Lullaby
All it took was a simple click,
A quiet smile,
A play of words,
And she did the rest.
She was his waking thought,
His lullaby,
His innocence.
Curled under the bed sheets,
Watching her lull into sleep,
He would call her his heartbeat.
Pills
The hardest pill to swallow
Will be when she sees
All the love you have to give
And quickly replies
That’s not good enough.
Nights No More
Out of all the sleepless nights.
All the broken glass.
And all the venom spewed.
He still missed the warm nights.
With her in his arms.
Watching the hounds sleep.
And the videos buffer.
Merlot
With a crystal rim
Pressed to her lips
She scribbled
His heart’s demise
Sitting at a round, gray lunch table being fed lies and fiction.
This is where my trust was looted.
Chasing a headmaster’s daughter who laughed at my puppy dog looks.
This is where my confidence was shattered.
In a locker room eating punches and mashing my teeth.
This is where the hate grew inside me.
In a chapel being commanded to stand.
This is where my faith dwindled.
In a camp cursing venom and rage.
This is where I cried for help.
And then I was forgotten,
Another face lost in the crowd,
Another student body statistic,
Another damaged, delinquent kid.
This is where I lost my faith.
My cozy hellhole where the wolves wore painted smiles and the snakes slithered in harmony.
And he said, with a stern look and honesty on his tongue,
“You’re going to hell and you don’t even know it.”
An Open Letter to First Love
I haven’t written you because it took me a long time to be able to think of you or hear your voice without feeling something.
Not something that left me with a long bar tab.
Not something that made me go berserk on a heavy bag or lay in bed all day.
It was something that made me miss the times we’ll never have again.
It was me opening our scrapbook without wanting to add pages or rearrange the memories.
Your insecurities didn’t bother me
Not the chubby cheeks, the chicken legs, or the frizzy hair
Or that you were a freshman when I was a senior.
I didn’t care about your sorry excuse for a family and friends who fed me nothing but smooth lies and fake smiles
What ate at eat me was that after all this time I can’t tell your truths from a lie.
It was looking back having no idea what was real and what was just you spinning a web of tales.
What bled me out was that you didn’t care when I hurt but I was there for all your sleepless nights, open wounds, and agonizing sobs.
Time and again I was editing myself
While you reluctantly kept your rough draft.
I came running in reckless abandon at your smoke signals while you didn’t flinch at my pleas,
“You’re killing me, you’re killing me,” I’d say after the whiskey pushed my truth out
But you wouldn’t take the hook out of your trophy fish.
Topping your stabs with empty promises about theme parks, UK flights, and blue labels.
I just wanted you to spare my hopes from the firing squad.
I think I iced over in Paris.
When I couldn’t wait to see you,
And like always you led me along only to send that nonchalant text canceling
Just like all the other times before,
Just tell me I meant nothing,
I could’ve jumped off the bridge with a smile,
But you ripped off the scab and poured whiskey on the wound for months instead,
And I fucked all the silver medals and buried myself in the sand.
Until I became numb from the bee stings and stopped feeling the salt on my bleeding heart.
I don’t regret you being my first love,
I just wish I had put out the fire that was me burning alive,
While you sat with your legs crossed sipping my gifted single barrel and watching the match burn.
