Idk maybe I'm butter

 I had a dream my hands were soft

And when they touched yours, they melted
And slid like butter over your hands

In my dream
I glowed
The same yellow gold
Warm and dense and heavy
I tell you i want you to swim through me like

quicksand

I want you to like who I am

But when I wake up
My hands are calloused
and rough

Ive ignored my hunger long enough

I dont want to be held
I dont want to melt in the heat of your arms
Or be sliced and spread thin-
Told im better soft and malleable
But im a county fair sculpture in the end

We sleep with the windows open

And listen to the sirens as they pass

I tell you I love the rumblings of the city
But i miss the patter of rain on metal

I dont tell you
I hate to look at ceiling fans

I want to give you
grace
for your ignorance
Less the due diligence
Placated by your privilege, It is easy to be dismissive

I tell you
I thought I was wiser from the broken bones
But they disfigured the truth
And lowered the bar of what is deemed abuse
Too fearful to define
(Or, rather, Diligent to remain obtuse)

I ask you not to say I'm overreacting
As I'm dry heaving my anxieties
I am sick from being told
my lungs decieve me
So even as I know that clouds move
I tell myself I'm crazy
I believe you
I tell myself you can vindicate me

Spotless mind

 I have been a fortress for my vulnerabilities

And when I ask you to be a person who gives a shit about me
You say I should never expect empathy from any boy I hope to fuck
6 years
and I'm still not enough

You resent the things you do not shelter
You get angry at the curtains
I had a dream I was watering a dead garden
Then left the only flowers you gave me to rot on the table
By the time I leave you,
I am hanging affirmations in mirrors I'm too anxious to speak in front of
I am stumbling to recite that I am worthy of forgiveness and love

You told me
my body is a weapon
That I am hollow without
You've become so powerful with possession
I let you turn my fear into guilt
And feel embarrassed
for the struggles of my parents
But you steal my poetry to add depth to your music
And claim
you could be a hero when you want to be
Or If you cared enough about me
But you get spiteful when you're entitled
And its my fault for ruining things
So when you ask me why I'm smiling
I know it is yours to take
And personified then burned at the stake
A competition when love is faked

Last week You took everything with sentiment
And said you're going to erase my memory
But you left anything that doesn't serve your purpose
And I re-enact a Spotless Mind with trauma breaks

My therapist asks me if I feel safe
My family says it's nice to see me again
I go to Cambridge and dance in the rain
I drive up the coast of Maine in a hurricane
Then I hate myself for still being angry
That you were fools gold breaking my teeth

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 fighting with 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 the kids had stolen it
In that call I revert back to being a kid and selfishly clawing for attention
Knowing I lost that when i was 12 and you were in prison
Or maybe 9 when the shit had too many dimensions
I only had you to blame for becoming the defendant

You were Uninvited baggage on my doorstep
The Crocodile tears in my carriage
Now im 2 hours west by your hospital bed
3 weeks out of the cold
The nurse hearing more than they want to know
My friend told me 6 years ago
She was afraid you were dead and unknown
Washed up on the river bank
Now your hospital is 2 miles away
From the bridge you wanted to jump
Until someone stopped and shut you up

It's a premonition

I had a dream he slayed my snakes as children
Then dismissed it as a residual affect of stacking memories to barricade myself in
A year passed without any warning
So I could still imagine him shivering on our mother's couch like he always is
I choked up my letter
then Mary died less than 2 weeks later
And I selfishly called it chaotic justice
Because I still had his crutch in my closet
And there is no ink for his ash to dissolve in
To mark another tragedy departed

It's a preminision of a sick sentiment
Obsessing over inanimate objects
A year and a half his crutch has been shoved 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 think I have bipolar depression
And she references our blood in past tense
I tell her it takes little for me now to control my emotion
Except for when I think of him
2 years 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
This morning I passed the hotel off the exit
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
With our perceptions 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
And I was only 9 crying on the stand, uncoached
Still was found a liar to most
By extension the 3rd adult to cause apprehension
Was the sleazy lawyer yelling at children

So I know we could pour our offenses
Into someone else's definition
But what justice isn't
Robs us of good will and intention