Brothers

I remember when we used to play hide and seek together as children,
Running and laughing with the wind.
We were small, and I helped you find good hiding places.
But your laughter would give you away.
I never doubted that you'd be that fun until you grew old,
And then,
I figured,
You'd yell at kids to get off your lawn as an old man inside joke.
I watched you grow up,
Just like you watched me grow up
And
I never doubted when you fell,
You'd pick yourself back up off the ground
And dust off your own skinned knees.
I remember
Climbing into bed with you when we were little,
because even though you were younger than I was,
You somehow always chased away my scary dreams.
I remember you always wanted to share things.
Even if it was your last piece of bubble gum.
You stuck up for me a lot.
Even when you knew that maybe I wasn't being quite so honest about who was responsible for the empty brownie pan.
You never had a shortage of hugs,
And you stood your ground even when we fought amongst ourselves.
These are the things that I know you will pass on to your son.
Your strength,
Your laughter,
Your honor,
Your love,
Your guts
And your glory.
You'll share your last piece of bubblegum with him,
And play hide and seek, always helping him to find the best hiding places
You'll dust off his skinned knees and
Scare away his bad dreams.
I know, because I have watched you do all of these things and more.
You're the best little brother in the whole world,
And it's only fitting
That you'd become the best dad in the whole world.
I love you, bro.
Congratulations.

Foundations.

You
Lit up the night sky with your
Bazillion watt smile
And painted the air
Purple and blue with fingertips
Outstretched from your palm
In the universal sign of
Hello.
I walked on.
A woman on a divine holy mission to forget
What went wrong
Why was it raining in the house
That my heart built?
Why couldn't I see the sky through the holes in the roof?
You appeared there,
Standing outside on my soul porch,
A few days later.
You were broken,
Asking for solstice and shelter
From the storm and
I knew then,
Because you painted sunsets in thin air
And shone more brilliantly than
The full moon that I
Could fix you.
I could offer you shelter
From the thunder bursting through your hollow ribcage.
You were raw and screaming on the inside
So I took a piece of plaster
From the walls of my heart
and hand fed it to you.
And then I watched you die.
As your body convulsed
And
You cried out to a faceless god
I held you,
Watched tears stream down your face
In a death rattle
That echoed in my brain until I heard nothing else.
I stripped you naked,
Washed your empty body
As the house that my heart built
Crumbled.
I watched the sun come up
As I laid you on a broken mattress
And sang you lullabies.
I fell asleep next to you
Wishing it were as easy for me
As it was for you.
I awoke to your fingers in my hair,
and your lips on mine,
Your smile dazzling as the desert summer sun.
I knew then,
We would rebuild the house,
But it would be the house our hearts built.
Together.

Words.

I write you Love letters on
stained bar napkins and used matchbooks.
I never let you read them,
Because I fear you'd find them cliche.
I keep them anyway,
Stored in a shoebox locked away in my heart.
Most people think in pictures,
But I,
I think in words and phrases.
The memories I have with you are
Metaphors and similes,
Phrases and clauses,
etched on the paper walls of my mind.
They say that love
Can make a poet out of anyone.
But you were a poet long before I met you.
I have kept every word you have ever written to me,
Because I am a hopeless romantic,
And I wanted to keep you close,
When you existed a world away.
I never told you how I felt,
Never told you I'd kept little pieces of you,
Never told you I'd never let go of you.
I loved you.
Wordlessly,
Selflessly,
Speechlessly
And all I have
Are words I wanted to say to you.
Letters I should have sent,
Even when you lived a world away.
I still somehow believe
That our hearts have always beat in sync.
I still love you
And in my star-crossed happily ever after
Trains of thought,
You are there.
Waiting for me.

Naked.

You asked me, how do I like you?
How do I like you.
I said I liked you as you, because I'd be pretty disappointed if you were someone else
And
That was the truth
But
How do I like you?
I like you naked.
You're going to laugh,
And say
I like you naked, too.
But that's not what I mean.
I like you naked
Stripped of all your physicality.
I like lying there, next to you,
And losing myself in you.
Your essence, your very nature,
Your being.
We talk a lot about souls,
You and I.
I like your soul.
I like seeing it in your face,
Hearing it in your voice.
Feeling it
When you touch me.
I like you naked.
I like hearing what's on your mind,
And I like knowing you trust me enough to let me in.
I like you mean, and nasty and rough around the edges,
And I like you strong yet gentle,
I like how you make me feel safe.
I like you naked.
I like meddling around in your mind,
Watching what makes you tick
And what doesn't.
I like you naked.
I like not just hearing,
But feeling and touching and tasting and smelling
You.
I like you
Unconditionally.
I like the game of devil's advocate we play,
I like you naked.
I like waking up next to you,
And falling into sleep to your breathing.
I like being with you, around you, beside you and on your mind.
I like you naked.
I like you like school children like recess.
It's usually what they'd say their favorite subject is.
You're my favorite subject.
You're my muse.
My heart,
My soul.
and quite possibly,
My forever.
I like you for everything you are, everything you have been, and everything you may or may not become.
Mostly,
Though,
I like you naked.

Shelter.

"I never said it was a dealbreaker!"
As we drove home on the I-10,
I practically screamed the sentence at you,
The way my soul was screaming at you.
I couldn't muster many words.
I was trying to hold myself together
Even if
My eyes were leaking mascara  kissed tears
And my brain was reeling as if it had been slapped.
I was
Twisting on the inside,
A proverbial
Apocalypse of emotion.
One.
Boy meets girl.
Two.
Girl falls in love with boy.
Three.
Boy breaks girl's heart.
No!
history has a tendency of repeating itself
NO!
i must be having a nightmare.
NO!
pleasewakemeuppleasewakemeuppleasewakemeup...
NO!
I am the strong one.
I am the glue that sticks people back together,
I am the rock in the dam that keeps it from exploding...
Exploding.
My heart is exploding.
My body is tearing apart from the shrapnel
This is Hell.
This is War.
I'm shell shocked.
My heart is coming home
From the front lines
In a pine box,
I'm fleeing back into a foxhole
Where they say
No one is an atheist
So I'm praying
I am on my knees while gunfire grenades and mines are exploding,
I'm praying
To whatever deity is listening
"Please, please if you're listening, if there's anyone out there listening, forgive me for what I am about to do."
I knelt there in the dirt,
For what felt like forever after you left,
My ears were ringing with
I love yous,
And
The sound of the truck door slamming.
I let the tears drip off the tip of my nose,
And onto a small flower
and I realized,
In that moment,
That when we met a seed was planted.
And we nurtured it,
Protected it,
And grew
Us.
And I was not about to watch that blossom wilt and die.
I promised you,
That I would walk the road that led to your heart.
I never break a promise.
I stood,
The storm calmed,
And I carefully stepped out of my foxhole,
And into the minefield.

Forgiveness

This is not a love poem.
I found you years ago,
Though it seems sometimes like yesterday.
I was instantaneously drawn to you,
Like a flies to rotting fruit.
You were broken and I knew I could fix you.
I could duct tape your broken wings and help you fly
Straight into the sun.
But you were no Icarus,
And my last name never has been Wright.
You were Henry Miller
And I could have been
Aniäs Nin.
But I was bound hand and foot to another.
That never stopped us.
We drank cheap beer together,
And reminisced about the old days when we were young
Before we knew the other existed.
It didn't matter that night,
We were too drunk
Or too high
To notice.
We played poker with body language.
You'd bet with a look
And I raised you a touch,
And before we knew it, we were going to your room.
But this isn't a love poem.
"Jess, I know I don't have much and you have a son, but I have a plan,"
Shut up and kiss me.
I wasn't interested in plans or what you had,
I was selfish.
I was bored with what I had and you, You were shiny and new and beautiful.
You made love to me three times that night,
I fucked you three times that night.
It was a full moon,
And I was hungrier than a starved wolf.
You held me all through the night.
You brought me coffee and cigarettes in the morning,
I thought you were just being a gentleman,
You actually were taking care of me.
I was a master manipulator,
A master of secrets,
A master of the dark.
And you were trying to feel something, anything, but the hole left in your heart.
This is not a love poem.
My life as I knew it,
The life I had carefully put together,
The life I shared with him,
Crumbled two days later.
For as Much as I have tried,
I have never been a good liar.
You were there,
But I shunned you almost as if it was your fault.
This is not a love poem.
It took me two years after our night together,
To finally figure it all out.
You've found someone new now,
So have I.
And we have talked since,
And I apologized,
But I don't think you ever heard me.
You told me not to worry about it,
You told me that you were thankful.
You told me you were fine,
I believed you,
Because you were all of those things.
I figured it all out, two years later.
I self sabotage.
I think I don't deserve things,
Good things,
Good people,
Goodness.
I had all of those things,
And I took all of those things away from myself.
You were an innocent bystander,
Not a catalyst.
You are good and right and selfless.
I see it in you every time we bump into each other.
You were never wrong for what we did.
I took you away from me, too, that weekend.
I lost out on you,
And not in the romantic way.
I damaged things,
Burnt bridges,
Broke bonds.
I see that now.
And for the record, I learned my lesson and forgave myself
For the record,
I am sorry.
This is not a love poem.
This is an apology.

Omission

Today, I thought about you.
I thought about the way the dim light on your dresser illuminates the planes of your face.
How hauntingly beautiful that is.
I wondered if you knew how I see you.
I watch you often.
I memorize the slightest details of your face.
I can see it when you hold back a smile,
or when you're being seductive,
I can see the ghosts that lie behind your eyes.
You asked me the other night
what my favorite part of your body was.
I could have easily said that I loved your cock,
watched your ego inflate,
but I didn't.
I said that I loved the space in between your shoulder blades, especially when you lay on your stomach.
I could tell that you were suprised.
That space, though,
that little flat crevice,
I love it.
When you lay on your side,
with your back to me,
I can nestle my face in there
and breathe you in.
The light on your dresser
casts a perfect shadow
so sometimes it looks like
a valley
and I like to trace my fingers up and down the hills of your shoulders.
Your shoulders attach to your arms.
And your arms,
they tell stories about you.
Those arms pin me down in
fits of passion,
they throw me up against walls,
across your bed,
and against counters.
Your arms keep me safe.
They hold me up when I can no longer stand,
they wrap around me when I need to be close,
they bring me back to earth
after you've thrusted me into oblivion.
I love your arms.
Your hands come next.
Your hands are fucking beautiful.
They create beautiful things, treasures, art.
Your hands invoke orgasms, cries of ecstasy, and pleasurable pain.
Your hands hold mine,
They tangle in my hair,
And they trace up and down my spine.
I love your hands.
I love your chest.
I feel safe up against it,
Whether I'm being crushed or held,
It supports me.
I press my ear against it often,
Just to be close to your heart.
I love your chest.
I love your legs.
Your legs carry you to me.
Your legs dance with me.
I think about how beautiful they are,
Well muscled, almost statuesque.
Your legs are made of steel and silk
I love your legs.
And your face...
Your face...
Your eyes are icicles and snow and sky and ocean.
I stare into them and see the infinate,
And I see cold fires.
Your lips are soft and perfectly shaped to fit mine,
And when you kiss me,
I feel every part of your soul behind it.
Your mouth tells me secrets, stories, truths, and promises.
You build bridges,
Tempt storms
And break me with your mouth.
Your nose is handsome.
It provides the perfect perch for your glasses,
A landing spot for my staccato kisses,
And finds its way to the soft spot on my neck, where shoulder meets clavicle.
I love your face.
So when you asked me what part of your body I favoured,
I made an omission of truth.
I favour all of your parts,
From your head to your feet.