#opo

The meadow of our love

changes with the seasons.

Spring has come again.

The once distant sun returns,

beaming across your face,

and nurturing the buds.

The rains thaw from sleet

to warm April showers

that make the ground soft

and the air smell sweet

with new beginnings.

Maybe it was foolish

to spend winter camped

in a meadow with no fire,

but i think it was worth it

to see the first sunrise

I've been in an odd position most of my life

Priviledged enough to have a house

But not to have a home

I've never not been from a broken home

A euphemism that sounds worse

Than the reality that marriage is hard

The intact home was worse than broken

There were no cracks to leak out of

Trapped inside a soda can about to burst

There are millions of stories about "home"

And each and everyone of them agrees

That home is not a place but a feeling

That feeling is always just out of reach

If home is security, comfort, and belonging

I've long since wanted

someone to read my palm

And tell me when I'll meet "the one"

So I could stop looking for a while

I was boy-crazy my whole adolescence

In love with the idea of love

Looking for it in every boy I met

Finding out I was also interested in girls

Only made it worse

There's a good chance

If you ever threw a smile my way

I've considered you an option

If you've made me laugh

You can consider me in love

I no longer believe in "the one"

But I still long for a soul mate

I'd love to have that certainty

In the kitchen, I hear pots clanging

Someone is playing the drums

I remember this game from childhood

And though I have other memories of pans

No one throws kitchenware in my home

In the kitchen, I hear laughter

It is unmistakable

Though there were once times

I hardly knew the difference

Between laughter and sobs

In the kitchen, I hear music

I will join them and we will dance

They will look at me with such love

I forget the years where I felt

no one looked at me at all

In the kitchen, I hear sizzling

The garlic and onions

Smell like limitless potential

Someone is making a delicious meal

Remembering is a violent act

No memory is sacred

Every moment is blood-soaked

Numbers are cut in half

Or else stretched to their breaking point

Remembering is never without casualty

Words and phrases drop like flies

Complex feelings are boiled alive

And their skeletons are puppeteered

I want to be like you

     I envy the way your loss lasts

You carry every little grief with you

     You understand why you feel sad

My skin is smooth

     not a mark nor scar to be seen

           nor even a wrinkle on my face

no one knows the truth

     of where it is that I have been

           now I no longer leave a trace

Were I like you

    moving so slow and dying so fast

I would watch the healing of my wounds

    and cherish every scab

And O, that sweet bitterness of heartbreak

    to have less than a century to love

        and to remember every time

Centuries does not erase the ache

    but I do not know what it is made of

        devastation and mystery combine

You are like you

    and yet do not know it as gift

the way you cannot help but follow-through

    how it all comes so swift

While you often don't know the why

    behind the patterns you repeat

         it is still there within

digging deep can bring it to your mind's eye

    you can learn from your history

"I can tell you went to school for words"

she says, and over the weekend it becomes

"went to school for words"

remarked, every time i speak precisely

it almost feels like an insult,

though she means no harm,

the idea that the words are not mine

but belong to ASU's COM program

and my degree

did expand my vocabulary

but i have always been precocious

always believed in the hope

that i could perhaps

create a kind of telepathy

perfectly transmitting

a thought to you

from me

but there has never been

a perfect word

that means everything

I need it to mean

which is precisely what makes these words mine

the room was always

a particular shade of indigo

that made my gel pens glow.

and i stayed up until dawn

in my nightclub of one

and in a crowd of people

my mouth frozen with slush

the color of sky

My pthalo ink was the only comfort

within arms reach

and i don't know which hurt worse

the ache of pressing on a bruise

or knowing that no one would ever touch you