if i ever was

for years we have tried to squint our eyes and stare at the sky. 

what is this pressure in my chest?

what is left?

what is this feeling in my feet?

i have to let it out i have to let it out.

i can feel my heart beat, there is something it keeps

locked in, the stanzas of our existence will intertwine-

the swirling leaves and falling colors,

we will all collapse, a grand collapse.

noise like the wind through the forests, over the rivers, across the seas-

thunder through the towns and the wharfs and the city streets.

everything will listen,

everything will be

what i have never felt, i will feel this time.

i am scared, i am terrified, this is mine, and i slide-

my panoramic view spinning and spinning, lightning and lighting

the colors the shapes, my life before my eyes,

everything unwinds.

i am awed by your power,

shocked by your grace.

choking and spitting and pale in the face-

hooked in my nose, the noise the noise,

the speed of your words through the air and the space.

thoughts like missiles crash into the churches, the bridges and barns,

explaining the sparks and stabs and stings

all of this, the things that cant be put to words, they ring

in my ears, before my eyes, my life-

it always ends on a riverbank in the sun at the end of the summer.

there is something in me that i do not understand.

a letter

"you can't be what you don't feel," he said,

and i believed him, and i was sad,

sad for the things i couldn't be, and the things i couldn't write.

"but you will grow up someday,

whether you feel like it or not"

and i believed him, and i did.

hey kid, there's a world out there to be lived in,

and you can't write what you don't feel

so how are you gonna write it?

and how are you gonna live it?

and how will you make it?

yours. and what will you chase?

people? dreams? storms? 

wherever you are, i hope you wont stay.

hey kid, slow down, you aren't mistaken yet.

there's a story out here, and we all just live in it.

the hours you wonder over words do not go to waste.

you have to believe that worlds collide in this place.

and walk with sure steps through the prairies and plains.

i will meet you there, where it never rains.

there is a fence at the end of this field,

and there is a storm at the end of this world. 

"you have clouds in your eyes," he said,

and lightning in my chest, i thought,

thought of the wind that moves me through the skies.

"and you have a mind like a mirror,

so go live your story, kid"

but when i wrote my life, it came out as a letter.

a sonnet

when i was four and a half, i fell in love

with the tall trees of corn and a toy truck full of grubs.

on the roof of your car we watch the sun, barely above

the treetops, dread going home and gaze at dead corn stubs.

driving my father's car for the first time, i swing

off the road to watch a flustered turkey flock

wandering through a frozen cornfield, intently gleaning. 

from the car i watch as the quiet birds peck the stalks.

now on the same state highway we take a detour.

i've always seen this road, 'let's go for a walk'

is all the convincing i need. i've always loved to explore.

stomping through the cornfields i splinter brittle stalks

and paint my cuffs with encrusted mud, because despite the early frost,

the following thaw had softened the earth, hardening my thoughts.

we will make our peace with everything

when i was little i would catch bugs and put them in glass jars.

then my father bought me a yellow and clear plastic bug keeper.

after that i would create lives for my friends in this miniature habitat.

i had two fascinations: bugs and dinosaurs. and since dinosaurs were extinct,

and i had deemed bugs more manageable, i caught bugs.

this was my first experience with love.

i could never let them go. and thimble fulls or bottle caps

of water were never sufficient to preserve their existence.

so it was sad, but i couldn't let them go. i would rather

see them grow feeble and fail in front of my eyes than let them fly

away, and that, i think, is the really fucked up part of this.

no matter how sad it was to watch them die, i could not watch them go.

and that, i think, is the really fucked up part of love.

it made my father sad, to watch these events unfold.

and now, looking back, i know where all the grasshoppers, moths,

caterpillars and frogs disappeared to while i left them unattended as i slept.

when i was eleven and it was summer, i went to Jake's house for the night.

and his step-dad got mad when we played nintendo in the basement

while Jake was supposed to be cooking his step-dad's dinner.

and that night we chased the winking lights in the dusk by the power lines,

and we captured almost twenty fireflies, which we put in a jar with holes

in the lid, which we left by the window. and for the first time

in our lives, we stayed up through the entire night.

and as the bugs' lights began to dim, Jake suggested that we release them.

so we walked through his yard in the dew and the mist and for the first time

in our lives, we stood in silence and watched the sun rise, as the fireflies

fluttered away feebly. although i had no idea why, for the first time

in my life, i felt very melancholy, a word i couldn't have defined.

and i haven't caught a single firefly since that night,

we grew up, Jake and i, and we left bugs behind.

but more important than that, i think i'm too scared to try.

and that, i think, is the really fucked up part of life. 

i sleep with my eyes open

and i see ghosts in every room.

i see your face in every picture,

and i get scared when i'm alone-

i get scared and i'm alone.

i am the cold creeping down your spine,

and i am the sting dripping from your eyes.

the catalyst of my transgression-

i believed all of your lies.