There is a complex emotion often confused with spite
that is difficult to explain.

It is the desire to hurt someone
not because they have hurt you,
not because you want them to be in pain,

but because you desperately
want them to understand
what you’re feeling

because words can only ever do so much

Our lives are peppered with last times
Salted with the unknowing,
in each moment,
when exactly we’re Here living them.

We hope for more sunrises
For more chances to sit on the hilltop
under the moon,
hands boldly interlocked
with the people we love

but we are never guaranteed more chances
or more moments, after this one

People spend so much time trying to forget this

Trying desperately to look away
from what they think
is this sad, awful truth
that must be blurred and kicked
and buried
in the sunlight

But it is this truth and our ability to sit,
with our arm around it,
that can offer us the perspective
we sometimes need
to take the risk of living

To pursue the things in our lives
that otherwise, terrify us too much.
Because as humans we are so good
at convincing ourselves,
that we have something to lose

It is a liberation
not a curse,
to be reminded of the fleeting nature of our lives,
our own impermanence

because everything,
our fear,
our insecurity, pride, anger, and humiliation,
all of these things fall away in the face
of two words so significant,
as The End

There is
some primal part of me that yearns
for solitude

To stand alone
in the backwoods,
no possession to my name
and no thought on my mind
but where I’ll be
when daylight falls,
purple and fading,
beneath the trees

How long is it since you’ve been moved?

In a way your legs can’t offer you

To a place you can only get to
through the touch of a warm hand
you’ve let in, uncertain,
only to find it fold
so carefully
around your heart

How long is it?
Since you were held,
without an ounce of selfishness in it
without the slightest notion
that you would ever be let go

It’s the same every time.

You’re sitting across from me in an abandoned food court or a movie theater or it doesn’t matter, and there is something so unnatural in the movement of your body that I can’t relax.

You ask how I am
and I don’t answer because I can’t look away from the thread of blood that has trickled
from the left corner of your lip.

You think I don’t notice,
you wipe it away and still try to tell me that you’re okay, that you’re Here
that everything’s going to be alright

and in the dream, I still don’t believe you

It can be hard to notice yourself
finding it more and more important
to look fine
than to be, fine