â i think the whole world is within you. â
â trauma is insidious. it sticks like a shadow, like mortar; the only thing holding our disparate shards together in the shape of a person. â
â what are we, if not the echoes of insults and disappointments, the ghosts of the people our parents used to be? â
â what are we if not the space in the skyline where something used to stand? the afterimage of a flashbulb lit in the quiet moment before roaring tragedy? â
â i watch you standing in the sunlight laughing, harsh and beautiful, something more than our parents or this nation could ever hope or deserve to behold. â
â youâre the one lucky creature in this world of ashes. â
â i feel myself decaying with every wasted minute. â
â i think if you took my chest and split me open, youâd find soft black rot where my ambition used to be. â
â if i cannot be happy, let me be free. if i cannot be free, let me be mad. â
â i think of nothing but poems, and all the poems come from you. â
â iâd ask to run away with you, but i never learned how to drive. â
â iâd apologize for staring at you, but you captivate me as the night sky. â
â when i was a child, iâd tilt my head back far enough that the only thing i could see was that stretching firmament, thinking: i might fall into those galaxies. â
â you are allowed to be angry at those who hurt youâyou are allowed to feel rage over what was done to youâyou are allowedâ â
â we burn, and our blaze tears away the veil of ignorance. â
â faith lies as charred or as changed as the city skyline. â
â we break out of rubble, claw our way to sunlight, wipe the dust from each otherâs faces with hands sick of fighting and digging. â
â we will tear down their walls and build our homes atop the wreckage. â
â i marvel at how you might lament a life like this. â
â you may whisper to yourself: do i dare disturb the universe? and i will twine my hand in yours and say: you haveâyou doâ â
â you are a fool, perhaps. but so are allâmen, women, everyone. â
â we measure our pride with watch-chains; measure our hearts with half-torn dancing-slippers worn on walks over rough streets, places they were never made to tread; measure ourselves with love-poems. â
â you are the might-have-been story of a boy grown into a man grown into the best mind of his generation. â
â you are the best mind of your generation which, coming upon the overwhelming question, turns it over like a diamond and, finding it unanswerable, sets it in a ring upon my finger. â
â perhaps it was not worth it, after all. or perhaps it is no great matter. â
â if i put my foot to the floor or take the turn just right, the horizon will swallow this ought-to-be-ghost town. â
â he prayed at the altar of machinery until the factory god gasped its dying breath. â
â i stand in the light of uncountable divinities and by them chart my westward course. â
â i was always more than the sacrificial lamb of the american dream. â
â in my memories you are gold-filigreed. â
â you became god when you breathed your first tale. â
â some things are best learned from the passengerâs seat. â
â amid the ache of beauty, and amid my wonder-love, i forgot i am a sinner. â
â i forgot that we ought to be bound for ruin, i forgot every cruel thing the world has ever flung our way, because the dawn made you holy in your sleep. â
â when i am bound for eternity, will you mourn for me? â
â i was only worth loving in your darkest hour, is that it? â
â i am a siren call, not sustenance: there is no meat left in me to feast on. â
â somewhere in me there is a living girl/boy/person, locked in the casket of my heart for safekeeping, buried beneath the silt of our solitude. it has been piled on for so long that i cannot find her/him/them when i try. i cannot even remember laying her/him/them to rest. â
â you told me you loved me and looked at me like i was holy. â
â you should have known i loved you when i asked you to take a road trip with me. â
â i love you, and because i love you i will put aside my relentless terror. â
â if i am your moon, do not take the sky from me. if i am your heart, do not take the cavity in which i beat ceaselessly, deaf and blind to all but you. â
â do not tear me from your chest while you still live in mine, so close that your breath is my breath and your words are my words. â
â who am i that you should love me? â
â i did not know with what words i spoke, what language, what voice; i knew only that i loved you, as soft and ever-present as breathing. â
â if you opened your mouth, the true name of god would spill from your lips. â