My hands resemble my mother’s.
And my smile is almost her's exactly.
But my heart is my father’s.
It is skeptical and questioning;
It is covered in defenses (for everyone else).
Harboring notions that cause it to yield
Without warning,
As if made of the sound in her laugh
When she’s nervous.

So I’m always left crumbling unexpectedly

I don't know who to be for you anymore. Because I can't be myself and I've never mastered being someone else.
My heart is so interwoven with yours that this brokenness is absurdley enhanced.

It isn’t about ownership.
It’s about being willing to belong
-In the most resplendent and terrible way-
To someone else’s heart.

Relatively speaking I'm happy.
And relatively speaking, I'm okay.

"Relatively speaking" is a bullshit term.

Why is it I only feel close to God on overcast autumn days? And even then, it's only for a moment. And it feels like what I suppose we all pretend home should be, before we grew up and messed up and hated what we became.

(Between you and me, I don't think we ever knew what home felt like-it's just some made up thing for nostalgia's sake.)

Today I am a sailor
searching for a swallow,
to assure my tired heart
I'm navigating home.

Right now, there's really just nothing to say.

The ending of summer
caused the sun to cast shadows early,
and the orange glow was just begining
as we were leaving.

It's suiting, don't you think? Everything is very suiting.

Does God play sad music to fit appropriately with our current situations?
Does He sit with pen in hand and lights dimmed while writing our epitaphs?

I wish what I had given you was something tangible and not these pieces of myself that cannot be returned. And I'm not blaming you. I just feel so exposed and raw. I fucked up so immensely; I should not have let you glimpse so much of me. I feel like I'm missing a small part of myself that's imperative to my function.

Can I be anything I want to be?
What about free?
What about not insanity.
What if I throw all my pills down the sink?

Can I be steel on the bottom of the sea?
Waiting for rust and corrosion to eat me.
Finally feeling honest, because I really am that heavy.
Finally feeling something besides calamity.

Can I say what I actually mean?
I’m folding in, like your fold up chair.
I’m disposable. Just like you.
I feel like falling.
Please push me.

I’ve got all these lines and shades of grey
To contend with.
All for my benefit.
And I believe it.
So what the fuck am I doing?
What am I doing.

Remember when your sister was your best friend
And you cried the day she cut her hair
Because you knew she was no longer simply yours.
Remember watching lightning storms
On the front porch, and praying it would rain
If only for a while.
I felt small underneath some fireworks
While my cousins battled, you held hands
And I wanted to be understood.
And what I want is to finally feel some peace
Since I think I’ve always been in flux,
I’ve always been waiting for my heart to stop moving.
Always moving.
Remember when mom caressed our faces,
And it seemed like that was enough.
Why isn’t that enough?
What will be enough.

I fall in love with broken people
To me they are the most beautiful.
I’m attracted to their emptiness
I want to fill it up for them.
I hate that “good” are optimists
And “bad” are depressed pessimists;
Honesty is brutality
And "righteousness" is pretentious love.

For Mara

I don’t know you.
I don’t know what you’ve gone through.
I’m not sure of the small things that make you laugh
Or your favorite alcoholic drink.
I don’t know the type of finger nails you have
Or how many scars run across your knees.
I don’t know you.

But I know you.
I know what you’ve gone through.
What you left behind was so precious and so dear.
And what you left behind was everything you understood and were comfortable with.
I know what it is to feel so full of brokenness that
You are actually empty.
I know you.

A soul so deep cannot remain drained.

Ugh

I am every which way.
I’m the path the power lines take.
I’m a part of the blue jay
With buoyant flight
And vibrant display.

For My Bosses: My Drinking Story

We got drunk on a 20 dollar bottle of wine, Mark and I.
Across the room they did the same, with a different kind.
Ours was the type they shared when he proposed.
She asked for a taste so “I can remember”.
I watched it move through her.
I watched it move her.
(They lived in a place with a willow tree,
Gravestones, and crooked streets.
I felt them shatter each other’s souls and
Her ring was always breaking.)
We ran along the autumn asphalt
And picked tulips like they were ours to keep.
We danced under the mercury lights;
It made us golden, made us glow, like heroes-
But I could never save you.
We climbed up a fire escape
On some rundown apartment.
We took off our tops and yelled at the cars
Four stories below us on E street.
You no longer move me.