Immortalized by the scribes in my mind.

My stoicism belies my loving nature

And when you first saw me, you probably

Had a notion about how I was defined.

You are everywhere all at once,

All the time.

You're many characters in my stories

With different names, different glories.

The reason for my poems, the reason for my rhymes.

Every single thought that I transcribe of you

Gets put on a piece paper so you can be immortalized.

My prayers, my wishes, my hopes, and my dreams.

All of the ideas that I threw away and shredded at the seams.

The scenes about me and you seem seemless

When I pen the fairytale of our lives with an eye's gleam.

To be loved by a poet is serene.

Because you're the main character in every book, defined by a penmanship that is motivated by a love never before seen.

I can't help but to draw sunshines with these words.

When you are the subject, every noun, every verb.

the tenderness of your stare

brings warmth to my wounds,

my fractured scars

it wraps them around in a blanket

( and they have been cold

for so long, you see )

you heal pieces of past traumas

without even knowing it, my dearest

the ones that have been with me

for years ( decades? yes, perhaps )

and you do it

just by the love that pulsates

out of that universe

that sometimes you let me see

out of those deep brown, amber hues

Lately

I'm finding faith

Between

Questions

And

Self-laced intentions,

Like a dot to dot

Painting insanity

Or something else.

So I interrogate

My eyes

And why they bend

And spin

Light as they do.

Is anything real?

So I will follow

my greed

Into the foundation

Of everything

I will never know,

And create night

With eyelids and hope.

And I will see her

As more than

An outline,

When I can trace

nothing

But darknes,

Peeling like scars

From from the center

Of me.

I peak back out

At the dawn.

And i wish I

I could see everything

Like this.

And follow the greed.

The truth is,

Being wrong

Is fucking

Beautiful.

Because she looks good

In both outfits.

If only I could

Also

See

Myself.

Dapper as fuck

In my confusion.

Maybe truth

Would never

Drop beneath the horizon.

But when it comes

To her,

You always squint

At the fucking sun.

I hope we are the normal people that they refer to. The ones who find each other no matter what. Throughout all of the life changes, preparing us for what's to come.

To love. Like we could've. But it wasn't the time then.

I hope the time is approaching, as I need you more than ever before. I beg that you still like me like you did back then. I couldn't bear the heartbreak I would feel if you got up and left. After countless nights of crying for you, pleading with the angels to bring you back to me. Please, stay. So I can too.

"[5] And the king gave this command to Joab, Abishai, and Ittai: 'For my sake, deal gently with young Absalom.' And all the troops heard the king give this order to his commanders.

[14] 'Enough of this nonsense,' Joab said. Then he took three daggers and plunged them into Absalom’s heart as he dangled, still alive, in the great tree ‭‭(2 Samuel‬ ‭18:5‬ ‭NLT‬‬)."

David certainly dealt with betrayal throughout his life, from being the betrayer in his affair with Bathsheba, to being the betrayed when his son Absalom stole his throne, and also being betrayed by his right hand man Joab when he ignored David's request to spare his son Absalom. Hopefully we aren't hit with the same extremes of betrayal that David experienced, but we will feel betrayal at some point in our lives, whether we are hurt by someone we love and/or count on, or whether we mess up and break someone's trust through our actions. We are in good company when we remember Peter's betrayal of Jesus when he denied him three times, and the betrayal of Judas after being one of Jesus' disciples. Jesus understands the pain of betrayal and can help us process it if we ask Him, and like His disciple Peter, we can still be redeemed from being betrayers in the past if we repent and turn to Him going forward.

Thank You Lord for being relatable for the times we have been affected by betrayal, whether we were the victim or the villain. Please forgive me for any times that I have been the betrayer, and thank You for walking with me through past betrayals that happened to me. Please help me to be a man of my word that is true to those I interact with, and please show me how I can bless and minister to those that have been hurt by betrayals in their lives. In Jesus' name I pray, Amen.

I’m often reminded of you.

When I feel joy overwhelm me.

Joy I thought you were faking.

When joy reveals itself plainly.

When joy reveals itself through song.

When synths feel cinematic and manic

and make me want to morph my body into a star.

When I hear lamentations about our eventual fate

that still allow space for awe amid lingering angst

When I want to feel everything, everywhere, all at once

When I want to feel everyone I love.

When I am wondering where I learned how to care.

In the beginning, there were two lovers

locked in eternal embrace

and they dreamed of stars and super novas

alone in the dark of space.

The male pulled away in order to see

his lover in full view,

but as he gazed upon her beauty,

the winds of darkness blew,

and death with his pure lack of mercy

struck with deadly haste,

stealing the male’s ever-living soul,

leaving his body to waste.

The universal mother,

struck with maddening grief,

gave birth to all that is

a universe beyond belief

with planets, stars, comets, suns,

expanding out away,

with gods and spirits, angels and demons,

and lords of night and day.

All the dreams she and her lover dreamed

became real and new,

as there she stayed, an unmoving center

from which everything grew,

and as the mother watched with sorrow

as her children drifted out,

always moving further from her,

closer to death and doubt,

her sadness, guilt, grief and suffering

encompassed everything

with death and darkness surrounding all

ever looming, ever waiting.

Forrest Gump said: Life is like a box of chocolates. But I'd argue it's a walnut: crack it open, and little useless shards fall out. Or maybe that's just what someone who has 'aftermath' says. I say that because at one point, the walnut was whole, and not broken, a bad analogy. There was a distinct before, and after.

Today I walked around my old college campus, the one I spectacularly dropped out of after one semester. I have a lot of somber thoughts about this experience. I went to the campus cafe and had a muffin and coffee and wrote down some thoughts on a napkin in blue ink. I prefer blue ink - on some documents, your signature is not official unless it's in blue ink; that's how you discern it was not forged, that's it's real. I am not forging these thoughts, this peculiar feeling of separateness.

I watch the college girls around me. One is staring at me. I like that, that I'm someone worth staring at. I don't question it. I do question the clothing choices - all parkas and mittens, zany hats and corduroy pants. And then I realize I'm judging them because I couldn't be them.

I dropped out, choosing mental illness over conventional quirkiness.

The girls fifteen years ago, when I went to this all-women's college, were horrible. They were mean, bulimic, and petty. I overheard one girl, when told I was to join a party later that evening, yelling - how could you invite Alison to this party? She's weird. I'll never forget her. She was my roommate.

Today, walking around the campus, I felt like I hadn't had the upper hand, the advantage. It wasn't just mental illness. No one understood the particular feeling of being disliked for who I felt I really was. For I had thought I was interesting back then, both for having a mental illness and not, but I most certainly wasn't. I was just eighteen. And young, and naive - so naive it makes me wonder that I lasted even one semester.

The 'aftermath' is what happens when you give up something that could have been great, and then spend a day fifteen years down the road admiring the girls you could have been; the infinite possibilities of them dressed up in winter clothes, but I just see straight through them to ghosts.

In fact, I wrote down "ghost" on my napkin, but that probably meant me.

This piece must be so boring to read. I feel boring just re-experiencing these emotions.

I wish I could wrap this up neatly. But these feeling just sit there, lame and intolerable to sit with.

I could connect this back to my walnut analogy, but who cares? When you crack open something not meant for you, it falls apart, sure. It sits in a million little pieces.

A million little sorry thoughts that add up to only one girl staring at you, and probably not for the reasons you think.

I come from a long line of rugged frontiersmen. Men who did whatever they had to in order to survive. Tough. Independent. Resilient.

For five generations, the unforgiving landscape of the Nevada desert has shaped our lives. The Wild West has been a major character in all of our stories, and no matter how hard we try to leave, each of us is called back to dance with the desert again. For me, that call came the summer after I turned eleven. I never could have predicted how my time in Nevada would shape the rest of my life, but I’m glad I got to spend a decade breathing in its untamed air.

There are few places that will foster a spirit of adventure like the absolute desolation of the high desert. Wide valleys bordered by rugged mountain ranges and covered by clear blue skies; and, once in a blue moon, a blanket of black clouds echoing with thunder.

Long, straight highways that cut their way through sagebrush-covered valleys and connect small town, to smaller town. No one around but you, God and the devil. That’s when you really get to know yourself.

There are no distractions out there. No one to compare yourself to. It’s in the desolation that you learn exactly who you are and what you’re made of. The desert will weigh and measure you, and if you can’t cut it, you’ll know. There is no hiding.