Daddy'd come home with roses almost every day.

“I love you, Honey,” he’d always say.

Onto Momma’s lips, then, he’d plant a kiss,

share with her his day, how she was missed.

Daddy was always so nice, kissing and sweet- talking her;

Momma said I was lucky to have such a father.

Daddy believed roses were the blossom of his love.

“Your Momma should be kept happy;

she’s a gift bestowed from above.”

One wrong word-- he’d apologize for hours

and next day bring home a dozen extra flowers.

And they were always the prettiest kind

from some expensive place,

always going in our most splendid vase.

Eventually, wrong words increased, flowers became so few.

Arguments would start and sometimes last an hour or two.

And then, they’d always fight, always yell—

telling each other to go to Hell.

Sadly, one night Daddy got so mad—

filled with so much rage—

that he let all of his anger out of the cage.

His fist was like a hammer against her face;

his love for her had been misplaced.

He bought Momma roses the very next day.

“I’m so sorry, my angel,” I heard him say.

“I’ll never do it again; I promise you that.”

But my Daddy was a lying rat.

Each time he hit her it would always be worse.

“Oh, I fell again,” Momma would tell the nurse.

Daddy loved Momma—he told me he did.

And that I wouldn’t understand

because I was just a kid.

And I couldn’t comprehend

why I saw not another rose

or why Daddy always gave Momma

another bloody nose.

Now the only roses I see

are the ones on Momma’s grave.

Daddy got too mad one night

and her life couldn’t be saved.

A sickening sea of seditious sychophants surge

at the steps of Congress. Stupidity

reaching critical mass, they breach barriers

--in typical white fashion--to lay claim to that

which does not belong to them. These

preachers of “just get over it”

whom can not, in fact, just get over it,

swarm like hungry locust hallowed halls of democracy,

looking to not leave left a single morsel 

of law and decency, proud to be followers

of law and order. Gunfire rings louder than their efforts

to make their voices heard in ways voting did not. 

They stare at a women bleeding out at their feet,

one of them, dumbfounded

that a blue life would do this. 

Is it wrong: 

that I laugh that she gave her life for a silly red hat

that I think the flag should be fed more of their blood?

Oh, to be a bear—

to eat and eat and eat, gorging yourself

on the fat of the land, until unrecognizable

in your own corpulence;

to just close your eyes and disappear,

a tumultuous season passing by as you dream.

It seems so unfair.

I could commit gluttony at dinner

yet, come morning, awaken

empty and needing.

How much time must transpire

between opening my eyes and closing them again

to be considered a new nap? Or have I succeeded

at one big sleep with brief intermissions

of disappointing wakefulness?

Some say it takes ten thousand hours

to practice a skill into mastery. I am

a student of the ursine arts. All I care

to do these days is hone this craft, still unable

to drift away for whole seasons.

A day or two may pass away, but I awaken

faced with all the reasons

I want to disappear. I close my eyes again.

Oh, to be a bear.

And how does a bear know

when the season is over,

when it is safe to open eyes once again?

How will I?

Butterflies migrate

smashed against dirty windshields

migrating to work

metamorphosis

reborn, made more beautiful

to die in the street

“A man will leave his father and his mother and he must stick to his wife and they must become one flesh.” A burning plagued my side and in her I found the reason why. Each morning as I stared at her picture, I thanked Him; and every night just the same. A complement, sculpted by the hand of God himself, it seemed, just for me—everything I needed, everything I never knew I wanted. Before I even truly knew her and was trying to pawn off my heart to someone else, it already ran away, leaping into her arms. It’s true what I've heard some men say: “The most precious possession that ever comes to a man in this world is a woman's heart”

I don’t believe in fate, yet it still feels that I was born to love her. Every event that has ever happened in my life, everything molded me into a character for her heart and only hers. She was never a trial, it was never a struggle coming to love her; simply natural, like day giving way to night. Not before long, we experienced a bonding of mind and heart, a grafting of two souls that not even the most skilled of surgeons could replicate. Although no one is perfect, there is nothing about her I would change. For centuries love has been captured in song, verse, canvas, and stone; I believe it is she and I that all these artists have been alluding to. After all, she is already the archetype, the ultimate beauty that these very artists could only dream of capturing. She is my reason for leaving behind father and mother, even myself and every previous course of action if so necessary. Without her, there is only a little bit of me left.

Yet here we are, distanced, paying the price for our untimely love. A shooting star streaked across the sky and I wished upon it. But I guess it does make a difference who you are because she’s still not here beside me. When not compared to her, this vision really is as magnificent as she said it would be. Thus, even after a failed wish, I watch the sky because I know the Universe is something that she finds intriguing. And maybe we’ll be gazing at the same star so, in some way, we’ll be nestled up there together—aflame like a blue dwarf with our love, instead of so distant like Pluto and the Sun. She is my world and now that she’s gone my heart has little left to stand on.

“Remember me when you get into your Kingdom,” pleaded an evildoer hung alongside Jesus. And it is this Kingdom which gives so many the strength to live and endure. But my heart keeps beating, white cells keep fighting, I keep persevering for her. The future will bring her to me again, I know it will. When I’m bent over like a tree beaten by the wind with not many years left of my life, she’ll still be a cherished rose garnishing my frayed limbs. A fragrant flower of exquisite color, such beauty it causes the heart to rejoice, so delicate and graceful yet mighty in power so as to keep life in these aged veins. Never in all my years will I live for anyone other than her; never in all my years will my love for her wane. “Bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh”—she is my Paradise. She is worth the wait.

What I learned about forever

is how the thought of it comforts people,

this idea of something good enduring for so long.

She made promises of our love in such

boundless terms.

Have you ever felt as if you were created

with a purpose to love only one specific someone?

And, finally, when you find them...

it’s like waking up from a dream into dream

except you’ve been awake the whole time.

Is this soul mates? Is this finding your other half?

Is it nothing more than dumb luck?

Because some search for this and come up empty.

How could I be so lucky?

And sometimes you still doubt reality

so you pinch yourself and rub your eyes

like you’re trying to polish glass.

But she’s there, every day she is is still there.

You couldn’t be any closer if you were sewn

at the hip; and would that even be

such a bad thing? Don’t two souls

in such love always want to be one?

But, then, one day you wake up

from the dream that was never really a dream

because you were never asleep but somehow

you missed it.

One less “I love you” turned to two turned to three

turned to all of them.

And sometimes things move so gradually

that you can’t even percieve the change.

You don’t talk anymore and you don’t

know why or when it started, just that silence

has never been so loud or the empty space

between your arms so heavy to carry.

You feel it growing inside you--

this sadness, this misery, this confusion.

It grows like a cancer

unless it feels like that’s all you’re made of

until you’re fraying at the seams.

And in your head is an endless loop on repeat:

her, making a promise over and over.

And you’re pretty sure promises

are supposed to be kept, it is a sacred thing;

isn’t that the very nature of a promise?

But what do I know?

I am just a plaything. A doll.

A raggedy teddy bear.

I am learning, though.

What I learned about forever

is that it comes sooner than you’d expect.

Death dons a new face

and the whole world hides behind a mask,

has quarantined itself indoors;

yet, each morning brings new mourning

as statistics continue to worsen.

The odds are in our favor

but every day I still read story

after story

after story

of those lost to this virus,

those whose odds were not favorable.

Sure, my chance of survival is high but what if

I’ve made a mistake,

my preventative measures not cautious enough?

Any day now, it could be my name in the paper,

just another number lost in the statistics.

I obsessively look out the window

keeping watch for an enemy impossible to see.

Like this old house, my body groans and creaks;

every new noise has me panicked

about an unwanted visitor.

There is always a thermometer in my mouth now,

the constant smell of bleach on every surface.

I have not felt my lover’s touch in months.

We promised to let nothing come between us—

all it’s taken is 125 nanometers.

There is a killer on the loose

600 times smaller than the diameter of a strand of hair,

her hair that used to be everywhere.

Her smell in my clothes, in my sheets,

the subtle reminders of her frequent presence

washed away with disinfectant.

We must stand apart now

to improve the odds we can live a long life

together when this is all over.

This is the happiest love I’ve ever known

and I stay awake at night worried

that I won’t make it long enough to hold her again,

that I’ll wake up in a lonely hospital room,

machines keeping me alive.

I stay awake at night worried

that all the bleach, all the Lysol,

all the masks the in world, all the distance

won’t make a difference.

I stay awake at night worried

that I will be prematurely plucked from this life

and never get the chance to love her

for as long or as much as she deserves.