“That’s deep,” they scoffed.
“We’re all deep.” I replied. “Our minds spiral inward, maybe forever,
don’t you get it? The depth is always there
it’s about how much of it you choose to explore.
How many doors are you willing to open?
How eager are you to face what you might find there?
You hear constantly how important it is to look up and look ahead,
but how many times have you looked down?
So many of us are just skimming along the surface,
eyes flitting to the next exciting thing happening around us,
thoughts wrapped up in what everyone else is thinking or doing,
and we’re content with this. We laugh at the suggestion of anything else
as if it’s taboo or something, to dive in, to be deep.”

I squashed spiders, before I met you.
I lifted my hand to strike one day but you stopped me.
You reached for a cup, and scooped it in.
You carried it outside into the grass and I looked at you in such frustration,
like I’d just seen the stupidest, most pointless thing.
“It didn’t have to die,” you said to me,
and I was quiet.
I remember thinking later,
how soft you have managed to stay.
All the horrors that have set up shop in your life,
selling you nothing but cheap shots and venom,
yet I see no bitterness in you.
You make me want to be better.
I just thought you should know that.

You said you wanted to walk out into an abyss,
and lose yourself.
And I wanted to tell you
if you could just step back far enough
you’d see, that you’re already there.

Our planet is buoyed in a boundless ocean,
an expanding and deadly chaotic mess of black.
The overwhelming majority of which we have never,
will never, see.
And for all we know, it’s just us out here.
We are trapped in this abyss
but we’re also all here together.

Maybe we should focus on that

It feels a lot like bleeding out on the sidewalk
but mostly like sitting on a cliff face,
taking in the beautiful view

The same way that I could steal the heat
from your skin with cold hands,
I wish that I could take away your pain

We were best friends, and then we were more.
Then we were nothing at all
and after all this time it is so strange to still hear your laugh in my head.
A record skipping,
a sound, an image,
caught in some crevice of my mind.