, slit your throat with it, and tell you that it's just a papercut, I will show you that faith does not move mountains, it simply makes them smaller.
You will stand up, shake the dust off your knees, and learn to clench your fists without worrying who will hear you.
I will try, but I will not love you correctly.
When you are 13 I am going to show you that what you see is not always on your side, you can love someone harder than you can stab them, but people are going to worry about ****** knuckles before they take a second look at a bruised heart, they're going to forget which one is more important.
I am going to tell you to forgive them, and I will never truly mean it.
Maybe I am sorry.
I am going to flirt with death until it blushes so hard that the blood from it's cheeks flows down to it's chest and gives it a heartbeat.
I am going to make you understand that GOD needs you just as much as you need Him, and there is power in prayer, in the way God might not be worth as much when people aren't giving Him their attention.
I am going to help you need less of the world, but a little more from people.
Your words will be full and deep, but never your pockets.
This is my blessing.

Have you ever seen the pages of a story unfold
in the single movement of a moment?
These are stolen.


                 © Qwey.ku