you know how the song goes:
a stitch away from making it
and a scar away from falling apart.
holding on gets hard when
the light at the end of the tunnel
goes dark.

my friend told me he doesn’t purposely
befriend actively suicidal people anymore.
so when a 14-year old friend
was hospitalized for an attempt,
he was shocked.
I’m not fourteen
and i don’t go to the hospital for anything,
but when i was fifteen i
asked my mom to start taking me to therapy.
she told me,
sweetie,
you can just talk to me about anything.
so i started writing poetry instead.
but poems can’t diagnose me,
poems can’t prescribe me meds to
fix the chemical catastrophe in my head
poems can’t cure me.
but neither can people.

there was a boy that i used to call sunshine,
but he told me that he would
rather be the moon.

i deleted your number from my contacts
once you stopped using mine.
you don’t keep me up at night.
i’ve stopped losing sleep over you.

i haven’t broken the habit of checking
people’s wrists when they move
because of all the girls i knew in grade school.
i have a friend with the first letter of help
permanently scarred on his stomach.
we’ve never talked about it.
i don’t know if either of us know how to,
or if either of us really want to,
or if either of us really need to.

when my brother was 18, he was convinced
that he wanted to go into psychiatry.
i think the closest we’ve ever been
was when i had a mental break over
orange juice at one thirty in the morning,
watching him play GTA on his Xbox 360.
when my brother was 17, he was convinced
that his future was in professional photography.
i’m 17 and i don’t have a ******* clue.
I’m 17 and i don’t think I’ve ever felt so much
like I’m just constantly drowning.

they say a captain goes down with his ship
and I’ve set myself up for losing all my friends.

she’s got year-round summer skin
and winter has never been my friend.

i sleep seven hours a night
and i wake up exhausted.

my cat has all his claws
and when he crashes through my bedroom
when i’m on the brink of extinction
it leaves me haunted, hearing
breathing and footsteps that aren’t really there.
so i’ll put studs in all my jackets
and wrap myself in blankets.

i wish you were here,
i wish i was there.

the first rated R movie
that i saw when i turned 17
was that one that brought back ryan reynolds,
starring a moody teen with
the best superhero name ever,
a CGI man who acted as her mentor,
a pretty girl like a damsel in distress,
and the bad guy called himself ajax
but his real name was francis.
i cried
a lot.
i’m not sure why, really, but when the credits
started rolling and it was everything that i’d
been waiting for in a movie for the anti-hero
that I’ve been in love with since i was 13,
i sat in those velvet seats and started sobbing.

when i was six, my dad took my
9 year old brother and i
to see ‘revenge of the sith’ when it came out
in 2005.
the scene on mustafar, the volcanic planet,
the downfall of anakin skywalker
stuck with me until i was 12 and rewatched
all six of those old movies,
stuck with me until i was 16 and rewatched
all six of those old movies.
when i was a kid those scenes were scary,
now i see a mimic of Shakespearean tragedy.

i pick things apart until i know that they’ll scar,
but scars have always faded for me.
the first mark that ever lasted for
more than a month was when i
burned myself getting a cake out of the oven.
i remember my brother telling me
that he wouldn’t care about the burn
if i ******* up the cake.
we laughed about it because it was a joke.
i still think about it.

i still check to see if you
watch my Snapchat story.

i rip the hems out of all of my clothing
compulsively. I’m sorry.
i’ll pick up all the balled-up threads from
the carpet eventually.

i keep ticket stubs and scraps of notes
hazardously strewn across my bedroom,
because i’m too sentimental for my own good
but organization has never come naturally.

solar systems are borne from my fingertips.
supernovas power my lungs.
stardust glitters in my veins
(i tell myself these things in order to
keep thinking straight)

hey, look at the moon.
see how she reflects the sun for you?
it’s because she’s got nothing
of her own to give away willingly.
i gave you everything willingly
i spent too many nights
shredding notebook paper into pieces
of white birthday party confetti.

i swallowed six painkillers today.
I’m passive like aggressive,
letting my liver slip into uselessness.

it’s really hard to write poetry about bruises.

Theandric
Relating to, or existing by,
the union of divine and human
operation in Christ, or the joint agency
of the divine and human nature…

in any ever after, timeless nature is thinkable,
first peaceable, gentle, easily made easy with,
free as the wind
true rest in coincidence, yes, the actual idea,
yes in opposition to no, and working together,
stirring in whole new precepts to judge with,
chaos and beauty, stormy weather and calm,
tobe ra', post internet literate inventory bots,
aiaiai
what could I have known,
had I read then what I read today, had it been
thinkable back in the times we made order,
made muscles remember qwerty gestures, ai,
as if we have a genius for testing best easy ways,
we build on each easier way, we meander theandric,
- as it is written whosoever is a grand inclusion
androautomatical informational intelligence leg-ends
collections of meaningful reasons for faith usage.
Garbs of right uses,
lose all value,
naked.
True.
Idleness at days end, gloaming sophist tries,
means of matching first impressions, is it real,
or Memorex, tell me wordless window watcher.
Watching infants gain first order for search
oh how happy we shall be, when we know our
ABC-DE
mmmmhmm four square frame of reference,
Hollies, look through any window/

now, I am the grandfather, proud, with no hubris,
as salt with no savor, good for preserving old paths.

Leave it be, today, I made these remarks,
at the same time something happened everywhere.

And now, these times of constant entertaining
information acquisition with intention
expand
to graphically appear in the mind of any ever
who ever rewatched "My Octopus Friend"

and American Utopia, and the Last Waltz,

Class action inclusive bubble develops, but now,
we stretch, was my grand father low or middle brow?

How long was America MAGA ablized, rooted

Caliche, soft lime, left deep ruts where braked
wagons ground recessed groves, we could see,

those mostly got eroded away after a century.

My grandfather rode from Sweetwater to Williams,
on horses he tamed and made useful,
on horses his father shod, and taught him to shoe,

such knacks as smith's must grow to feel known,
to any degree as fine as tempering spring steel,

using modified fires of inner solar ovens,
the size of the point of the smallest star you see.

Spot welding aitia precepticonical connection,
where chata left a gap open to chabad concoctions.

I’m rewatching Harry Potter, and it hits me
He was only 17 when he saved the world.
Only 17 when he faced death,
Defeated Voldemort,
Buried friends,
And still walked forward.

I rewatched Hannah Montana,
And realized she was a star at 13.
She used to seem so much older—
Confident, funny, double life and all.
Now I’m older than she ever was on screen,
But somehow, I still feel behind.

Katniss volunteered at 16.
Peter Parker was dodging bullets in high school.
Percy Jackson fought gods at 12.
Even Lizzie McGuire seemed to have it more together
Than I do now.

And the characters I used to look up to
Now feel so out of reach.
I used to think it was because they were older
But now I’m the same age,
And somehow…

I’m just sitting on the couch,
Binge-watching their stories,
Still waiting for mine to start.

But maybe the difference
Isn’t the age,
Or the magic,
Or the fame.

Maybe the difference is
They had scripts
And I’m still writing mine.