Tracing daybreak by the fingertips,

each shade of the sun trying to burn through me,

leaving behind my silhouette,

leaving behind a memory,

reminiscing days long past,

chasing the moon

Love me
Take me
I’m nothing more than a bag of hollow bones until you speak life into me
You
Your name
Breathes and lives in and throughout me
Not a day goes by when I don’t think your name
It’s like knowing my own
My heart is characterized by you
It is you
It knows no other response but to your name
Hearing it, it leaps like my mother demanding me forward
I wish I didn’t have to learn this way
I wish it so different
I wish you by my side
You and I
Your lips on my neck
Your hand on my thigh

Only sandy shores and sunsets can temporarily fulfill what you gave me
All the love
The security
The Laughs

I wish so much
But in all, I wish you happiness
For what more can my heart deserve?

Everything I did was viewed through the lens
of some sophisticated world traveler.
You really critiqued me, from how I got on the bus,
your eyes checking my intuition of how to stand while it moved,
seeing how I engaged in conversation with strangers,
scanning the clothes I've curated,
and gladly noting how "little I seemed to care about them",
chalking everything up to "american ignorance",
to scoping my bookshelf for your overrated preferences,
you are prying into my music taste,
my palette,
my body.

Meanwhile,
I get on the bus per usual,
wide stance to balance the stop-and-go motions,
I tell people have a nice day and make small talk about most everything!
especially the weather,
my collection of clothes is a museum themselves,
I care and tend to each piece carefully,
I think American's are happy-go-lucky double edged swords,
My bookshelves,
music taste,
pallet,
and body
are all full of volumes
unreachable by those who try to see me through
their narrow monocular.

Do you remember those days before when we were care free?

Before when nothing mattered other than what adventure we'd go on next?

Before we had to worry about real world problems?

Before we made our social media accounts?

Before we encountered that first bully?

Before mental illness bothered us?

Before we felt like we were drowning?

Before we slit our wrists that first time?

Before we got so depressed that we tried to take our own lives so many times that we lost track and failing each time and each failed time adding to that collection of scars on our bodies that, if we ever get out of this black hole, will one day look back on and wonder how everything got so bad, but maybe I won't, maybe I will be successful.

Slurring sweet confessions under a sea of sleepless stars, surrounded by the sound of each other's deepest thoughts

Watching the way your beautiful mind unravels the world's mysteries, one enigma at a time

Scraping your brain for every ounce of inspiration, drinking in your world view, trading your two cents for my dime

The way your heart rate picks up when you talk about the sad stuff, or how your smile looks, beaming at least 100 watts

The way you glow in the moonlight, bathed in rays of somber hope, the way you comfort me, the ways you helped me cope.

For all these things and more, I owe you everything. For giving me a peek at perfection, I don't know how to thank you.  

So thank you.

The choice to stop was mine.
The addiction itself was a different story.
Doctors don't write prescriptions for this kind of stuff.
The cold sweats associated with anger.
The beginning is the hardest part.
Admitting temptation.
I was addicted.
The situation had ended but I kept obsessing.
Knowingly risking health.
The way you feel, the way you taste.
I couldn't afford to lose you as well as myself in the process.
Properly insuring another substance for another.
The cost of Medicare.
It was my decision, my choice.
Your voice a constant peer pressure of finding bliss.
If only for a minute.
At some point I ignored my own voice.
Reaching for you again.
I acknowledge that it was my responsibility.
Blaming everything around me, even you.
In this brief moment, common sense wasn't so common.
Not anymore.
Forgetting that actions have consequences.
For every second I ignore you.
You whine, you cry.
Becoming my chronic illness.
The enabler to what ever complaint.
It's hard to quit.
Finding every excuse except the right one.
She was the highway.
I was the traveler.
Weary in search of exit.
This road becoming longer and longer.
The lights becoming more and more distant.
Each exit in-between stops having fewer establishments.
Additional signs appearing with more temptation.
The cold sweats are back, this anxiousness to reach for something that I know isn't there.
This addiction to hold you, crave you, taste you.
This urge to love you as much as I did.
This persistent itch that I can't live without you.
Doctors don't write prescriptions for this kind of stuff.
The warning labels causing more harm than good.
Reminiscing on times that I shouldn't.
The choice to stop was mine.
To love someone that doesn't love you back

I am sharing this opus
It's more of an onus
Of just how things went
But were not really bogus.
I earned my life lumps
Racing over speed bumps
Trying to outrun cards dealt
That were not quite trumps.

Still I made it this far
And while I’m not a star
I suited and showed up.
Things are what they are
And I can debate them
But I can’t dispute them.
It would be a big lie
If I tried to refute them.

So my doddering totter
Gets odder and odder
Telling me loudly
I am Grim Reaper fodder.
Some bridges burned,
Another corner turned
Dealing with the effects
Of the lessons learned.

Now an irascible rascal
Far too frequently wrathful
Warring with too-small print
I am the long-retired radical
No longer marching around
Supporting causes I found.
No longer a crusader, I am
A kind of sad circus clown.

I never expected to have it made
Like a grandee in the shade
Sipping my iced mint julep
Rich from making the grade
But  with youthful short sight
I never saw it in this light
That I would fall so short
Of playing things just right.

Still, I have to cut some slack
When I sit here looking back
At where and what I was.
The view is not so black.
While superstars never came,
My lottery dreams were lame,
I feel I did all that could
To honestly play the game.