spilling

I want to get lost between your legs,

The purest of lust, the itch of sin,

Searching for something new to taste on my tongue, to wrap around my fingertips,

Writhing and speaking my own holy language in such a sacred place—

Lacing every inch of your skin with my own like a roadmap until I know it by heart.

I want to know the things you say in the dark to no one else,

Secrets spilling out of every line traced,

Hands wrapped tight, but soft like sheets around your waist,

Lips overlapped like time and space—

I want to be what makes you ache.

_______________________

JK

afraid to feel

I don’t remember the way your love felt anymore.

In fact, I don’t believe I really feel it in myself these days. . .

It’s hard to describe the way it was, like a warm jacket no matter the season, or a flash of rain on a sunny day—

I’m much more inclined to describe the absence,

Like a phantom limb, a hand placed on my shoulder that isn’t quite there—

In pulling out the pieces, I may have severed nerves as well, leaving my heart pounding at the walls of my chest, chasing ghosts, howling at the moon.

Some days I feel I’ve been leaned into a corner for far too long, my neck bent and strings gone out of tune, no use in singing anything anytime soon.

I have to reform, restring, reshape, and I’m still learning how.

I’m afraid to feel the way I’ve felt before, afraid to give myself and so much more, afraid to let anything or anyone be purely adored.

The thought of it right now is sickening and sore in my mouth, like a wound left open, untreated, ignored,

But there must be something more in store, something there to hope or long for, something shiny or dense and solid, not so easily taken or moved.

The right love, the best life, will always find its way to you—

A time and place that doesn’t make you choose.

___________________

JK

strangled

I can’t say it.

I can’t hurt you.

I don’t want to go, but I may have to;

Time drags a long sharp fingernail down my back,

And I have nothing to respond with, no slack.

The silver cord is as taut as could be,

And I feel strangled by the line,

Unsure of what I have in life.

I have a feeling that I may just explode—

The heart in my chest like a violin unbowed,

The reverberation of an instrument so hollow that no sound can unfold.

What good comes from such strife?

I feel caught and exposed, chained and unloaded,

Completely bound by pure muscle,

Like a handgun with no clip, or a pair of femurs without a neck to interlock with.

Am I tainted in some tenderness, or just drowned in my own blissful ignorance?

What more time might I lose in this?

___________________

JK

with you

I wish I could fall into a painted blue sky,

Tightrope across the radio wires;

I’d love to feel as though I’ll never die,

Strung out on the spire of the highest peak—

If I shared with you my greatest dreams,

Would you dare to ever jump with me?

slipped

What if I told you?

What if you knew?

How would I say it,

And for what if I choose?

What would you say?

What would you do?

How would you feel,

Or would you feel how I do?

If only I had it—if only it was just there,

Just outside my hand, slipped between the cracks,

Somewhere. . .

How would I even capture something I don’t fully understand?

__________________

JK

bad wrapping

This year has been filled with a lot of firsts for me.

Some of them are truly awful, and I wouldn’t wish them on anyone—but some have been absolutely amazing, and I would implore everyone to go out and find them for themselves.

Yesterday was my first birthday without my dad.

It’s just hitting me today how much I really appreciated his call, and how he’d tell me how much he loved me, that he was proud of me, proud to be my dad.

And I have more firsts to get through. My first Christmas without him is going to be tough. I always knew which gift he wrapped for me because of how badly it’d be folded and taped. Sometimes he’d forget to wrap it entirely and have to run away for a bit to do it day of, as we’d be opening other gifts.

I got my habit of bad wrapping from him, I guess.

After that, it’s the first new year. A day that once held such love to me will now be doubled with grief and remembrance, perhaps a bit of loathing.

I really fucking miss my dad. It really fucking sucks.

But I am not alone, and I know that. There are others who grieve, there are friends who share, and there are many to bare it with me.

The day my dad died, I drove straight to Kyle. I don’t know why—he lived out in the middle of fucking nowhere. And he was already awake, like he knew I was on the way, or someone was with terrible news. And we just talked. And we joked, and we said some really fucked shit. But he was there, and he made himself available the rest of the week.

And Jon drove down from Delaware and stayed the whole week—we made music, we played games, and we cried together.

I went bowling with Christina and then we got ice cream and shared our old music tastes with each other.

Asher and I just sat and talked, and we discussed everything down to the smallest of details.

Every day since has been nothing short of a climb, but I’ve had footholds and rest stops all along the way up.

Today I am not okay, but I know that I will be okay, and that sounds good to me. I will push through, and things get farther away, and I just have to stay hopeful that I am strong enough, or willing to accept help when I need it.

I just really miss my dad.

___________________

JK

what it means

I think about the way time passes, and how I’ll eventually forget the sound of your voice, the way a smile, so small, perched just between your nose and chin, the echo of your laugh between the walls of that now empty house.

Murphy’s Law states that if it can go wrong, it will, and I fought so hard against that for so long, and it became time that I learned from my mistakes, because I let too many slide, too many chances I gave for you to change.

If you hurt once, you will hurt again—almost patternistic in your approach, gaunt stagger even, through life.

My father told me to only look for good things, good people, and I am terribly sorry you were not one of them.

I said I wouldn’t write about you, but I lied. Try as I might, some knots can not be untied, some cords lay unsevered, small enough to tuck inside some capillary, too hard to find.

And believe you me, the love is by and far gone, and the pain is more of an itch that pulls words right off my tongue like some playful dementor in training—but there is a soreness found through disappointment, the turned-tables, the death per se of a very close friend.

I do not miss the you that you are, because that is not the you that you were to me, and I am sorry that your journey for your own sunshine burned away every bridge you crossed on your path,

But it made finding my own so much easier, less of a haunted chase through scorched earth back to you, and more of a field of flowers, petals made of soft hands of friends that guided me towards a better me.

I know you have tried to reach out, perhaps out of the kindness you may have, or perhaps out of some pity for yourself, guilt most likely, in the how and why,

But I have poured cement into the old foundation to build something new; what room was there before has been covered in solid ground.

You are not welcome in these new walls, the paint is too fresh and the color is just setting in—you will not step foot in my house again.

I am still learning what it means to build grand spaces with such small hands, but I will do it best for myself because I can.

I do not wish you harm or suffering, but perhaps justice through your own emotions will suffice.

I am perfectly content with my new lot in life.

_____________________

JK