When I’m with you I’m afraid you might hear the words that flap like birds inside my chest.
That if you listen too closely, you will hear the songs I have turned you into,
in the air as it leaves my lungs

If you decide to feel
people might think you’ve gone mad,
like you’ve taken up the business of exploding.
Because instead of dousing the wicks of lit fireworks
yours will launch
headlong into the sky and scream
every color they’d been trying so hard to hide inside themselves.

And there are some who will look up with tears in
their eyes and exclaim, This is beautiful
These are the same colors I see in myself
and I feel this like a quake in my heart

And there are many who will turn away and shrink,
uncomfortable, grumbling that it’s nothing special at all.

Everything that’s happened and could happen
has happened, is unfolding still, somewhere else in time.

There’s a me somewhere out there,
still wondering who I’ll grow up to be

There’s a me somewhere complaining about the carrots on my plate.
That would give anything to be older, to be here

And I wish I could fold back all these pesky layers of time between us
to tell them they’re wrong.
That they need only wait to get their wish,
that it’s me, plummeting ever irreversibly forward
who would trade anything to go back again,
just one last time.

All of the world’s great scientific minds came together and concluded that something horrible must be poisoning the people of Earth.

They were hurting each other and themselves, with words and guns and when that wasn’t enough, they laughed at the damage it caused,
even to the planet and the air.

They focused on money and war and colored filters that made their pictures rosier than they really were, because they couldn’t stomach what they really looked like. They let the fear and pain inside them fester until it exploded out into a million pieces of shrapnel that imbedded into everyone and everything, and them.

These scientists knew this couldn’t last much longer so they poured every drop of their collective resources into finding a solution. They ran tests and collected data, sleepless and dedicated. They brewed elixirs and capsules and syrups and there was even this powder you could sprinkle into your food and not even taste it. Thousands of dogs and cats and rabbits and mice gave their lives to help find an answer, and the scientists all held their breath as they watched every single attempt at a cure, fail.

The lab’s janitor looked up from the puddle they’d been pushing around with their mop. They wiped the sweat from their lips with their sleeve and declared that the poison was hate. That the only real antidote, was love

It’s the talks I’ve had with you in my own head that I lose the most sleep over.
It’s 3 am and I’m awake again
replaying scenes in my mind that have never happened,
over words I’ve never said

I want you to close your eyes
and picture that you have this superpower,
one where you can go back to any time in your life
and change something you did.
You get to make a different choice,
the one you really wanted.

Now open your eyes.
Tell yourself that you’re alive,
right now, in that memory. That pivotal moment.
Now is your chance to do the thing you want to do,
right here.
Hold onto that feeling and let it carry you
through the choices that matter most to you,
the ones you shy away from, because this is all we get.
This is your shot. The closest thing we will ever have to a rewind button