Golden Hour

The grass is about to die

and there is an itching under my skin like

boiling water threatening to spill

all over the brand new sugar coated kitchen counter tops.

In these pages are confessions

I still don't understand. And I write

words and metaphors and similes

and meaningless quips to

try and make sense of it all.

But I've filled these pages with

misshapen sentence structures

and I still can't see,

rolling in the yard like an old blind dog

with only my nose and skewed

memory to guide me.

The grass is about to die.

In an old poem,

when I was able to be straightforward,

when I thought love was like a

cozy sweater that shrunk in the wash, I wrote,

"One day

I will wake up

and your name

will not cross my mind."

Yesterday a girl who only

skimmed my last chapter

told me it was his birthday.

And I didn't know. Had forgotten entirely.

And it occurred to me

that one day

is today. And so

I do not know what I'm doing.

I do not know if everyone's words

mean the same things that mine do.

But I do know that

one day you wake up

and you're laying on the couch

and your neck is stiff and your legs hurt from climbing

but your mind is full and your fists aren't clenched anymore.

And one day you wake up and

blank pages are still scary,

but they are manageable

and the boy from the desert isn't the only one

capable of loving you and in fact

only you are capable of

holding yourself tighter than

his old gray hoodie could ever dream of.

And one day you wake up

and you get to tell yourself

that you have a right to decide.

And one day you wake up

and you finally believe yourself

when you say that you are not

committing the same sins

that were committed against you.

The grass is about to die

but your parents are downsizing soon anyways.

And so you're back to this bubbling in your veins.

I know it should be different

but it never is. No matter how much

cheap beer I do or do not drink, it never is.

And I dream of straight hair

and slender shoulders but the

parts are mismatched like a bad collage.

But mostly, I dream of a spine made of iron

with a heart of cotton and

sweet white wine flowing through his veins.

"He" has been so many

different boys. Each time I think

that he's hiding. The iron spine,

cotton heart, sweet buzzing blood,

they're just beyond my view. Nearly

each time I'm wrong. Or one of us

doesn't stay long enough to find out

if we've failed the others' expectations again.

And so I'm left with this.

The itching nausea. It's the feeling like

your favorite song just came on

and you desperately want to dance

but you're too sober

to let yourself be that vulnerable.

I'm still trying to figure out how

nothing and everything seems to

both work out in the end.

I guess fate is a true anomaly.

The grass is about to die but

I've never been one for lawn care anyways.

I've always just let it grow.