Another school assignment, in which we wrote a poem about our future using the theme of ‘Someday.’

Someday I will leave this town.
Someday, I’ll be half way across the world,
remembering my life in little Ohio.
Someday I will stand in St. Peter’s Basilica
And hear the echoes of eternity

Someday I will stand on the rift in Cardiff,
In the crowded markets of Venice,
And in the TARDIS in Earl’s Court.
Someday, I will leave this place
And all that will be left of me is the creaking of old wooden stairs
and the impenetrable silence of dust settling on a Sunday morning.

 Someday I will stand in a sleepy Roman apartment
And remark upon how beautiful my life has been.
Or maybe I’ll finally learn to swim, finally learn to conquer my horoscopic birthright.
Maybe I will write remarkable rhymes that top the Best Seller’s List
Or maybe I’ll still be scribbling in notebooks in my bedroom.
Someday, maybe, I will do something great.
Or maybe I will never do anything at all.

But for today, I am alive
And that’s good enough.

This was part of a large assignment I had to complete for my English class this semester in which we turned a metaphor into a book. I chose to compare myself to a book.

I am a book.
I am bound in old skin,
Filled with endless words.
My mouth is like an epilogue,
Pre-empting our encounter so you
Are not alarmed by my content.
Every year is a new page;
Crisp and new until it’s pushed along.
Swishing and flying by,
And then they crumble.
They wrinkle and tear
Like a half-forgotten memory with all of the faces smudged out.

I am a book that writes itself.
A book so small, but whose dusty shelf print
Will echo for all eternity.
A book that has been dropped a few times,
Whose pages have plenty of footnotes for future help.
One chapter is full of golden rings and smoking mountains
And another is all time travel and timey-wimey things.
This book is mad North by Northwest.
But even in my faults
I am a reliable book.
I am a book who is always there to be picked up,
Who will always remember where you last left off.

I am a book
Whose words will not erase.
My spine is bent and weak.
My cover is withered and worn.
This story won’t last forever
but for now, it goes on and on and on.
Like a faithful novel,
Like a reliable fairytale,
This story will finish.

I am a book.

Is this what it’s supposed to be?

Am I supposed to hear you in every strum of an old guitar string, smell you nearby as cigarette smoke coils around my nose? You’re in the sheets of my bed, in my clothes, on my lips. It’s inescapable. The notion that if I adored you any more then my chest would yield under the sheer force of it.

It scares me; knowing you scares me.

Before you, I had dolefully contented myself with the idea that maybe I was just made to be alone for a while. That there was an ingredient in my quintessence that repelled anyone who may of actually been any good for me. And then suddenly my very soul is enticed and it’s enlightening and you’re beautiful and we’re beautiful and -

I am something new. I am the fresh cut vegetables in our kitchen. I am the snow white sheets on our bed. I am hum of the strings of your old black guitar. I am all of these things but you are more. You are the food those vegetables produce, the warmth in those ivory sheets, the fingers that wring music from thick strings.

I would rather be remembered as a cold-blooded lion than the prey who was eaten because it was too busy lamenting.

I wish you could see me now.

I wish you could see everything you missed out on. Me, standing in a dirty bathroom with his shirt on, the smell of his cologne invading every nook of my senses. My hair tousled from him running his fingers through it, trying to bring us closer in a kiss that couldn’t get any more invasive. I wish you could see me now, with every bit of his soul inside of me. I wish you could see how reborn I am.

I’ve changed since I knew you and I’m glad. I’m beyond joyous no longer do I care to see you. I hope the next time you see me, it’s across the street or in the store or at school, on his arm, a smile on my face and contentment in my eyes.

I have his smell on my hands. That Old Spice cologne-deodorant combo that always smells amazing. It’s in my hair and on my clothes and on my bed and never in my life have I ever felt more in love and the best part about it is that even on the days when I’m feeling lonely or have the mean reds or think that I’m gaining weight or I feel like a pile of crap, even on the lowest days, I never miss you. And for God’s sake, I hope you don’t miss me too.

The shades are closing in on me.

I saw you in a dream once.
I saw you days after and after,
being carried like a great soldier, bathed in white light.
I saw your smile and I felt the forbearance rolling off of you
breaking and breaking and breaking
on my clouded and confused third eye.

I saw you in my dreams.
I saw you as if you were real, as if I could touch you
like a sign from God. Like an angel.

And after you, never did I again view the world the same way.
Where I saw light I saw shadow and where I found good in others, I searched for ulterior motives.
Too many times have I cried to myself into my pillow
asking eavesdropping angels why only the good die young.
I asked why I can even feel at all
when every ounce of humanity I had left had been wrung from swollen eyelids
when all I had left were these calloused and shaking hands
that would dare to write truth
upon truth
upon truths.
That would ask why I would even dare to love again when everything that I had known to be love had still been taken from me.

I saw you in a dream once.
You were neither a lover nor any friend.
You were my blood.
All of my passion died with you.

I cannot bring myself to flesh out, ameliorate, or otherwise falsify the fleeting but unmistakable feeling of realizing that it may not last forever, and that not knowing if it will is the worst part.

“But isn’t that part of growing up or something? Isn’t there that surreal moment when you’re seventeen years old and you bend over to pick up a dirty shirt and suddenly, your back hurts? Or you’re finding yourself leaning in a little closer to that Economics textbook? Your neck is stiff and there’s a sharp pain in your knee and just thinking about Thai food for dinner makes your stomach burn? You know? It’s not so much growing up as much as it’s getting old. But there’s more to getting old than just slowing down at the gym, let me tell you.”

He took a deep breath, something akin to a sigh, and took Robert’s hand. His wispy grey hairs had a faint white incandescence now. It was coming soon.

“Growing old is hard, Bobby,” he whispered. “Growing old is watching your childhood home be torn down. It’s watching your mother’s rose bushes die or attending your best friend’s funeral. It’s having someone tear your heart out with their perfect hands, it’s watching those hands take your children from you.”

A silence settled between them that for once didn’t seem tense or awkward. The old man’s eyes settled on the only window in the room, looking out with a distant gaze. It was grey and miserable outside and something about that made the old man laugh in-between tell-tale coughs and murmurs. Robert could feel the cold silver of the old man’s ring in his hand. He hesitated for a moment before twisting it off of his finger and pocketing it, nodding solemnly to the old man. He could still remember the shiver that ran down his back when the elder leaned up and whispered his name in Robert’s ear, patting him on the shoulder before settling back into his hospital bed. Every odd night, Robert wonders if maybe he saw an inkling of a smile on his lips as he died.

That night, he remarked aloud to an empty room how ironic it was that he had spent so many years pretending he was already dead, but was not the least bit prepared to lose his father.

“Up in flames! Up in flames! We have slowly gone — “

I fell into cotton blend bed sheets and expensive cologne. I fell into the striped polo shirt you hate so much but wore anyways because you forgot to do your laundry today. I fell into your arms, onto your wide ribcage, and drifted off to sleep. Every few seconds, I would awake and was caught in an echo of the moment you picked me up and laid me on the bed, feeling the sheets wrap up around us and the warmth of your hand like a five-tongued flame on my side. Every inch of your body is charted underneath my fingernails. Every freckle, every bump, every dip in your skin. It all happens so fast but all it takes it one spark —

and my entire constitution goes up in flames. The heat radiating off of you melts into me and compounds us. I know your physique as if it was my own but still. Still you do not know mine and every time you lay your hand somewhere else, it burns and burns and I almost lose my mind at the slightest wrinkle of warmth.

I am slowly burning away everything I had so carefully built. I, myself, am burning away and my ashes are forming a shell around you.

“We have slowly gone — oh, we have slowly gone! Can we pour some water on?”