Boy

From afar, he is gorgeous. Closer, spots litter his face Like angel’s fingerprints litter the concave eyes of a child who has seen God.

His gaze is soft. Inside it lies razor burn and self-deprecation As he is easy to cut.

Hoping a different face stares back out at him He looks in the mirror often, Self-obsessed with change he does not care to make. He pities its absence.

Even his reflection, self-effacing, sometimes avoids him (but this is rare as his reflection needs him more than it needs morality) As it knows what he thinks When it sees him.

He touches his cheek with dry hands That always leave him bloodied. He thinks they all leave bloodied.

He knows he should just be gone. It – everything – would be better. But fear is red, and it stares back out at him.

So, if he cannot go, He must instead be reclusive. Yet his eyes yearn to hold your gaze – He’s too ashamed to touch you.

But you’re secretly watching, As magnetic, he pulls you in from afar. But he is hideous up close And you wonder why you desired him at all.

And now you, yes you, cannot escape his dark mind, You cannot even think about anything other than him. Which is what you want, as it means you don’t think about yourself.

He hasn’t thought of you either, He doesn’t even know you look back. Sorry.

And so when he finally turns away while he still only sees himself you see a darkness that is so absent of light you cannot even consider it black as black has too much light absorbed inside its emptiness and this darkness is so far away from light it cannot even absorb it –

It is in this darkness that you realize you cannot think of yourself at all without him, You realize you cannot even think But only feel the darkness telling you who you are –

Telling you that you shall think again when he faces you once more, Telling you that life is not over,

That you still have control,

Telling you that you aren’t just a faceless being with no ability to be touched in the first place, Telling you that you are real, Telling you that the boy is worth it, Telling you to breathe,

(A silent Inhalation)

Telling you that reflections must be patient.

The day you really looked back into his eyes changed everything the arrogance was so much more beautiful when you saw the sparkling lights of his mind hiding in his pupil you realized that inside him as inside you lies a truth that others may fail to see because of the wickedness of his exterior but his exterior was ridden with holes this whole time holes he dug into his face because he wanted you to see him because he was too afraid of the words spoken because words bring things into reality while changing the appearance of his reality can only imply you open your mouth to tell him he’s beautiful your teeth move and your tongue laps at them your mouth never opens and so he turns away smiling teary-eyed to fail at his next endeavor he turns to the door bringing darkness to your abode stealing away a light you don’t know next when you will see you only think that if he had wings maybe that would make him grand enough to live the life he desires but you know wings are only ever ripped off and truth is only ever seen through the holy’s puncture marks through the thin sheet of the ether and even if he finds the fiftieth gat flying with attached wings somehow finding the strength to believe in himself despite the flaws that he can’t help but see that mark his identity there will always be the burden of the past which an eternity of truth cannot rid the only way eternity does not kill you is if you are born eternal and so we have to live orbiting each other barely glimpsing at the vast expense of others' and ourselves's brilliance blinded by the beautiful destruction of the idea that something is better more perfect than us that we need that idea even if God is not real to live to think maybe when we look in the mirror we can see something beautiful we can focus on the sparkles in our eyes that were left by an angel’s touch.

I was once you. I may still be you. In your position, at the face of this boy, I could not breathe or utter a breath.

I wanted to dissect him, to pull him apart to feed on him. I would assume you would want to as well, because there is nothing better than a simple boy to cause your mind to rip itself apart because there is no such thing as a simple boy. I do not know whether or not my tears mark a change, or my bloody nose brought by the Summer heat and not the picking of my scabs, but I feel something in my body that has made me think maybe I have moved on – or at least developed my emotions for him. Once this boy was me, and you were his reflection: now I am not so sure if I am the reflection of this boy and you are the one pulling at the levers of his mind. There is a dark and lonely feeling I hope we all get, so that we can more appreciate what little we have, so we can all come together to face the unhumble, to learn how to be humble ourselves – humble and honest; and authentic – because otherwise no individual will trick themselves into true eternity. Into a lack of care for validity. Into a perfect combination of all the glories of Earth. We instead need to come together to be all that sparkles inside this boy, so that we can all work together to reach the eternity that always has been the human spirit, which we do not have without love for one another that causes us to orbit that which is ugly and that which is beautiful, possessing a mixture of hatred, disgust, pride, glory, satisfaction, validation, and awe that continues forever on this beaten path, that causes us this pain. But, if we focus on the beauty, we can erupt into the same society as we have been living in, but one with a different understanding of our inevitable events, that can allow us to feel complete. Or at least pretend to.