Clouds Are Cliche

Microscopic tributaries flow from a single droplet.

Colors oozing from the tears we lose

Create the dried oceans wrinkling the papers.

Nothing holds similar power to

Old, forgotten tears on the page of a book;

The ink does not bleed.

It cries across the chapters,

Desperate and grasping for more.

It cries like I do

And like my predecessors did.

And it cries like the others will

You have been everything, and your lies seize him

Under the restaurant of war, she is a grotesque season,

So I rush to trampled houses, so greedily

And without understanding of the fallen roof.

Nor do you, do you curse 

Zeus; do you mind the strength, do you

Need the glory, do you steal the will,

You cling to the nurse dabbing your wounds.

O, the nothing sea at night, was it

Beyond language. It has been wrecked; do you

Find yourself wanting to dive into its harrowing tide?

We wander among disease,

The dark heir to our thrones, the speechless heroine,

The light taunts me.

It flickers on the other side of the darkness,

Luring me.

Everyone always says

Do not move towards the light at the end of the tunnel,

But it seems to be the only comforting thing here.

It feels like home.

And so I start towards it.

The closer I get, the bigger it is.

When I finally reach it,

I find a bulb twenty times my size

And other moths, like me,

Who sought the warmth and safety

The limit of x cubed as x tends to infinity

Does not exist. It cannot be defined.

We’ve been taught that from a young age.

Maybe not in calculus terms,

But every child believes they are unstoppable;

There is no limit to what can be achieved.

But what happens when adults

Stop focusing on infinity

And instead teach about zero?

Because the limit of x cubed as x tends to zero

Is zero. No room to grow. Stuck.

From the left and the right: zero.

That’s what we become. Closer and closer to zero

Your obituary is late.

At least, I think it is.

I heard this week that you were

Dead

A claim with no proof.

I have no reason to believe it,

And yet here I am

Sitting uncomfortably waiting for my own end.

That’s always what happens with a

Teenage Death

It makes us expect our own.

As I politely wait for

Death

To take me, I’ll think of you,

Ethan,

When you run out of emotions,

There’s not much left you can do.

You can sit at the table and eat breakfast,

But you might as well not

Because you can’t taste anything.

You can go to your classes,

But you might as well not

Because it’s not like you’ll be able to learn anything.

You can binge watch a tv show,

But you might as well not

Because the characters don’t mean anything.

You can sit and stare at the wall,

And you might as well

If a term has not been used,

it doesn’t mean the concept does not exist.

Time existed before seconds.

Triangles existed before Pythagoras. 

Existence and Understanding are not synonymous,

Will never be synonymous.

So maybe people did not understand homosexuality,

As children we ran together,

Picking bleeding hearts from bushes

And throwing them into the wind.

But this path has overgrown

As we have grown older

And I can no longer reach you.

Once we flew like power rangers

With napkin parachutes above our heads.

How did those carefree kids become

Your doodles are stuck in my head.

The bubble letters, the water bottles, the patterns

Are all stuck, pushing at the walls of my subconscious,

Trying to break free. I don’t know why your doodles

Live in my brain, but it’s been four months since they set up camp,

And there’s no sign of them leaving anytime soon.

Your little nothings have become big somethings to me.

I don’t know why. They seem like nothings to me.

Yet here I am thinking about

“CLOUDS ARE CLICHE no they’re not”

Written in your notebook surrounded by drawings of

Whatever was in front of you, and I’m wondering

If clouds are cliche and which part of you is right.

I’m wondering how you can disagree with yourself

On the inside cover of a black moleskin notebook.