The ice is cracking. It has always been. When I was younger, I used to let myself believe that the low groans were the voice of my father calling me home. No one ever told me my feet weren’t supposed to blister like this. I thought they were shedding. I thought I was growing. No one ever told me you could pick the way you died. When my brothers best friend broke through my parents said it was an accident, hoping we would never become curious with cold water. We visited his grave the day after Christmas, it was still covered in poinsettias and Pokemon cards. I shuffled my boots through the snow, while my brother hid the hockey puck of a lump in his throat. I don’t know who he was trying to protect. Because we both know it could have been him. We both know it still could be. Debts are yet to be paid and the knives in our house have always been sharp. Trust me I have checked. He could still dive into the water with him. In the car after, I asked if he was scared of dying. He took his eyes off the road when he said he was more afraid of the people he would leave behind doing the same. At the grave, I mistook the envy in his eyes for sadness. I think there was always a part of him that wishes God had a different intent that day. That he would have frozen that December instead of Tommy. These are the wishes we will never put on our Christmas list. These are the the dreams we will never chase on account of the other. He turns up the radio before I can tell him how proud I am to have him as a brother. That he will be one of my favorite things. I want to tell I am so glad he decided to start ice skating again. As we drive home it starts to rain. I think of spring and safety and melting and mending. The ice is thawing. It has always been.

Electricity has always seemed like magic to me. So when the lights in my house started flickering I blamed it on the angry spirits. You told me all the ghosts were in my head, it was merely weak wires. When you were standing on the chair, screwing in the loose bulb I realized that maybe we aren’t magic either. There is a chance we we will burn out too. Last night, I was still awake when you started to cry. I saw all of your lights fade out. My spine bent as it heard your ugly gasps. Every inch of my being told me to keep pretending I was was having another nightmare. Then I remembered when I was nine. My father took my brother and I out barefoot into the backyard to teach us how to find the north star. He pointed to the brightest one and called it home. Even then, I knew that it could never be that simple. We most be allowed more than one sanctuary. I mean there were millions of stars. Heaven couldn’t be that greedy. I ran to all the neighbors houses, like a persistent salesman, trying to make them buy my black out. I wanted to see all the stars. I wanted the whole map. All of it. And now I am lying across from childhood wish wondering how I ever loved before I sat with you in your darkness. I clutch onto your forearm and tell you it is okay. That I love you. That sometimes my wires get weak too. Sometimes the ghost escape my head and come to play. Sometimes I wish we were still nine years old and could pretend that if all of our toes stayed under the blankets we were invincible. I can not pull you out this, we all have our own boogie men behind the bedroom mirror. But I will promise to not be scared if it. Of you. I will keep the power company on speed dial and play board games by body light until you decide to flip the switch. I used to think electricity magic. I used to think you were the light of my life. I know better now. And that’s alright.

Sometimes I eat pizza at one am and begin to feel like my grandma would be really disappointed with me. When I talk, I either ramble a lot or I become as quite as a church the day after Christmas. Never in between. Either way, the right words never seem to make it out alive. There are moments I wonder if purgatory is real because sometimes I only see in gray. Sometimes I think we’re already there. I get really scared. The clammy kind. Sometimes to the point where I take really long showers and say I’m shaving my legs. But we all know I’m convulsively crying on the egg shell colored tiles, the walls are thin. I like to pretend my father can’t hear me though. There moments on the sidewalk when I want to turn to strangers and ask them if they are terrified to become just like their parents too? Sometimes I build levies around myself in hopes that I will keep the floods out. Or maybe to try and keep the salt water in. There are days I don’t want to open the closet or the curtains or turn on the bathroom sink. Sometimes I think I have made myself into a giant metaphor and that I was always asking for this. Sometimes I make myself the victim. Some days I don’t even make it out the door. It’s easier that way. Sometimes I wish I would have given you more. I have begun to think that life will always be this way.

I am two sleeping pills and four sad songs into this surrender. This is my sheep song. My losing battle.

There is a moment when you become so startlingly close with each other that the most insignificant things turn into the most romantic. Like brushing your teeth in the same sink or remembering how the other takes their coffee in the morning. Grocery lists in their handwriting turn into love letters. Dinners with their family begin to feel more necessary than a night in your favorite city. I think so many people go into relationships fearing they will lose their fictional spark and become mundane.They begin to believe that love is only meant to be heart pounding and breath taking. I’m not saying that isn’t a part of it but I’m beginning to realize it’s not the most important bit.

I developed a habit of stockpiling letters in between the binding of my Bible, only half hoping God would be able to translate my wayward cursive. Some days, I leave them scattered on your bed side table so that maybe I will not have to keep whispering my confessions into the back of your neck at four am. I flush at the thought of someone hearing my inward sins as easily as understanding the movements of my pen. I quiver at the idea of forever and fatal flaws. I hope you understand I do not think myself weak but sometimes I do shake like a leaf on an autumn nights. There are days I don’t think I have the power to get out of bed. Please, do not hold anything against me but your body. Please, understand I am still collecting bits of heroes in my pockets so that one day I can build a better me. I know it would be easier to walk out of this abandoned church, blame it on the creator, but I hope you realize sometimes the softest prayer sounds like the holiest of choirs.

My life is a series of glances that I should have held a second longer.

Find myself retracing our battle steps in my bed every night. I still sleep on your war path. My laugh lines still look like self inflicted scars. My legs still buckle at the mere thought of being able to kiss you bloody again. I am a deserter seeking refuge in your bullet wounds. I am a soldier tying your tattered scarf around my bayonet. I am a veteran with a purple heart. I still wonder why you left.

Open the door. Hear my kettle cry. I want to warm your toes again. Do not make me kiss your answering machine goodnight anymore. The last time you talked to me I swear I heard a mountain summit in the back of your throat. I miss the way you used to miss me. Turn around. Don’t walk away. Even though I would be content to stare at the back of your neck for weeks. Even though I could write sonnets about your hairline. Even now. Even after all this time.

i do not believe that this is the end but there is something about this night that makes me want to hold you like gravity holds the moon. you are the galaxy. and if the world were to disappear into you i doubt i would mind.

I am a misinformed martyr, willing to die for a cause that no longer exists. Somehow, even though waiting for you is like singing hymns to an empty pew, my palms are still open. They will always be reaching towards you. Sometimes, it feels like I am making love to a cracked mirror, an altered version of myself. The morning after an encounter I pick thorns out of my ribcage and find lashes on my calves, Still, I place you on an altar. I idolize you. You are my anti-hero. The bringer of my end. My own personal cup of hell. The apocalypse begins at the curve of your lips. Yet, every time I see that grin cut across your face I swear I am in front of the savior. Somehow, you are still salvation and I doubt there will ever be a day that I stop kneeling towards Mecca.

Most days, I wonder what is left of me. What shreds of skin still remain to be stumbled upon. I fear that maybe I have undressed in front of two way mirrors too often and that maybe I haven’t left any secrets, even myself. What if I am another America? Have the pioneers already come? Has the gold already been found? Have I been conquered? My words, my feelings, are they now easily explained in textbooks, mysteries solved? Can past lovers now easily dissect my short comings as if I were a lab rat? Am I merely another moon? Another myth solved? Another magicians trick? Maybe this is how the gods felt when their lightning bolts were demoted to electric matter. Maybe our secrets make us matter. Maybe they make us real. Maybe I am thinking too much. Maybe I always will. Some nights though, I think that there are still parts of me left to be discovered, fossils still waiting to be brushed off. Some nights, I know I’m not finished yet. Some nights, it doesn’t hurt to grow up.

I keep finding myself attempting to write metaphors about trees, thinking that somehow over-symbolized branches could begin convey you. I feel so stupid for thinking I could cut you down to shubbery. I just want you to know though that you are not weak. You are so much more than maple and evergreens. You are stronger than any birch, any oak. You are the strongest man that I have ever known.

let your insecurities make your body blush. have them all kiss the crevices that the lovers could never find. let your lungs collapse in a battle cry that the matyrs all would envy. you are a temple painted with bullet holes but damn those pinholes sure can light up the night. there is no fire escape. no back door promise. no tresure beyond those gates. you are the destination. you are the prolific prize. you are your own saving grace.