love letter to the sixteen year old who wants to be a martyr

come here. the world is not an ocean

to fight your way through tirelessly.

i think my hands will fit in yours

because this is what hands were made for

if not to hold other hands then to hold

the paintbrush or the pen or the bread.

just as our backs were made not to be

sharp and bulletproof but to shimmer

at the sight of the decadent sunlight.

you do not have to bleed to be alive

but when you do i will clean your wounds.

let us follow the ritual we have done

for hundreds of thousands of years

and that is waking up in the morning

and kissing the blue sky and being alive.

come here and wash up on the sand.

we can have love in the middle of this war

with ourselves. we can lie in this bed and

sleep in the middle of the churning sea.

but please when you wake do not think

of the body like a mission. do not think

of tenderness like a conqueror

with every sword drawn and polished.

the world, your world, is not a battlefield

nor is it, again, an ocean,

nor is it a prairie

full of birds taking flight - as much

as i would like it to be.

there is no cross waiting across the river

there are no crowds waiting to watch you ache.

there are, of course, people waiting to love you.

think of the hands and what they are made for

and the way they refuse to die.

know that in your sleep while you dream of knives

they trace your face still

and they do not draw blood

but rather memorize the fluttering of your eyelids.

this, i think, is the song they sing in church

on the good days.

where the sun becomes its own blessing.

death has a thousand of its own songs

but none of them have made it extraordinary.

i think of a country like a body

and a body like a country. i think of her

destitute, i think of her lonely

i think of her sinking to her knees

when grief floods the land

with that merciless high tide.

suffice it to say that if grief is a god

then i no longer know what to worship.

if the sunlight is a god

however every morning is a prayer.

in summation when all my bones are broken

my knees will be the thing which i fall upon

and when i look up from the cool earth

i want to look upon something good.

in the meantime i think of you, going to every party

in the dress you wish to die in.

i think of you under the moonlight,

white lace like a war flag shivering like a soldier

so that if you were to fall into the swimming pool

and never return you might at least be remembered.

you were glowing, once, but not like this.

you were a radiant thing, but not here.

the silver glint of the sword

is not sunlight, nor is it stars.

you are praying to the wrong god.

to be human is to want to be something else -

god. ocean. bluejay.

empty stadium swelling with the ghosts of applause.

i’m sorry that you’re angry over this.

over all the things you are not all the time.

i’m sorry that you dream of such decadence

all through the night - making monsters

out of men while your hands

make air out of air out of air.

while you dream of biting that silver bullet

and spitting it back out at the world.

because what are you

if you’re not angry? who are you

on the nights where you do not dream of blood?

i will remind you: your hands are not curled into fists

while you sleep. we have been over this.

while i clean your bloody knuckles please

tell me a story and leave out the parts

where you were too cruel to bear.

tell me what is left after the bruises fade.

find a story about love buried in your chest.

are you afraid you will see the sunlight?

so much of it that you cannot turn away?