Caught between timezones
and gliding among the clouds,
the wings of the plane
keep me grounded.
Reminding me that I do not
belong, that
I am not a part of this sky.

But sometimes, it is so easy
to look past
the harsh metal of the wings
into the forgiving darkness
of night.

The stars, always clearer up here,
make dreaming that much easier.
As the world spins below me
and I fly against the current of the clouds,
the stars shoot by, waiting
to be wished upon.

We should have known it
would be like this.
From the first flight to the cancelled
connecting one, it was a typical
family vacation—complete with
bickering and cramped plane seats.

When we arrived, and the luggage was
lost in the sea of bags left in Denver
across six hours of real sea,
we knew this was a bad sign.

When we woke up with sunburn
because our sunscreen was lost with the bags,
everyone was to blame and no one was
owning up to it. Above, the sun floated
innocently in the sea of clouds.

But then the luggage finally came,
and we began to soften
as the tradewinds
whipped up a forgiving breeze.

And we sat together and watched the sunset.
Remember? How cliché, the sun with its
watercolor sky and the sea’s reflection of it.
We went to bed that night with pictures
painted against our eyelids,
the soft brushstrokes of
sunsets and I’m sorrys.

I am caught in the twisted loop
of a broken record;
the conversations that seem to
repeat themselves;
the questions I ask and answer
again, and again.
I find myself speaking the same
words only to
get back the ones that have
been given to me
before.

I’ve been talking since I could
walk and yet
how many times have I walked
the same route?
How many times have I talked
to reach the same
conclusion?

The parallels I draw between each of
your voices
make my own sometimes shake,
and what I catch myself sharing is
nothing new,
nothing I was never told to
give away. 

The words have always been right.
In my heart I’ve felt the power of a poem--
the lines that catch in my throat to keep
me from crying;
the phrases that break like ice, hitting
the ground with resonating power;
the words that draw pictures in my mind,
teaching me to understand the beauty
of the world.

It has always been a game
of make believe.
Of pretending I loved other things too,
of pretending I didn’t want to do this
with my life.

It’s not hard to convince yourself
when everyone else believes.

But when I fall asleep to a newly
filled page,
when I spend hours to commit
lines to memory,
when I sit on the side of the road
tapping words into my iPhone
because I can’t wait to write them
down any longer,

I know.

That the words have always been right.
and the words have always been there.
And I’m trying to figure out
if I love poetry enough
to be poor.

When his eyes blink shut for the last time,
yours fill with tears.
Forgetting the bad days
to draw up the good ones,
we mourn,
and remember,
and cry.

What is life but a blink, anyway?
I try to recall those better years--
Velcro shoes,
pennies and diners,
childhood memories
of ridiculous stories that always
made us laugh.
But these memories are no more
than a flutter of eyelids--
there one moment to be forgotten
the next.

And I can’t push away what I remember
best from the last years--
his unyielding stubbornness,
his biting, bossing words
and most of all,
his sad, gaping loneliness.
But for this my heart doesn’t hurt,
because it is so easy to forget
the bad days if you
close your eyes.
And he was never really alone.
Despite it all,
you loved him,
and so I did too.

My eyes don’t blink back tears
until I embrace you. 
When finally I let go, 
my heart aches,
for though I didn’t know him
at his best, more than
anything,

I can’t stand to see you
cry.

You invite me to share
with you the intense words of my poetry
in the tent we’ve made to
find ourselves closer to nature.
Halfway-outdoors,
we trade poems like secrets,
seeking, searching to be a part of
something greater.

But the thin layer
of the tent’s bottom between
the ground and you and me
serves as a reminder--
we are not a part of this,
we are never going to
belong here.

For we are not made of beauty.
Not made of the stuff of the earth,
just caught accidentally in its orbit,
we're too complex to ever really
fit in.

But here, with you,
I’m starting to see that poetry
can capture that simplicity.
In words I find the beauty
I can’t find in myself,
a realization that has yet to
make me sad.

Though the tent’s top zipper cloaks us
from seeing the stars,
it falls free with a quick pull.
And so we share the poems we’ve strung together
as the layers, the thin layers,
fall away.

Our existence will never be simple but
tonight, that is enough,
for beneath these blinking stars
I am made of words, and
I have never felt more alive, I have
never been more beautiful.

I know that what
most deeply connects us
is more than half-hearted poetry.
It is not written words but
the ones spoken
halfway between
midnight and the next morning
as we ponder life and what we’re doing
here, thousands of miles
from each other and from
the stars yet close enough to know
what it feels like
to be glowing.

Halfway between two bad days and
the liquor that
stained them both,
the bad taste in my mouth is
made sweeter with your words,
the late nights joining us together
like the lights strung over your porch steps.

But leave those lights now and
watch the sun,
hanging an hour lower
over my sky than yours,
the same colors painting our
skylines pastel
as it sets tonight.

Drive to me with your hands
off the wheel
and you’ll know what it feels like to
be alive, glowing,
biting back the darkness halfway
to morning.

The music that hums through my
speakers these days
lets me make believe
that you’re not just a voice
in my colorful imagination.

In my mind you’re here with me,
glowing in the dark of the emptiness
I’ve imagined you into,
singing ballads into the
gray summer sky.

Other nights I catch myself
falling into a world I’m not
yet part of, as if we already
knew each other, more than
just a neon love dream to wake up to.

But I was once told to seek the future
by spending time in the present,
so I let tonight be,
sinking into
these recordings,
the sound of your guitar
strumming beneath the melody of
a voice, yours.

It’s easy to pick you apart like dinner
leftovers on a gloomy Saturday night
spent at home--to look at you and think
mean things.

To wonder how related we really are.
Did our stars cross paths and choose to
stay together somewhere in the solar system,
a sort of luck or misfortune we’re stuck with
forever?

Perhaps it is easier to find the faults in others
when the glass that we look through isn’t
really transparent at all, when the glass is no
more than the mirror that hangs above
the bathroom sink.

The flower petals wilt like the skin peeling
from a burnt nose, yet
we are happy.

Sweat sticks chair to cotton to leg
like glue, yet
we are not scared.

Eyes squint in blinding sunlight and ears
strain to hear above the wind, yet
we are ready.

Our parents are crying, and
our teachers are tearing up
and our classmates are ready,
ready to walk together
one last time.

I am holding the hand of
my best friend, and I am happy
and I am not scared
and I am ready.