i am old soil
it’s been exactly one year since i wrote that first poem about you. i sat in bed and started thinking about what happened at sandy hook, and how fragile life is, and how much i wanted you in mine. when you read it you said you teared up and couldn’t believe whatever this was we found in each other. you called it indescribable.

i lied in the same spot a year later with you beside me - emotionless. thinking about how i watched you change with every season. how spring turned into summer turned into autumn turned into winter. how the purity of something new became as hot as the persistent day as it rests too heavily on tired flowers, and how when that tiredness wins, they die like everything else.

i could feel my chest collapsing that night i sat in the stairway and read every word you had written to someone else while you were gone. how you teared up when you read the words he wrote to you, and how you couldn’t believe what you found. you even called it indescribable. now i can’t stop thinking about what those words might have been and how they compare to mine, i can’t sleep because i need to know what you found and if it feels anything like what i lost.

i’m sorry if i’m so stuck in this. it’s just before you came along i spent four years with someone who would watch me watch the world but couldn’t hold my hand and see what i saw. someone who loved me so much but couldn’t understand how a human soul could mimic the seasons, or how a person can be fine for so long but wake up one morning wanting to die all over again. so when that feeling rises over the mountains all i ask of the world is that they greet it differently than pagans when they worship the sun.

i am old soil /

mixed with the compulsion to describe what used to grow here. to describe the indescribable sensation of life in a dying field. as if remembering the smell of your blossoms is the only thing keeping me alive.

june 2014
it’s june. my anxiety came back this month. enough for me to call my therapist and admit to him that i felt scared in the same way that i used to before i got help. he said that being so afraid of death was at least proof that i no longer wanted to die, so i guess progress is progress.

it’s june, and so far i’ve spent a lot of time in bed. my laptop broke, and while i was without it someone hacked my personal information and has been stealing my itunes money. my last two music payments have gone out to an email address i’ve never even heard of. i filed a fraud claim but i doubt i’ll get the seven hundred dollars back. i don’t care, i just want to feel better. i’d pay seven hundred dollars to anyone who could make me feel okay.

it’s june. the anxiety made me sick like it did in 2012. i can’t tell if the heaviness in my chest is from the bronchitis or the panic, but the sensation of having both is all i think about. sometimes i can’t even believe that this is all happening to me at once. the relapse, the sickness, the computer, the money. i guess when bodies shut down they don’t hold back, when bodies fall apart they encourage everything around them to do the same.

it’s june. you and i are officially over. i slept with someone, and i know you want me to regret it, but i just don’t. i was single, you encouraged me to do what i wanted. i thought you were just being mature, i thought we were taking an adult approach to being in each others lives. i thought at most you’d be jealous as my ex lover and happy for me as my best friend, but i often forget how the latter never really existed without the constant resurrection of a relationship that never worked for us. go ahead and hate me, but after three weeks of hell it was nice spending an entire night where i didn’t think about my chest. we didn’t just fuck, we stayed up and watched netflix, and we laughed, and we talked, and it was the first time in so long that i really felt like i was going to be okay. i know it’s those small details that hurt you the most, and that pain you feel toward my contentment is exactly why this friendship had to end. you always said that if anyone did to you what you’ve done to me you wouldn’t stick around, it took a year and a half to discover that you meant it.

this month fucking sucks. i don't know how else to say it. i don't know how to turn this into poetry, it just sucks. i just want to laugh at how much it sucks and move on. i want to look at all the bad that’s happening and scoff at it like i would if i were watching a movie. i think that’s the only way i’m going to get through this.

we'll repeat i 'love you' until the mirror breaks
bubble boy, an insignificant cell on a strangers body. a nobody, with no purpose, but i’ll still find a way to draw parallels to who looks better with their shirt off. now it feels like the world is spinning too quickly and sometimes i just can’t fucking believe that i’m here right now. please, i’m begging you to compare me to someone else. spit in my mouth, on my chest. let me taste you so when you’re gone i’ll know exactly what i’m missing. it’s 1am and i want to be apart of you in ways you’ll only bring up when you talk shit on me years later. until then i’ll kiss your stretch marks, and you’ll run your fingers across old scars, and together we’ll repeat i love you until the mirror breaks.

the root of my problems doesn’t have a root at all. it isn’t a string or trail of bread crumbs i can follow back to a single moment. it isn’t a suppressed thought, it’s the voice that convinces me my thoughts are worth suppressing in the first place.

the emotional weight of six ropes of cum on a human stomach
stillness, quiet, nothing. the mind of a regretful someone coming to terms with his own self worth. comparing who i am now to who i was then is a long desolate highway made up of every road trip i was too scared to take. still, it’s nights like this i lie awake wondering what it means not to simply be alive, but to live.

for me being alive isn’t about living a dangerous life. it isn’t about jumping out of planes or scaling the side of a mountain. it’s the emotional weight of six ropes of cum on a human stomach. it’s lying naked on the floor staring up to a blank ceiling and realizing that you regret everything you’ve done for the last six months of your life. because it’s those flaws that make you weak, and it’s those flaws that make you human, and right now i can’t think of anything more beautiful than when you compared me to a fox because i know that’s exactly what i am. that’s me, i have the nervous demeanor of a fox.

in short, being alive isn’t about living a dangerous life. sometimes there’s comfort in simplicity, in being normal, in hating yourself. sometimes being alive is the realization that you don’t want to die anymore paired like a fine wine with the determined confidence that you’ll never want to again. and just like that, with tears in your eyes, you’ve said it. “i don’t want to die anymore.”