Everyone had their own version of him.

All adding up to be the man they each

Treasured. I never met the man they

Loved. Distant from his

Laughter. Away from his

Warmth.

I stared with eyes of

Envy.

The envy soon became

Guilt.

Because I had to say bye,

Without ever having had the chance

To say hi.

Words - purposeful or accidental

the foundation of society

something seemingly gentle

shielding a harsher reality

Hidden as jokes and compliments

Said to friends and family

what's not noticed nor processed is

the effect they have mentally

Degradation and humiliation

They don't create character

Rather, they fuel frustration

Building a barrier

Standards that we're held by

Created by what is perceived as right

Comes across as verbal dynamite

Even without knowledge of what is implied

Not one of us are the same

There are differences to respect

It’s not our place to shame

Because none of us are perfect

There is no excuse for spite

Even on the receiving end,

there’s no need to requite

As a future friend

One can offer some respite

By being the first to defend

Is it too much to hope for,

That deplore disguised as candor

might end today?

Leaving no more hate to say

I boarded a ship of ornate sails,

Gorgeous from the foremost sight,

And that beauty never paled,

Hosting revels through the night.

The Captain had had marbled eyes,

Rolling back and forth,

Never once did they hold my gaze,

Still, we charged on north.

It began in champagne and stolen giggles,

Mornings spent out on the sea,

Then a sailor saw his Captain,

Signing stitches in her sinner’s plea.

She departed in the split yolk dawn,

A death bright life jacket at her throat,

I think I see her in the ships that pass,

Finding home in some other boat.

But our crew was panicked, pale, and fraught,

Running grooves into the floor,

There I tossed them an ivory bone,

Knocking on their worn wood door.

Soon thereafter, I was a sailor,

Captain’s hat fit to my head,

I boarded another field of patrons,

Giving them every open bed.

For a while, I had never been so joyed,

Had never loved this much,

But while the guests tangled their fates,

I became the ship’s own crutch.

When the sinking ship sprung holes,

Smaller than I’d ever seen,

I pulled the tape off from my belt,

And lined it up at the seam.

It lasted for an eclipsed time,

Then the holes emerged again,

This time larger, rounder, taller,

But for a time, I can pretend.“

My passengers, the ship’s not sinking,

No, that tragedy is not fact,

I’ve Captained dozens of burning bridges,

If it can be fixed, I will do that.”

And there I did fill in the hole,

Rounding out a cork of wood,

But this too soon came undone,

And in a foot of water I stood.

I reached for the cork, securing once more,

Another round of tape,

This ship will not be sinking now,

No, it still can be saved.

And when the water’s at my neck,

I finally heave a sigh,

Perhaps this truly is the end,

Perhaps I say goodbye.

And then the water drops once more,

And I can breathe again,

I return to the deck, hair like oil,

Promise to fix it, I know I can.

But should I fix this ship that sinks,

Even when my body falls apart?Should I fix this sinking ship,

When it breaks my poisoned heart?

Cause when the water brushed my lips,

I begin to pray once more,

Not for the ship to float again,

But to finally knock on hell’s door.

To drown, to die, to then go under,

To touch my palms against the floor,

To know that even in my wake,

No one has loved you more.

I gave this ship my soul, my being,

Have stripped my body bare,

I lined the hull with my skin,

It seems it is death to care.

But would you send driftwood my way,

If I finally did give in,

See blinks against the ocean spray,

Or would you denounce my unknown sin?

Was this always what our destiny was?

A bond borne in sacrifice?

If you’d save me, I do not know,

But I would not roll the dice.

A blue pair of goggles

that shielded your eyes from the world

and made everything look tinted 

with a color pulled from the ocean it blocked out.

What you lost

when you tried to fly

and catch the wind like a butterfly

in your netted fingertips.

You thought the ocean was yours

the goggles your suit of feathers

that let you watch the fish

flying underwater.

And ocean gods can catch a butterfly

without destroying its wings,

and the wind would be a wonderful present

for your mother.

But, nature was the ball of fire

that melted the feathers off flight

and sent Icarus tumbling

because he thought the sky was his to keep.

With your feet in the water

you fell,

and you lost your wings,

burned by reaching too close.

It has been a long time now,

and you closed most of the windows

you could once see out of

because the daily world is enough.

You walk on the shore,

the crystals sliding off your dry skin,

leaving the waves behind you.

Their treasure lost beneath your feet

I remember when Chance planted me, how I had to look up through my sprinkles of leaves to see the watering can he struggled to hold between his tiny, plump fingers. He had planted me in a yard of freshly tilled grass, facing a white wooden house on one side and a crowd of towering trees on the other. “What a nice willow tree you will grow to be,” he would say, patting my leaves. 

Every day, he came to water me, and as the seasons passed, I grew taller. My branches thickened as they reached for the sky, my leaves beginning to dangle like Chance’s hair, long and shaggy, though my leaves were green, not red. Chance called me “Willie.” He often sat on my gnarled branches, gripping my limbs as his wiry legs dangled in the air. Sometimes, he dashed around the base of my trunk swinging a plastic sword, pretending my curtain of leaves were a portal. As he grew older, he no longer climbed my branches or played with my leaves. Instead, he would sit nestled into my cool trunk reading books for hours, staying for less time until he stopped visiting me at all. 

I wasn’t sure how many years passed. Chance had told me he was going to a place called “University of Georgia.” The seasons whirred by, with the same weeds sprouting among the grass in summer and the same snow cloaking the world in frigid white in the winter. My days were spent drinking in the peaceful air, listening to the faint scurrying of animals in the distance and the trills of the birds, listening for Chance’s laughter or the crinkling of a page turning over. I became taller than the white wooden house, though I was still shorter than the forest of trees behind me. 

On a sunny morning I awoke to the sound of sharp clattering. Two people were sitting by my trunk on a red and white-striped blanket, munching on pastries and drinking porridge with metal spoons, and they were talking about books, mentioning “Paper Towns” and “Jane Eyre”. One of them was a woman, and the other was Chance, who looked very much like he did before except for the auburn beard studding his chin. A few days later, Chance came to tie a rubber tire to one of my branches, but he didn’t visit me again. 

As time progressed, my branches seemed to grow heavier and my mane of leaves sparser. A little girl started visiting me, with the same fire in her hair Chance had. Sometimes she would climb my branches, digging her plump fingers into my bark, and sometimes she would swing on the tire attached to my branch, filling my days with laughter. She would recite stories of princesses and knights to me for hours on end, always beginning with “once upon a time…” But my limbs grew weaker, and my trunk began to lean drunkenly to one side. 

On a rainy night where the wind screamed and wrenched at my hair, my trunk cracked in half, the top careening towards the ground. On and on the wind lashed through the night, though by then I was only a stump of jagged flesh, weightless and icily numb. As the sun crept back into the sky, the little girl ran to me, her face screwed up in a frown. Chance followed after her. “Willie was my best friend when I was small.” He put a hand on the girl’s shoulder.

“Willie?” The girl asked. 

They were talking about me, but I was too tired to listen further.