we must not forget how often a child is not a child,
how often a spit-soaked handshake means:
"i'm trusting you not to **** this up"
and then suddenly, as sudden as the cutback of a razor scooter
(may god protect those in low-top sneakers),
everything is all sorts of ****** up
(including us)

because in this life, in this interstice between birth and death,
we are dastardly

we are cowards,
afraid of singing in public and laughing out loud,
too good for a daydream or two

we forget how to be youthful
(in truth, i disappoint the past me all the time),
forget how to keep pinky promises
and we most often forget that it is us
who cause a child to no longer be a child.

Forgive me for my retreat,      forgive me for how quick       I find
myself      lying slow on the bedroom floor.      More nights     than not      I pretend myself into a poet     even though I haven’t entirely      found the right words.     Did I tell you yet   that I am more wreckage     than warfare?   I couldn’t tell you     the last time     my tongue was a grenade    but surely these hands     have held the carnage.    Surely you understand    I am no poet     but     neither are you.   Then again,    who is?    Aren’t we all just    writing ourselves into     existence?    This language cannot hold    another me.    This language was not intended    to be misconstrued     between stanzas.   But,    how else can we study    each other?    How else could you know    that these words aren’t really mine   but I hold claim to them     anyway.   How else could you know   that this is not a real poem   but I bring it to war   anyway.

sometimes i trick my body into becoming something else    something unrecognizable
i tell it to sleep peacefully or   to remember the embrace of a friend long gone

often the body becomes a symbol of what was lost
a friend a childhood a reason   i tell myself the bruises are just autographs or love notes   they never stay but i convince my body to feel them   still  
is this desperation or just another species of grief?

i have discovered so many that i’ve run out of names
“crying on the side of the highway overpass”
or “a sound i did not recognize as my own until months later”
or “a dream i had once but wish for still every night”
or “picturing his broken hands folded over a lifeless belly covered by a worn football sweatshirt”

sometimes i believe in ghosts   i was taught to fear the sacrilegious  but i lost faith since    

january has been ten months long    the chill follows me no matter how far i run

sometimes i trick my body into becoming something else    but mostly i trick it into becoming an unremarkable hollow thing

Night time becomes a hymn in itself,
sleep a prayer I have long forgotten.
My hands clenched in a fist,
crinkling the prayer card until
his smile folds in half
like that miserable metal frame.

I un-crinkle and smooth quickly,
taking his face in the palm of my hand
and look again to his sleeping body.
I weep. Silently. My prayers
are just a string of vowels:
no god or heaven ever mentioned.
There is only sleep and
please wake.

There is no waking for me or for him.
There is only the wrinkled prayer card
and one last glance before I turn away
and resume the journey home.

I’ll kiss you still
On your way out the door
I’ll let this love **** me
If it’s all I’m living for

Were you ever mine?
Or just a figment, a dream:
A promise of goodness and freedom
In the empty echoes of me

Can I still touch you
In the bright candlelight?
And better still in the darkness
When I peer into the night

I think I’m breaking
I think I’m your mistake:
The piece to the wrong puzzle,
The thing you have to break

Can you ever love me
The way I need you to?
Or you could just hold me
Until I melt into you

Don’t make me beg
For you to just stay,
Though I know you
And you’ll just leave anyway