will you learn to love yourself the way i know you should?

will we find the courage there to call our friendship good?

the world is closing in on me, i think it’s time i go.

and with your sad young eyes you’ve taught me things i didn’t know.

and my heart broke down to powder there and i wish i’d let it show.

and i listened as you said to me you’d rather die than grow.

i was born to follow you.

don’t let romance and beating hearts change what we came to do.

don’t go home, don’t look ahead, don’t look behind.

everything we were is dead. die, then grow.

sometimes i want to drink a whole bottle of vodka by myself.

feel that acid in my throat, dissolving its lining and bringing momentary life into my limbs.

sometimes i want to smoke pot until there is nothing left to my vision except colors i’ve never seen before.

sometimes i want to not give a shit. for once. i want a couple of minutes just to break out of my skeleton.

sometimes i want to wake up in someone’s front lawn with head pounding and start trying to run down the street, laughing at the people laughing as they watch me, laughing because i don’t know where the hell i am or where the hell i’m going or who the hell i am.

sometimes i want to climb into a stranger’s truck bed, and they would tell me stories of childhood abuse and escaping to the west coast, and i’d make them deposit me at a mountain i could only see at a distance.

i would climb it, and at the top i would ask God to not give me a purpose.

to get rid of the idea of success. to get rid of classrooms, of business attire, of the mentality that we’re all actually going somewhere.

the only idea is this: instead of a gun, you hold a pencil. that’s it.

the world is dying, and you want your masters degree.

i’ll clamber down from the peak and wander. until this world finally burns to the ground.

i saw her.

through your blinds into your room, i saw her sit on your bed.

i saw her smile.

i saw you turn off the lights.

but before the darkness, i saw you smile back.

i sat on a bench outside your window, and i shivered a little.

my eyes glazed over, and i stood up and stuck my hands in my pockets.

i stepped on every crack in the cobblestones and watched one of my knees buckle and heard my breath catch.

i made it to the table and laid on top of it.

the stars were so brilliant, that my first thought was how much i wished you could see them.

and in spite of myself, i smiled.

and with that most unhappy smile, and the memory of your smiles to her, and the table grooves in my back, and the stars yelling at me with brightness, i felt something deep inside of me slip away.

it made me want to sit up and try and pull it back in, but i knew something was holding me down. and in that ghostly iron grip, i knew that thing hadn’t just escaped.

it had died.

so as you touched that bare, white skin of hers,

i dimmed.

when you whispered soft words in other ears,

i cracked.

the stars winked and the black sky pulsed.

i could not find where i had gone.

i was handed a shovel as we walked into your backyard at night.

i held my hand in front of me to search for the warmth of your back.

my bare feet were soaked in the grass, and i buried my head into my collar as tree branches snagged in my hair.

something white fluttered a few feet ahead, and there it was. a fire kindling on discarded newspapers.

your dad smiled as we dug a ditch around the bonfire, the sparks smoldering and flying in every direction.

we leaned on our shovels and smudged the dirt around on our faces, thinking about the future and seeing the faces of politicians crinkle and the headlines turned to ember.

i noticed a red rim settle in around your eyes, and i knew we were ancient. 

we were the first people, eagerly watching the sky for the passing of time.

observing a flame for the first time, watching it grow along with our hope and along with our descendants and along with a world past our caves and our land.  

we were divine: we were creating light. i felt godly, as words crumpled away into silent air, and will soon be replaced by more.

what if the air suddenly refuses to consume our words?

i noticed an orange tear on your face, and i knew we were ancient. 

you know…

stars are all dead. most of them, anyway.

dead light that’s taken a bajillion years to reach my eyes.

all that beautiful stuff dead.

i wonder what i’ll look like when i’m dead.

people who knew me, but i didn’t know them, stopping by my open coffin, dabbing their eyes and saying, “oh, she looks so beautiful.”

so, a peaceful face. maybe a slight smile.

or i end up in a bunch of pieces, ashes floating on the ocean’s surface.

stars, deceased light, floating in the absolute absorption of light.

black, the color most commonly associated with mourning.

the end.

secrets.

violence.

evil.

elegance.

cruelly beautiful.

my dad asked me the other day who my best friend is.

easy, i thought, my mouth already open.

but…i didn’t know. the strongest possible form of friendship - who matched that?

i liked when it was a decision.

“let’s be best friends.”

“okay.”

and you were, that was that.

i don’t know how to define a friend anymore. there are people who give to me, and i give back.

that is a choice. usually.

yet sometimes i can’t even tell who is doing the giving, what is being given…and if i even allowed myself to give.

or it just happened.

“no, dad. i don’t have one. just a lot of unique people. very different people.”

he understood. my strange words made sense.

so, he is one of those people.

i wonder how many are out there in the world right now that i could give to, and they could give back.

are they also laying on front lawns and watching dead light? pretending to pinch it with their fingers?

you’ve been dead for eleven years.

and my body does not look old, but my bones are aged and aching.

I have not been on this earth but two decades.

“You have so much ahead of you.”

What if all that is supposed to be in my future has been stolen and already lived by my past?

What if I am one hundred years old, not because of unique and extraordinary events, but because of the emotions invested and drained in the constant little moments?

You were forced to grow old, to rush past life, in the spans of a few seconds.

We do not age based on our experiences and wisdom gained…

We age based upon how life has decided to treat us, in the degrees of how fast it feeds on our innocence.

Your talk of brighter things coming causes my eyes to dull and my mind to numb.

My ears are stopped, 

my days have been numbered for the present and past

the rest is a great space of nothing.

We die at different points in life.

You died on an airplane as it plowed into a building.

I died in a boy’s bedroom on a summer night.

and what is a naked girl?

the goosebumps

the small hairs on her arms and legs

the razor burn

the curve of imperfect breasts

the little pockets of fat above the hip bones

the scraped knees

the arch of the neck, swoop of collarbone

unkempt hair.

bare.

one bent leg, toes crunching into the carpet.

is she beautiful to you now? 

does the absence of clothes

make it so?

is she a piece of meat

for you to eat

or do you think about how much

she must love you 

the way she stands

those bright eyes

she has never been 

naked

in front of any boy

before

this girl. out of the world.

her soul is being given to you.

her body is a nothing.

her emotions, her heart falling into your rough hands.

are a something.

are you her everything

while she is your

something?

You once had a face filled with blushes and hues,

but like paintings abandoned in houses left bare,

those tinges have seeped away, dripped in your shoes.

There’s a shade of crestfallen you constantly wear.

But like paintings abandoned in houses left bare,

your skin is not flesh, instead, layers of dust.

There’s a shade of crestfallen you constantly wear,

a red dress you’ve sewn with the threads of lost trust.

Your skin is not flesh, instead, layers of dust,

your bones are exposed for the teeth of the years.

A red dress you’ve sewn with the threads of lost trust,

dissolved by the acids of Time and your fears.

Your bones are exposed for the teeth of the years,

Life stole you from me in the park while I played.

Dissolved by the acids of Time and your fears,

your eyes swam together and started to fade.

Life stole you from me in the park while I played,

he’s a senile old man who is wreaking of booze.

Your eyes swam together and started to fade,

his hands gripped your neck as he whispered, “You lose.”

He’s a senile old man who is wreaking of booze,

his footsteps like drips from a rusty sink faucet.

His hands gripped your neck as he whispered, “You lose,”

Your light falters like the tail end of a comet.

His footsteps like drips from a rusty sink faucet,

he laughs and he snorts, ‘cause he knows that we’re blind.

Your light falters like the tail end of a comet,

a miniscule speck that nobody will find.

some days your eyes have yellow in them, flecks that pulse while you stare at the words on a page intently. 

yesterday, they were a thousand shades of blue, swirling together and colliding into the pupils. they watched the sky until i couldn’t tell which was reflecting which. a cloud settled into your right iris.

a week ago they were striped with green, wavy and curling at the edges where the white begins.

your smile ate up your cheeks to talk to those eyes, wind from the open window ruffling our hair and singing an ancient tune. the stripes showed your appreciation that it had decided to share it with us in your truck.

tomorrow, they will have a faint background of red and black, your neck swaying and bobbing to music, to heavy beats and dark lyrics, fueling your anger and confusion. i’ll watch in pain as those colors seep away your grins and gnaw at your sockets.

jesus was a great preacher.

buddha, an intelligent teacher.

oh yeah, muhammad was pretty smart, too.

class, morality is relevant.

truth belongs to the ones who seek it.

just let go of those hard things, simply empty your mind.

but question what you’ll find.

every religion speaks the same language, each is all-inclusive.

the bible and koran? spitting images of one another.

what do i get at? i get towards harmony. i reach for death, because it is lovely.

i am a good person, yes. my own heaven awaits, my body thirsts for the soil from which we came.

i wish to walk side-by-side with buddha; he was so much like jesus.

did i tell you the koran is the bible?

students, won’t you take my outstretched hand, and the answers it holds?

“let us not argue over god,” whitman says. let us take his advice.

whitman…is what we’re learning.

god is in us all, he is god, but we are god.

i close my eyes and clench my hands into fists, and my breathing refuses to slow.