We walk along the parched roads,

Tracing our steps back home

We know exactly where it is,

Yet we cannot find it

The locals stare, I’m not from here

Not sure if it’s my clothes,

My walk, my skin, my Spanish,

All of the above and intuition

Finding home, I’m loudly alone

And home is not a home

Rather, it is a mere checkpoint

In between my daily facades

 Pleasured faces in putrid places,

I love women in knee-high laces

Chicken-shits like me, scared of change,

It takes time to rearrange

Pages torn and faces scorn,

I think of you when listening to Korn

I was a child, I used to be louder,

I always waited until the final hour

My biggest fear is being contrived,

If I meet The Weeknd, I’ll know I’ve finally arrived

Cool blue night, silhouettes all adorned,

Beside me, the only one I adore

My toasted toes

dig into crystal love,

Salty winds carry

microscopic universes

I feel like we’re German youth in a film

Grass blooms and breaths,

Shimmering waves of dead skin

wash over me

I thought I buried you in my dreams

And here you are

His tired gaze traps mine

he sits down right next to me

as if we were already looking for one another

Cigarette?

Nah, but I did consider it.

He tells me what his perception of the world is like,

his fervency for film makes me jealous,

his cadence and anecdotes break my heart as he inspires it.

And thought I told him I quit,

he offers me a smoke again.

I learned that he used to call himself she,

he wanted me to know his awareness of his own fortune

the ability to relax in a space without fear

One of the lucky one, he called himself.

I told him we’re all lucky, lucky to be here breathing,

you know, considering the past year.

I didn’t tell him then, but what about

the luck, beauty, and mundaneness

of two souls, separated in every sense

walking the same blocks, the same paths,

past the same bench at the same time,

on the same cool blue Saturday evening

Her embrace slowly settles in

My eyes snap open,

she is here with me.

My window is carelessly open,

dancing dusts dot the dark skies

her sharp air invades my lungs,

demanding I leave my tailored reality

to join her in the calm chaos

I can already smell from here

Cold,

my chapped knuckles leak a stain

on the carefully arranged snow

Cold, the addicting cold,

She treats me with respect.

Though my body overcompensates to keep up with her,

I’ll repose in the pillowy white sands she’s left for me

as I watch as my blood is covered and washed out

by infinite perfection

I don’t drink anymore

not since,

the last hangover I had

made me feel like a crowbar 

pried my skull from my brain,

my stomach had river dancers residing

Alcohol’s reputation of being

 an emotionally numbing potion

goes over my head,

and instead,

exacerbated are my emotions,

uncontrollable are my words.

The more poison I put in me,

the more venom I am capable of spitting

 I don’t drink anymore

 because I know what I’ll become

 a silent violence

 enacted on my friends, family,

 the love of my life

Or, honestly, it’s easier to say,

I don’t drink anymore

because I don’t like the taste

Running my pudgy white fingers

through her deeply black hair,

I memorize

what makes her laugh

etching her giggles

into my delusional mind

I am content

with the way she loves me

because I didn’t know

I could be loved at all

She looks at me with that dimpled smile

as my heart shatters

She lays her head on my shoulder

as I ponder the difference

between our I miss yous

 Don’t you think it’s contrived to write about

writers block? It’s as if

you’re trying to get away

from doing actual thinking

Allowing rogue ideas to rattle

is worse for lil ol’ me

I get to meditating…

Damn dude, MF DOOM died right at the end

of the worst goddamn year

that God damned us all with,

Been two years since Amanda transitioned.

Is it disloyalty

my tears accumulated

more for her than for my own grandfather?

Do I even possess

a right to any sadness?

Anyway, I have to write this poem.

 At the end of every road of love

is an inevitable drop-off

in which one falls 147 feet

Where they are met

with barbed spikes protruding from

magma, spewing and flowing

and lava sharks with laser attachments

In other words, you cannot attempt

to be in love without expectation

of absolute destruction

If you ask out your crush,

you’ll either get crushed

or they’ll say yes

If you ask your now significant

other, their hand in marriage,

you’ll either hear a triumphant Bridal Chorus,

or the dulcet tones of Marvin’s Room

Reduce marriage’s outcome to a binary, if you will,

0 being divorce, 1, happily ever after

Though both result

in dismay of different strains

That of divorce being any number of things

a contemporary adult can conjure

And of happily ever after?

Perhaps the biggest and most significant

fall of all, that of losing

whoever was insane enough

to see you through

a lifetime of flaws and fumbles

This fall, being the closest in feeling

to the hyperbole I made in the beginning

How can you combat inevitable despair?

You can’t, really, liberate yourself

from these outcomes

unless you decide to wall yourself off completely

bringing an entirely new form

of suffering to the conversation

The only thing you can tangibly do

is have the windows down

and enjoy the incomparable beauty and vistas

As you’re riding to the perpetual gates

of ineffable suffering

I really wish I was enough,

charming enough to

find the words to make you stay

What would be enough 

to make you feel

you didn’t have to leave

How can I be confident enough?

to go on without you

I couldn’t get enough of you

two seasons later

I know we’ve both had enough