my heart is thumping, ricocheting off the walls in my chest, slamming into my ribs, and mercilessly kicking it’s own ass. there are things i want to say to you, but i can’t. my heart screams a laundry list of reasons you asked for that i was never able to give you. you can’t hear it because i’ve trapped it all inside, afraid of what would happen if my mouth let loose what my heart has been yelling all this time.

know that i want the absolute best for you. in this case, that means me not saying the things i want to say or doing the things i want to do.

it means me not looking at you unless you’ve passed and i know you can’t see. it means me not talking to you unless you come to me. it means i can’t engage. it means i’m not entangled with you on a weekday night in some dark space, hidden from everyone.

you’re leaving. when you’re gone, i’ll miss seeing you.

not in a creepy way, but in the way that i’ll miss knowing you’re safe. up until now, i have some modicum of control of how safe i know you are. i’m charged to watch out for you, both by my higher ups and yours.

then i won’t get to know anything about you anymore. 

you’ll be gone, and all the reasons you asked for, the explanations, and answers i couldn’t give you mean nothing.

you may think i’m a coward. you may be right. but you were robbed from me, and i didn’t know whether or not to chase the assailant and put up a fight. because, honestly, i thought you were the one running.

i’m not a coward. i was as confused as you were.

i’m probably more confused about the whole thing than you are now. but i don’t know that. i assume that someone has enlightened you. no one has told me anything. ever. and i’m still in the dark.

but, hey.

i enjoyed our time, short though it was, distant though it now is. and i miss you.

soon i’ll miss knowing you’re okay.

soon, even that will be robbed from me. 

you’ll probably never see this, but it’s meant for you.

today I put a rose in a jar for you. the significance wasn’t great; there was nothing earth shaking about the action itself. i saw the rose there, a tiny, ivory bud jutting from the bush, barely blooming and perfectly beautiful in its strange symmetry. i almost passed it by until i thought of you and how often i’d visited here and plucked a bloom or two and gave it or them to you. i walked past, blankly eager to enter my home but halted, images of rose upon rose upon rose intruding my thoughts. those moments before: i’d been a part of them, but most recently hadn’t taken the time to absorb them as once i did.

here, though, time stopped and space excluded itself from me. and you and i and this little rose shared a moment in the twilight of a setting sun in the space before my home, and love, which had overtaken me, found an outlet and bloomed.

that one, i thought, in particular, would have been a perfect candidate if you were here. but you’re not here. in your absence, i came again to why I had ever plucked the roses for you.

this one is special. it’s the first rose i ever gave to you. and it’s here for you when you return.

“am i funny, mama?” says the upside down clown in search of his head, while dreamers in waking lie dreaming whatever half-dreams waking dreamers dream… in bed.

the notion of commencing thither and thather in worlds unknown to waking upside down clowns is foreign to even the jolted leg kicking up from the imaginary stair to which it will inevitably fall.  or won’t fall. 

and all the houses you see will never provide you with the home they felt like in the moment you read those symbols that should but don’t quite make sense together. 

the light blue motorcycles you rode, even when you don’t ride motorcycles, they understand you.  a singular ride to revelation. 

even the air you floated in amongst family and friends as you ascended became the cold sweat you arose to in the hot bed that froze you exactly where you thought you weren’t. 

things that seem made from fluff become personal so fast and that’s fine as long as you know whose ass it is that’s on the line. 

arise, o sleeper!  come to your senses!  what will the ax rip away and what will the fire burn?  or is this all a joke to you?  if so, i’ll take your seltzer and run to sniff my own god damned flowers. 
or at least someone else’s.

because the grass is always greener on my side of the fucking fence.

i feel it in my marrow.  some movement so deep that it shakes the balance of the land beneath our feet.  some think that the institution on which this place is said to have stood for hundreds of years will crumble.  that it is the cornerstone.  i see and feel something different.  i know the cornerstone.

separately, the place promised me is lost.  it’s really not that i care about the sullied dream, because i don’t.  apathy has not brought its fortune to my doorstep, but instead another a-word brings an h-word home.  to give structure to those feelings, in the literary sense, is to take value from what has taken place within and the transforming power allowed me in this singular, evolutionary instance. 

the earth shakes, not merely because this movement has quickened, but because that which restrains it has tightened its grip.  the friction will inevitably break either the captives’ will or the captors’ grip. 

we will not stop till it is done.  we will win or we will die.

i was in the middle of it, a centrifuge.  from where i stood, everything was spinning around me.  in the middle, i was stationary, watching a blur of people careening through space.  the world they were a part of was muddled and confused.  the landscape wanted to stay in perpetual motion.

time slowed here in this moment.  a nebula formed in mid air.  astral clouds permeated the world around me, giving birth to stars that twinkled and vanished as quickly as they had come.  i was lost here, suspended within the world.  there is something of a revelation when time is set aside.  i remember this.  suspended in a moment, one  gains perspective on how he views the world and will inevitably come to some sort of epiphany about the workings of the world. 

i believe i had almost reached catharsis when something hit me hard. 

it was a sturdy blow to the whole right side of my body, a blunt force straight to the shoulder, arm, hips, and head.  i was knocked off my feet.  the smell of earth filled my nostrils, bringing mountains, childhood adventures, and good solid work days in tow. 

the nebula had subsided, but the stars were still out, leaving me without any notion of when or where I was.  despite the stars i was seeing, i had thought it was daytime. 

“get up, asshole!”

somebody was being yelled at.  the receding cloud and stars revealed to me my location.  i was sprawled prone, half on the curb of a street somewhere.  i came to know this only after i saw two tires role over my hand.  i probably would have yelled or expressed some negative thoughts about the hand if the entire left side of my faces wasn’t suddenly calling my attention. 

the sensation wasn’t pleasant.  something was touching my face, crawling downward slowly, warm. 

“get the fuck up!”

somebody’s going to get their ass kicked.  poor guy, the other one sounds pretty big.  the warmth crept in my eye and blinded me. i tried to get it out but it was spreading and sticking itself to my hand.  it was blood.  someone was bleeding all over me.  then my catharsis came. 

i’m the guy.  i’m the guy who’s getting his ass kicked.

don’t project your needs on me.
what makes you think i need them? 
you see something in me you don’t agree with? 
some choice i’ve made, and you can’t perceive its outcome 
   or the source of it’s birth, where it starts from?

i am mad.  pissed.  because what right do you have?
i take my time, make my mistakes, learn on my dime
   to do the right thing.
but, to you, i’m riff-raff,
damned to fail with that propensity you ascribed to me
   as a bad moral knit that i’ve weaved,
a tangled web that, in your view, is a trap.
i’m a bad seed.
or pick a metaphor that you see fits more
   and give it over because i don’t care.

you can’t touch me; i’m not afraid. 
you best believe i’ve had my fair share of lies
   and judging eyes on me on my ride here.
this is not new.
i’ve dealt with people just like you.

your tactics of bending backwards to turn me over
   on myself are as useless as the crew of skeletons
   in your closet. 
cue the bone men that you cover.

you say that you have nothing to hide.
but just like those who tried before, who vied to score
   some points against me in the past, you will lose.
because in this game, it’s those with integrity who win,
not those who flash their pedigree as some form
   of bettering instant status promoter. 
i know your motives.
you’re full of fear inside and you need to chide mankind
   just to feel alive. 

i pity you; i do.
because this brief moment i’ve taken, in hindsight,  
   i’d bet is you whole life. and i can’t stand the way  
   that hitting you with these doom phrases and
   crazed words has made me feel.
it just isn’t right.

in the vastness of the cosmos…

failure to launch is static…

one feels one ceases…

but constant motion…

always moving…

never still…

never…

still…

i dreamt of a man who would not let go.  he grasped so tightly, his fingers turned blue.  he moved from a place where he could imagine himself without to a place where he couldn’t imagine himself at all.  he had lost all sense of self and clung to all around him.

perhaps this was done in an effort to obtain a sense of definition.  perhaps he thought if he attached himself to a definable thing he could, himself, again gain definition. 

he was not aware, at his loss, that he had only lost his own sense of self and that he need not be defined.  it wouldn’t do any good anyway.  he never was.

i miss summer thunderstorms. 

the smell of lightning in the foothills, charging the forests with negative ions, refreshing the soul. 

the heavy plopping of thick rain drops on the roof, the windows, the trees, my head.

the sudden flash of lightning penetrating my bones.  the great roll of thunder shaking my core.

drenched, standing in the rain, face to the sky, arms outstretched, taking in each second or fraction thereof, a part of the force powering the downpour, the electricity in the air, the energy in the sounds, vibrating everything around.

even the most dangerous storms are worth being in.  if the rain and the wind could sweep me away, i’d let it. 

for a moment, i am taken to the ends of the earth.  i see the mountains, the desert, the fields.  i see great and small animals.  i see all manner of things, man-made and not.  we are connected.  i am in the storm’s embrace, at its mercy, taken wherever it has been, deeply imbedded in its desire to move forward, knowing it will die, longing not to.  i don’t want it to die.  i don’t want it to end.  i see everything the storm has seen.  it sees me. 

in a flash of lightning, in a roll of thunder, i am brought back, left by a magnificent force.  we will never meet again.