You played the harp
Some times I wonder
If you knew what you were doing
Or if you only plucked the pretty
Strings 

She hated all that made her
I loved all made of her.
We had just become
Too well versed in the art of
Being apart. 

I gave it all to you.
A night at the Fraternity house
A drunken drive to my home
The one painted yellow,
The one with the green shutters
Your lips, lemon-lime
Tangy from the Sprite mixers
Your hair, as red as I was ready
Your skin, milky-white
With cinnamon colored freckles

I counted every speck
In hopes of finding the secret
Of making you love me back;
Of making you stay 

You tend to gage the seasons on the 
Colors that find their way
Into my hair.
A skill picked up from me,
From the days
When I would count down days through the 
Edges of swords that line your
Calloused-cauliflower eyes.
So I may knit you a blanket of threads—
As fine as the floss I use to clean
The empty spaces between your bones—
All to keep you safe and shrouded
From the world
Pining to consume you,
Open your cage with tools forged in fire,
Then eat you.

This shroud will keep you safe;
Ensure your scent does not
Escape.  

There was that night
She came and stole me away
From my family and we
Left to visit her mother,
Carefully placing multi-colored
Christmas lights on her grave,
Carefully sipping out of our Coleman mugs
Filled to the brim with a mixture of
Marshmallow froth and hot chocolate. 
This is how I hope to remember you,
Lying there—hiding under a night sky
With the Winter colored clouds 
Wishing us the warmth
Of life, and joy found in
The glow of the lights on the 
Surface. 

I’ve been living in my dreams for what seems like centuries, attempting to pick up the things I’ve lost in my past; experiencing things I am far too afraid to embrace. Sometimes I awake with immense joy for what the world has in store, but other times like today I am forced to tears. 
     I had a dream about love, but a love I will never experience. A love that was real, messy, and powerful; one I’m even afraid to portray on paper. It was a form of love no one will ever be able to mimic. My heart breaks knowing no one will truly experience the love I was part of while asleep. Maybe that’s a good thing, it’s something to strive for. Perhaps it’s all part of this divine plan, or maybe I live in my dreams a little too much. More likely, it was just representative of the egotistical maniac I’ve become lately. Whatever it was, I just want to live in it.
     I stayed in bed praying to fall back into the dream where I left off, embraced in that grip that felt so familiar yet new. The whispers in my ears and the facts that I’m too afraid to admit. But all that happens when I close my is is nothing. So, I wrote the story on my wall, above my bed, to never forget. It’s said that your last thought is what you dream about, so maybe if that story is what I fall asleep next to, it is what my dreams will be about. What if I fall asleep at the same time and watch the same thing, and listen to the same things, or even worry about the same things; because, damn, it was wonderful. I don’t want to lose it like I don’t want to forget to breathe or walk or eat or die, because this dream has become a part of me. It had become the possibility I want to embrace, the basis of the hero I will become. It’s pumping through my veins, waking up all my organs. I’m back.


It would be easy to slap a fiction label on this, but I won’t lie…it’s not fiction. I’m back and ready to be my own hero and to fulfill all those other mantras I spent months repeating. 

“Sometimes when I cant fall asleep
I wrap up my arms across my chest and
I pretend your with me
I pretend your where you should be”

You hid me in your
Bathroom for days at a time
Kept secret behind the
Deodorants and fragrances.
Learning how to escape.
Crawling through the pipes
That riddled the insides of those walls.
Teaching me how not to lose my hair,
Or go grey.
Forgetting the lessons from Sunday mornings,
Because when you’re older
Those mornings are for driving.
Yes, it was there, in your bathroom
Where I lost what it meant to be a boy.
Washed down the bathtub drain
Like the dirt you washed from
My Feet. 

This will always remind me of the girl who wore bandannas and taught me how to skip school. You’re married now, but you’ll always be the one who took me to my first show.