I was five perhaps
When you buried treasure
In the backyard
Underneath them apple trees.
You told me, one day
Someone will find it
And know you existed.
You died a year later.

I was nine when I took
A shovel to the Earth
Digging three holes,
One for each apple tree.
Just so I'd be certain.
I cant remember how long I dug
or how deep I even went.
I was so young, digging holes,
Peering down, foreseeing China.

But I never found it.
I just wanted to know who you were.

I stuck a sparkler in your ear
right when the red from the sunset left
and the heat had passed.

Dad asked why I had done it.
Summer 2004.

You waking up
without laughter
is the day
everyone dies
and I know you can't laugh forever.

I wanted to buy
A book on tying knots
Accurately and without
Thinking.
I Found it ironic.
Defective.
I can barely tie shoes.
In Dream, in sleep
Screaming.
Confident.
You cannot commit.
I lay there.
I lie there.
I figured out
how to Be strong
Patient
Connected
Woven
Coursed
Laced
Understanding
Trusting
But I still practiced
Many nights
Eyes wide awake
Intently
Focused
Exhausted
How to tie a noose
Correctly
Effectively
Without fail.

I was six
When my Father
Taught me how to throw a baseball
He said, "Son, next time you'll get it farther."
I was eight when
I got my first black eye
My father said, "Next time you square
for I didn't raise no ballerina."
The summer my dog died,
I chopped down my mother's rose garden out of anger
My father took a belt to my rear
And said, "Next time you'll get it harder."
I was twelve
When I swallowed what was left of my grandmother’s prescription. 
My father said, "Next time take the whole medicine cabinet with ya."
I had my first kiss the year after
My father said, "Next time don't be such a pussy, son,
Take her round’ the corner."
My sixteenth birthday I watched my father’s pants fall to my bedroom floor
I buried myself.
He said, "Next time I'll do it even longer."
Eleventh grade, I didn't pass the baseball league tryouts
He said, "Next time do fucking better".
I then graduated, enrolled myself in community college
My father said, "Next time son it'll be Harvard."
It was Christmas 1989,
When I took a shotgun to my father’s face
Blood roared
I shouted back,
"There will never be a next time
Father."

I WANT TO PICK
THE STRAWBERRIES
OFF THE NEIGHBORS
BUSHES
LIKE I DID WHEN
I WAS A CHILD.
AND STAB YOU
WITH A STICK
LIKE A SWORD
IN THE WOODS.

Dedicated to my first heartache.

I picked a pumpkin for you that contained seven different colors on it’s complexion off an Amish woman on a backroad in the middle of the country.
I planned on it mailing it to you
but I slowly watched it decompose
on my nightstand instead.

The heaping pile of mold and mush
rested on a bed of flowers I had picked for you
on an autumn run, in a farmer’s field
based specifically off their scent. Honey & musk.

I’m not sure why it took so much thought and so much courage to dispose of such insignificant things.
Supposedly, my last gift to you, but I had’t known it’d come without a proper farewell.
The fruit was falling through my hands, almost as fast as you slipped between my fingers.
I threw you out in three acres of woods.
I covered you up in foliage that lost it’s colors.
I said my piece.
I did it when no one was around.
And I moved on with winter.

The lifeguard asked me to join his team.
Because he knew the water felt most like home to me.
But I only wanted murder and Happiness,
Lemonade and whiskey.
And I replied,
"You cannot save People."

I have to grow a beard
To stop explaining I am "he" and "him"
To stop swallowing when I'm too tired too
To stop cringing, to stop folding up
One day.

Somewhere over there in the river's rock bed, there is your heart and there is my heart and a man who wants to eat it.

Somewhere over there in the cold, crisp creek, buried in sediment, under a stone heavier than my precious body is a Love that every type of person desires.

Can this man pick up the stone to retrieve it? And if he can, what will he choose to do with it? And when he chooses, will he be happy?

Somewhere in the Tucquan Creek is a Love that has been sacrificed to the world, just for you. How far would you be willing to go, to find it, to get a taste of it?

Am I dying yet?
"Yes".

Solitude.
Was the first word that installed itself in my mind.
As I laid in bed, there beside you
wrapped in floral sheets
under cracked ceilings
neighboring with faint children's laughter
and ambulance's wails.
Lack of knowledge for the grasp of it.
I imagined that word as some sort of peace.
It's defined precisely as,
"the state or situation of being alone."
I didn't want to believe it.

Yesterday I stabbed myself 66 times in my back.
I watched for 66 hours
The blood running down my back.
Today I counted to 67.
Today I watched myself die 67 times.
66 hours ago I was bleeding.
6 hours before that
I was perfectly
fine.

I obviously didn't make it Home.
I'm Sorry I didn't get to see you.
I got caught up in the Universe and forgot about "time"
And it's 1:30
And you're gone.

I strangled you while you were sleeping
and froze fascinated in what you were Dreaming
You look like
Morning
Remember when I use to always tell you that?
Don’t move just yet,
I’m not done yet.
Don’t make this any harder than it is.
"I’m sorry, I let you down."
I said with tears descending to your face.
I want to keep you like this for as long as I can
You’re a fucking angel.
Fragile
and delicate,
like mother’s china
My veins beveled
matched yours
but they spoke so differently
My hands enclosed around your neck
Shaking
Just give it up already
Stop fighting me
resisting
this isn’t easy
Please.
"I’m sorry, I let you down."
I said screaming,
sobbing
"Why did you have to marry some sick twisted bastard like me?"
I said sobbing,
screaming.
You can continue to Dream now
and you’ll never have to leave this bed.
You’re a fucking angel now.
"Baby, you’re a fucking angel."

Morning was spent
viewing photographs and memories
of childhood
Sixteen years reversed back.
Fingering through
I wanted to know
What was the only thing
that mattered to her then?
How did her yard smell?
And can she still remember it?

Night was spent
Talking about the viewing
Listening to my Mother cry
Sixteen years reversed back.
Feeling rushed at her own son's funeral
I hadn't known
She was worried
If he could still feel the cold.

She didn't forget it.

I wonder if anyone ever reads the books left on the shelves at Goodwill.
Because they're a bunch of self-helps
Where no one could save themselves.

Summer nights
The air
Warm and crisp
Tire swing
Tossing in the wind
Reminiscing my childhood
Looking out the window
Where did the days go?
Green fields
Mother yelling,
”Dinner!”
Right before
Mosquitos
Break the skin.

If I tried
to pronounce
your name
again

It would be
like the first time
I was taking speech

because you're not
the person you use to be
anymore

And your name
doesn't
make it
past my teeth.

Ma says I've been dragging this out for far too long.
You don't understand.
I found her dead.
I want to hang onto her for as long as I can.
She was sick.
She liked the bathtub.

I Found a Lover in my Dream last night
And I can't Remember Her.
I Found a devil in my Dream last night
And I can't voice what I had done to him.
I woke up choking.
I woke up running to the bathroom.

Betty became obsessed with collecting baskets and bears.

And I wonder if she picked up this fixation when she was a child or if it's just something that happens systematically as an elder.

Does she have her bears in a specific arrangement on her shelves? Or are they perched in the woven baskets next to her recliner?

Is the collection a comfort, a void, or one and the other? 
An obsession, an unhealthy act. An addiction, but not death.

Which one is the apple of her eye? I want to ask her if she can live without.

I read all your books
before you were about to leave me
Just so I know I'm not missing anything

I bought you a bed
That no past had fucked in
Cried in
Shaped itself in.
I bought you a bed
That had a hole inside of it
Where I laid and only touched you twice in.
I'm at your throat.
And it's going flat. And
You don't love me.

You ate chalk for days
I told you to write it down in blood

When were you the Happiest?

You play with my fingers and say my hands are dry. You inform me that I need lotion. You take it all back and state that my hands are rough. You say, “They’re working hands, they're much different than mine.” “My hands lost their oil.” I say and ”They’ve changed in a way that’s difficult to describe.” They’re firm and thick like a Webster’s dictionary with a thousand lines to interpret lifetimes of stories and meaning. But you weren’t around to know these things. And now they begin to hold things differently. Yet, you notice subtle surface changes that I cherish, that I use to get so excited about but eventually with time, they diminish from my memory. Things people don’t notice. Things people are afraid to say. Things that just become. Things I don’t tell anyone.

You say you grew up where the only men you knew had calloused hands. And if they weren’t, you speculated what kind of species stood before you. I remember shaking your Mother’s hands for the first time in her tiny kitchen and wondering if she thought my hands were soft. I remember extending my hand to her once again later during a departure and retracting my hand almost immediately back into my pocket, afraid I’d be caught with delicate hands, afraid I’d be caught.

I dip my nose in a jar labeled: “dark angels”.
It holds remnants of a charcoal paste
I take in the scent
as deep as my lungs will allow me to breathe
It brings me back to the time
we sat in your bathtub
and you rubbed the black salve all over my face
To dull the acne on a teenage boy in his early twenties
but I saw you rub it on in such a way that you were visualizing what my face would look like with a five o’clock shadow.
That moment you observed me with Loving eyes
and I observed you looking at me
imagining what I would look like in your future.

I dip my nose in a jar labeled: “dark angels”.
And I breathe in the air, the utmost capacity these lungs can hold.
And sometimes I cry
The reminiscence of a memory smudged on the tip of my nose.

Sharkey cradles my head in their hands
And holds ten pounds of blood, bones, and matter, 50,000 dreams, every lie I've ever kept and thought I've ever had, endless stories, all my memories, and everything that has yet to be told in the palm of their hands.

They say that I feel so apprehensive to be held and that it could mean I'm self-sufficient and handle a lot on my own.
I say, I'm reserved and vulnerable.
The acceptance of receiving an intimate touch after a loss. I'm grieving trying to find the peace in the state of savasana.
They say, "Let go and trust me."

You drank all my beer.
I pushed you up the river bank.
After we tied 1,000 knots together.
On a cold afternoon.
I thought I broke your knees as the boat came down on us.
I cried when you walked away and said, "You belong down here."
I cried and tied 1,000 more knots that day. 
I read letters an old lover wrote to you of the time she sucked your cock.
I saw pictures of you when you were a kid when your son was a kid, and every van you lived in.
Your mother's name was Ruth Morgan and I couldn't get over how beautiful that sounded. She invented the keyboard and I couldn't get over how bizarre that was when the man who no longer has teeth explained that to me.
We drove to the house where your son was born so you could get frozen meat and morphine.
You pointed at every house on that drive and told me who lived there and who did what where.
You brought records over that were moldy and waterlogged. It was years since you put a needle down. 
Your worn, aged hands shook in excitement. I wouldn't dare to take away.
I watched you dance when you thought no one was watching.
You told me you had cancer and I told you I wanted a penis attached to me.
We both may never figure those things out.

We met one week ago. 
Your son was chopping wood and I approached and I said, "May I borrow your axe?"

Dedicated to my undying love, The Redwoods.

I walked through a castle.
Calling for mother and father.
An air balloon
Appearing.
I'm still trying to figure out
what that means.
This too will change
and I know
that.

On the dirt floor
Looking up at you
Surround me
as I kiss you.
I know it will be sometime
I don't think I'm ready
for it.
And the bearded man
didn't want me to take from him.
But I kissed father's lips
before I realized it was him.
As I touched his ear.
Cracked bones. Just hear.
Because I can be better than that.
And that mermaid swimming
in the forest
Told me a story about gnomes
and trees
Running down every bridge I found
with dirty bare feet
And a constant laugh carrying me.
It's alright
to look on the ground.
There's light there too.

My feet aren't cut by your broken glass
The Redwoods are no longer afire.
The mermaid is still swimming.
I nearly fell on top of death
As I trip over it.
And it was cold
but I couldn't stop Laughing.

 

I don't belong with the shallow
That's why I was always the first
to jump in
to see
how far I could get.

I gotta wake up
I gotta put on on a shirt.
You'll never understand.

I may want to make a sweater out of your blood
when it thickens
and I'll have you wear it
when you feel warm
and I'll make you feel
what I hold behind my teeth.

This morning
I woke up with just my head and arms.
Nothing else.
I lay there cemented.

I wrapped my arms around my face.
I held my head in my hands.
Each finger whispers gently,
” I Am Here.”

My mind screams,
”You must get up!”
My mind pleads,
”You must get up!”

I am trying to find my legs.
Forty-seven minutes.

I examine your favorite candy
every time
I am at your daughter’s house.
I read the label front to back, front to back, front to back.
I try to understand why you liked them so much
but the ingredients are written in French with an additional text stating, “natural artificial flavors”.
It could be that somewhere in these tiny mint charcoal chunks, I am longing to find a piece of you.

For, I never got to look you straight in the eye or receive a chance to.
It bothers me some days and drives me absolutely insane others.
I desire to meet the eyes that helped create one of my favorite humans.


In Memory of Rodney C. Abel.

I don't read your diaries.

Sometimes
I don’t know
what I’m doing
the sound isn’t right
and my pack isn’t ready
and I’m wondering if people are gonna come
or if the sea is still
waiting for me
or if it wasn’t even missing
me
all along
I’ve been watching your setup
Holding your life on my back
and for a second
I thought
I was in a city
I never knew
with a beer in my hands
and a gut
full
of wonder.
I Hope
I never lose it.
Maybe I gone darn lost it
and I’m fucked up
and I already knew it.
And the sea, and the sound,
tangle into another round
as these veins
tie to my feet
for another year.

Yeah,
I’ll figure it out.

I cleaned
and I waited.
I scrubbed the dish
until I drowned myself
in my sink.
I felt my head
shatter
into the disposable
I'm smiling.
and my smile
is washing away
submerged
against the current
to garbage and stagnant water.
I lay here. In dark
and dirty
thoughts.
I drowned my body.
and my head is bleeding.

My smile never fading.

I can't stand when you talk
And your spit gets clogged in your teeth.
And you say those awful things.
It lays like rough gravel
It lays and sits
Inside of me.

I'm sorry I yelled
I'm in heaven
Please don't leave me

I blindfold you and I take you on a drive.

You are sitting in the passenger seat with a Navy blue cloth wrapped around your head.

You are laughing. Asking me to tell you what is going on. A seven minute drive and I pull over. I assist you out of the car and I position you center. I tell you not to look just yet.

I hand you a camera and lift and level the view finder to your eyes. Instructing you to snap the picture when declared.

I step back and take my place. Which is when I calmly say, "ready".

"Click." Goes the shutter. You take your blindfold off. The view shows a sign that reads, "Future View" with a young man smiling in front of a field of flowers. You remove the camera from your eyes. You tuck the picture in your pocket.

I never heard from you again.

You said, "things will change".
Aren't they always?

Spend your money at National Parks.
Not Disneyland.

She took me to the graveyard on our first date.
She took me to her favorite spot.
Where bones lay and flesh decay.
Where the worms eat
and people weep.
We sat behind a stone,
where something was etched,
where Someone was missed,
and where Samuel is dead.
It was night but it was not
dark
to me
It wasn't as dark as it seems.

We talked on top of many
Where they listened,
Where it was safe,
and no one will say anything.
She told me secrets
Secrets that I kept,
Secrets that now belong to the dead.
Where they lay,
Where they rot,
and where they'll stay.

She took me to the graveyard on our first date
but it's not as dark as it seems.

Remember when we were catching light
And we held it in our hands
You took it from me
And put it your pocket
You said you needed it just a little bit longer

I didn't mind
I was red and sunburned anyway
But it didn't hurt.

Later that night they told me
They found you
With a medicine bottle in your hands
An empty medicine bottle in your hands.

You told me that you loved to wake up to the sun
But you didn't wake up.
And I am red and sunburned
And this hurts.

Every man was shirtless in this town walking up and down the sidewalks and almost every person I ran into had no teeth.
At the red light next to me was a storefront. The window displayed a John Deere tractor up for sale and besides its rear tire was a taxidermy deer mounted on walnut, laying beside a flexible flyer sled. The other side of the storefront displayed a blue and red sign that read "UMP". The rest of the wording remained tucked behind a rocking chair and a brass spitting can. In between the two windows was a note on the door. Black faded text on sun bleached paper that read "this structure deemed unsafe".
I left town after that.

I was once told,
going through a natural opening in the Earth, makes you reborn again.
And in a way, it kind of does.

I remember that autumn
I spoke to you in photographs
I took.
How sad it was
and almost romantic.
You understood, I missed you
and that I meant to do a lot -
more than sick beds and
planned 10-minute phone calls
and you engulfed and took noted
how sharp and personal I made
the blade
and how vibrant the blood
was
in written letters
and faulty words
I did my best to express.

I made sure every moment
I was awake
Because I didn't want to be caught
or taken under

I got up every day
bent down on my knees
and I prayed
for the low tide

and you sat back, and
watched my agony.

The sign said boardwalk
in red fluorescent light and golden bulbs
It seemed like Hollywood to me.
The pier all lit up.
Quiet and empty.
Didn't seem lonely.
It looked like a time stopped carnival.
Spiraled like the metal roller coaster,
I felt life twist around the carousel.
I could hear decades of laughter,
as silent as it is, although I'm the only soul around.
And there's a magician in the behind the glass
with a bag of tricks in his hat.
He won't stop repeating,
"I WILL TELL YOU YOUR FUTURE."
with thirty lines and a button in the back.
I
DON'T
WANT
TO
KNOW.

I don't want to know
because I am content where I am,
in this ghost town,
with this Ferris wheel
where the kids spend their coins on cotton candy
and saltwater taffy,
and you,
you,
know nothing.

 

I fell asleep
and bumped my head in my dream.
Awake, awake, still sleeping.
Climb over
and see it all for once
Step on the light
watch it start to cascade
beneath your feet
in the cracks
in the cracks
where the dark hides
and everything has been seen
Poured and washed out
by the light that ate the trees
the air is slowly slipping out of reach
Swallow what left,
wrapped around your tongue
your gasp will be gone
taken by the light
where shadows can't reproduce
and nothing is what it seems
Trying
to hold light in your hands
burning your palms
disintegrate, near ash.
You can't hold it for very long.

You are dreaming.
You are also dying.
You are awake still sleeping.

bottom
comfort
darkness
darkness
bottom
comfort

take a dive
red dye
fill up
dark abyss
let me drown
I like this

I was focused on looking at everyone else at the carnival.
All those people I haven’t seen before I wanted to know about.
I was so curious what they looked like for the first time and if they were happy.

I woke up
in a bloody t-shirt
with a concave hollowed out hole
in my chest
and dirt in the cracks of my identity
and I could hear the rain
beat down
and descend down
down into the gutter
almost relieving.
Let me declare,
I’m not jaded
and I haven’t been smoking long
but I’ve smoked more cigarettes
than the man smoking for seventy.
I claimed it wasn’t an act of pity
when I took a shovel
penetrating it into the ground
Its planted beside a Japanese maple.
It was decided earlier upon that night
when the storm rolled in
I took a shovel
penetrating it into the ground
buried my heart in the yard back there.
I claimed it wasn’t an act of pity
and I’m not jaded
I was just tired of the thousand inhales
and the situations I was putting it around.
It didn’t deserve a Life like this
I wasn’t worthy enough to have it.
I woke up
with a concave hollowed out hole
in my chest
and dirt in the cracks of my identity
and after the rain ceased
I could still hear it beating.

It's been years
and we use to balance ourselves on the train tracks.
Every summer. Beer after beer.
I guess we kind of fell
with some type of percentage in us
and we could see it coming fast behind our backs.
The stones started to shake.
We took off in opposite directions
Time ran through us as the freight nearly clipped us.
I let us die There.

Our flesh and bones broke up into parts and became dirt.
We are just soil and some plants in between the rails.
You are wrecked and I'm just picking pieces of my body up.

I am a mold of clay endlessly forming into a remarkable undefined sculpture.
One day, I will break, I will die, I will become something else.

Remember when Johnny said everything will be alright?
We played red light, green light
and hide-go-seek
until
the fireflies were out
ready to be caught
and used as night-lights
in glass jars

Because we were all afraid of the dark.

We built forts
made out of
bedsheets.
Stepped on pillows
to avoid lava.

We looked both ways before we crossed streets.
Saved the nickels and dimes
we found
in the creases of the couch
to put into
quarter machines
crossing fingers we'd get what we saw
in those plastic balls
but we never did.

Taught our 2+2's
and how to tie our shoes
To grow up and be a fireman
because we thought it was cool.

We were kings of the castle,
We were only nine in the grass.

And the cars still move from left to right
but we're not firemen or comic book heroes
And now the kids are 12 smoking cigarettes and giving blowjobs

No longer playing make-believe.

And I go back to thinking,
what Johnny said.
And I wonder about the dark.

What was it, that scared us to death?

cunt cunt cunt cunt cunt cunt
cunt cunt cunt cunt cunt cunt
cunt cunt cunt cunt cunt cunt
cunt cunt cunt cunt cunt cunt
cunt cunt cunt cunt
cunt cunt cunt cunt cunt cunt
cunt cunt cunt cunt cunt cunt
cunt cunt cunt cunt cunt cunt
cunt cunt cunt cunt cunt cunt
cunt cunt cunt cunt cunt cunt
cunt cunt cunt cunt cnut cunt
cunt cunt cunt cunt cunt cunt
cunt cnut cunt cunt cunt cunt
cunt cunt cunt cunt cunt cunt
cunt cunt cunt cunt cunt
cunt cunt cunt cunt cunt
cunt cunt cunt
cunt cunt cunt
cnut. cunt

cnut.
cunt.

There is a dead bird in my pocket.
I cannot bury him
The ground is still frozen.
I killed him
He became apart of my windshield.
And I can see in his black eyes
That he is there
But not there at all.
I tried to find a heartbeat
But I'm just picking up mine.
I don't really feel much of anything.
I hate that.
I know he didn't feel a thing.
And it's just a little stupid bird
I see them all the time.
But I get the feeling he had to die
Maybe in a way wanted to.
And I know there is something else to it
Timing could not of been better.

There is a dead bird in my pocket.
And the fortune cookie read:
Dormant Starting Unveil Version.
It basically means,
He was not actively growing.
He was asleep but still alive.
And he would rebirth into another point in time,
Continuing on a new journey.

This evening I walked onto my porch
And a little stupid bird came out from underneath
And looked at me.
And there is a dead bird
in my pocket.

I wish I didn't have as many body parts
The water is running cold
In this run-down apartment.
And you got the Duke.
But you really just want me Dead.
As I run through boulder fields
Trying to assassinate you
And I want you to Believe me.
Because Nothing was ever right in this house.
You can't make soup in greasy pans
And call this, Home.
You cant say this is Love
And call it precum and loose.
And I Hope you lose All the things that made you the Duke.
I Hope Europe is awful and Everything for you.
You are the Contessa,
You're gonna Be fine anyway
Even if you're falling out of vacant lots.

I think you are so beautiful and ugly
You can be just as cold as Alaska
and I’ve always wanted to go there.
But you are still my sun
in the Arctic.
I’ve tasted your tongue
and it can be just as sharp as the stick,
I wanted to stab you with
when I was so fucking mad
but yet, just as delicate like everything in the jar,
I gave to you on your birthday.
Your saliva is warm and crazy.
Please give your tongue,
When you’re not saying anything.
Please give me your tongue,
When you’re not speaking a word to me
because I can hear it all when I swallow.
Please spit in my mouth.
Let me choke on it because it is warm and crazy
and I’ve never tasted anything better.

We are waking up to condensation blanketing our home.
Good mornings exchanged and you kick open the truck’s back window.
We rise and hold still for a moment as we wake and take in the view and sounds of the glorious Pacific on the back of the tailgate.
You run through the tall mountain grass to the very edge in white dirty long johns and a striped sweater.
I light our stove and prepare to make instant coffee and my famous potato breakfast.
I watched you, watch the ocean until the potatoes were soft.
We are at the cliffs of Big Sur.
It is peaceful and it is quiet.
Your hair is tangled so preciously like a lion’s mane, your eyes are awake.
This coffee is the best-worst I ever had.

A year and month go by from that very morning.
I’m waking up to your mother offering me instant coffee in her outdated kitchen.
I kindly decline as my eyes shift to the table bearing never-ending stacks of unopened envelops from car insurance companies and notices of monthly billing cycles.
She heads for the door and lets me know she’ll be returning.

I’m at the kitchen sink, watching her walk her dog, along the sidewalk until her feet leave the window frame.
My eyes gaze to my favorite picture of you when you were a kid.
Not the one with your bleached hair and your shitty heart tattoo.
It’s the one I always hold when I’m over here.
The one where there are missing teeth in parts of your smile, you are eight, holding the one thing you love the most.
I am holding a picture of the one thing I loved the most.
I am just waking up and we no longer tell each other good morning.

When I was a kid, one February afternoon, I watched my dad cling to a rope that held his body to be dunked into the icy river of the Octorara. 
I watched my breath leave my little mouth. I watched the rope give. I watched his eyes close. When he submerged, he was declared a member of the Groundhog Lodge Society.

I tugged at his side for years after that asking if I could join his stupid club. I told him that I was indeed brave enough to immerse myself into those icy waters too.

I wasn't old enough, he said one year. I wasn't old enough, he said the next. Eventually, it was expressed that I wasn't manly enough.

As I grew older, I taught myself what a man should be by observing this world's gender structure and erasing it. I watched the males around me get so caught up on the gender roles of their masculinity. Engraved in them by their fathers and society. God forbid they admit their femininity. 
I had realized that a club initiation wouldn't make me a man nor an animal coming out of its burrow to display its shadow, doesn't make winter come or go. But I do remember when I was a kid, that it was a sacred moment for the only man in my life.
 
I find myself sometimes when I'm driving that I avoid the groundhog on the road.

Actually, when I see the groundhog, I avoid the entire road.

Would my father be proud of me?

My Uncle Rick told me he would split a log for every time he had ever wanted to kill himself.
I would sit there on one and watch him in repetitive motion
The ax coming down so elegantly yet destroying whatever it had touched
and I'd count.
He didn't break a sweat.
But I grew exhausted
watching him, listening to the ax whack and whack.
I wanted for it to stop.
I counted 78.
I stayed the remainder of summer with him.
And I can't recall a time where he appeared disheveled
But when I left, we were at 83.

I had a dream where Favro killed himself. The same day my Lover mailed me back my handwritten letters. I couldn't even get you to call me back so I could grieve.

I opened up my mailbox and there on the stack of letters sat a Tangerine. I knew it was for the sake of your own amusement and I heard you laughing all the way from Laramie.

A sweet, simple holiday offering, displaying acts of thoughtfulness now speaks forbidden to touch. I hadn't bothered asking the postman how much he was paid to stage this but I spent time looking up the meaning of it. And my God, You are poetic and brilliant.

Tangerine symbolizes a false perception of reality. When the situation in the eyes of a person is seen very differently than it is in reality.

I called and texted Favro until he picked up. He picked up and he muttered that I was only dreaming but I'm awake and you still don't Love me.

She had asked me if I knew where I was standing.
I responded, “A wheat field where its remains were left for straw.”
She questioned if this is where we turn around now.
And I replied, “I'm running through this field.”
She expressed worrisome about getting caught and the damage caused.
I left with, "the wheats been cut." And she headed home.

Then I ran and ran and focused on the sound of the breeze wisping away at the straw. Salish natives weaving their songs in the rhythm of such. I was awestruck with the pink from the sunset embedding the Swan Mountains and the remainder of snow on their noses. In appreciation of witnessing the contrasts of blue being birthed in the sky after the smoke made me simply forget. This is when for the first time my focus was knocked by such worries expressed, all from the sound of a whistle from a man, only to be calling his dog.

And I said to myself, that he or she farming the field is no longer observing it after they hang their hat for the night for they been staring at such all day. I'll be a speck they never thought about. And I look no different from the wind. And then I ran some more.

Which is when I realized,
It took all my life,
That fear is a learned behavior.

I lived longer than I thought of.
I guess we all have.
If you're reading this.