Your first poem

 10 years I wait to retraumatize you

After seeing your messages
With the same kind of yearning
I had for connection,

I knock
And you crack the door
To tell me about your ghosts

I want to hold your hand
I feel like youre someone I should know
But you never let me in
Theres some golden shadow
In your new apartment
It must be different
from the grief weve been stricken with

I tell you I know what I want now
And its not crying in the car
Next to someone who I hope never understands
The reason why
I hide my emotions behind
Thinly veiled sexual detachment
But now I have to try to forget
That you ever asked me what I wanted
And I chose to be honest
And ignore the dreams where I lose my vision
After realizing Id been blind when I had a moment

It's been at least 6 years since I called you on anything

Now its a telephone on your hospital bed

The most we spoke; the least we said

20 minutes of fighting with the television for awkward conversation

A third of the minutes diluted with silence

When I dont have a response to a sentence

It's been 2 weeks since you had your rib broken

Have to replace your phone cause some kids had stole it

In that call, I revert back to being a kid

and selfishly clawing for your attention

Knowing I lost that when I was 12 and you were in prison

Or maybe 9 when the shit had so many dimensions

I only had you to blame for becoming the defendant

You were my uninvited baggage on the doorstep

Crocodile tears in my carriage

2 hours west to be by your hospital bed

You were 3 weeks out of the cold

The nurse hears more than they want to know

And you remind me of when a friend from 7 years ago

She had a dream you were dead and unknown

Washing up on the river bank

Now your hospital is 2 miles away

From the bridge, you told me you wanted to jump

Until someone stopped traffic to shut you up

It's a premonition

 A sick sentiment

Obsessing over inanimate objects

A year and a half his crutch has been in my shed

And I'm moving now but can't get passed

This idea that it should come with everything of him that is left

Like the sum of his ashes unspilled on the table

From our ritual filling of silver mementos

That now leaves my throat feeling hollow

This inanimate object like a noose around my neck

A year and a half later our mother asks if I have bipolar depression

And she references our blood in the past tense

It takes little for me now to control my emotion

Except for when I think of him

A year and a half later and I pretend I've curbed the anxiety attacks

From when I had a dream he was in the driver's seat

Taking us off the cliff

Long before I ever lived on the ridge

Or woke up late at 8 am

and didn't respond to his text message

passed the hotel off the exit again

And the apartments where I could have done everything different

In honesty, for a while, I resented the death of him

Simply because it was something for myself I had imagined

you're still holding grudges against a ghost

A brother with blood too thin to share a toast

Now courage can bond us

Or become the host

For resentment despite now that

You are who you chose

for most of that November, my teeth were stained red

Lost the high of life and got drunk instead

But I should have scared myself

with any tendency to become a lush

I am already a submarine made up of rust

We carry our burdens like a badge of honor

Its the weight of addiction and a homeless father

The past makes excuses for decisions on the altar

Our perceptions are distorted on where we falter

When I was 7, I waged a war against my body

And every ceiling fan that chose to taunt me

So every middle-class home was haunting

I was 9, crying on the stand uncoached

and still was found a liar by most

So I know we could pour our offenses

Into someone else's definition

But what justice isn't

Robs us of goodwill and intention

6

Life is regurgitated in distorted sentences

It takes 5 years to learn comprehension

You were reading me wrong as I'm heaving anxieties

In my crusade against the softer parts of me

And you know my father abandoned me

So I hyperventilate in my sleep

And you use it against me when I'm weak

It's embarrassing to trip over nothing

You are a helium get well balloon

I get lightheaded and then confused

With all the hot air I am filled with

I make a conscious decision

To mute myself instead of the television

Landscapes/road trips/mountains

We compare our bodies to these landscapes
And mark them off like conquests

But I am more unlike myself everyday
Becoming more polished
With every melting country road
Curves that make me soft but bold
I am a waste of your time
With my legs around your neck
But you just rev your engine
And turn your wheel into my wreck

Sometimes you catapult into cities bragging with confidence you can conquer based off friends previous conquests
And cities shriveled in comparison from the distance you glorified in your head

if you squint your eyes through the haze you can trace youre finger along the silhouette of the mountain range
To you, everything is the same
As the sketches that claim you fame

And sometimes you get close enough to see the jagged rock columns
Rising up like the fairytale kingdoms you grew up reading
There is something there that needs your saving
And determination makes it yours for the taking

But Some of us born into mountains retreat into the ridges
Seeking a plateau and some peace
So you are more confident than you should be
For someone who was born on a beach
Where the ocean is endless
And you are senseless
To think there is any of me to keep
tracing fingertips is less effort than climbing over my edges
And these mountains are so different from your sketches

It should be winter soon
But its too hot right now
And your palms get wet with instant regret of promises to conquer mountains you have never traveled before
Your windows are down but its still too warm
You cannot grip these curves the way someone more patient can
Or someone who could understand
What it's like past the valleys without the views
I am more than someone new

2 shadows

I cant leave your side without the smell of cigarettes on my sweater
but i hate the feeling of being alone
so i trace your crucifix with my fingertips
and judge you for your crutches

but i still dont wash my hands
before i touch someone new
it always happens too soon
and you hate that thats something you knew about me
before you ever really knew me
my past is thicker than the smoke thats hanging

i cant detach myself from your broken promises
so i try to blind my brain
begging to change the way i over-glorify
people who think im not enough for them
because i am sick of suffocating on nicotine
for people who dont want to hear what i think

and so
that summer we bought disposable cameras
i waited to get the film developed
i know i am not akin to fitting in
but the alcohol ingested
created a moment
a feeling unlike indifferent or distant
and i didnt want to miss it
but the photographs still felt foreign when i thought i needed them

now i am crowded
and shoved, spilled beer with no buzz
i feel emotionally fatigued
a catalyst to my social anxiety
but repetition dulls me
and this is what living is supposed to be...
right?
i need to get out
to feel trapped and lonely

this art
it proves regression
when im dying for clarity
ive moved on from the worst of things
found travel and trees
but i drown myself in dreams
i will never follow through with
because promises are toxic
and i learned that from my best friend

it was a lie to say anyone would be there when i needed them
so whats the use of getting drunk with fake friends?