(i)

when I close my eyes
and do my best to cling to nothing

I still feel the earth turn

this body shoots
across empty space
in place
with me still in it

faultlessly hiccupping along
to the rhythm
of something
I would never dare sing

but to shine is to shake
so I must be doing something right
or so I’m told
by the moths hitchhiking in my wake
on their way to brighter lights

and it is okay
if I am just a waystation to them

it is okay

even if I cannot expel the rain

it is okay

for them to shelter here
in the unlived spaces within

because it must mean
that someone kept a light on
all this time
somewhere in there

and therefor,
maybe life
will also find
its way home
to me
again.

---

(ii.)

“she’d never know it was love, if it was comforting.”

it’s been two years
since I wrote that line
about someone
who would never love me again

two years
before I realized
it would the bleakest self portrait
that I would ever paint.

---

(iii.)

they say
there is no hallway pass
for sadness

still…

I will feel naked
when weeping without reason

maybe Dad was right
maybe against my better judgement
I have become a man

or maybe it’s the fact
I pinned my heart
to a stranger’s sleeves
and am yet to get it back

screaming at bygone shadows on the street
to the point my throat expels no sound:

“my love, my love, my love, my love
are you quite lonely enough for me now?!”

---

(iv.)

it’s been a good week
but upon returning here
after midnight
after joy and kinship and exposure
to the romance of friends
after having longed for my own bed
and to finally settle this debt with sleep
I find
that loss,
and sadness
and their inherent silence
have beaten me back here

and though
the joys will linger

this empty bed
is still something I must swallow
on a full stomach.

(v.)

---

I wish

that the day
they write

that we held hands
even in death
and grew flowers
toward each other’s graves

that the feeling of your ruby hair
weighing in my peasant hands
will no longer feel misplaced

and I hope,

oh how I hope
that they never do forget
all those rainy days
where we did let
the doubts of our love
collapse the house

because that
in those
our weakest moments
might just have been us at our best
and there would be
no flowers grown
without

the love
rediscovered at those depths

amen.