When you don't sleep, and you don't work, you write.

i see your face, skin and bones

flesh alive beneath a photograph

and you are the reminder of the air I breathe

this fresh, young air around me

I suck it in and let it fill my belly

try to keep it tucked up in my ribs

let it cage itself inside my lungs.

it won't stay there forever,

the air tends to escape me

often flees just to return.

you are so small, your frame so slim and build so tall

I know the men like you, such boyish souls.

I cannot help but know them well.

Their names are scratched into trees

etched into locker room walls

their youth tends to evade them

but they're still hanging on.

and you are a reminder of my childhood

my awkward shift, colossal steps out of adolescence

leaps and bounds to the loss of my childish innocence

no cynic, I've still got these teeth to grin with

still got the sunshine to keep me warm.

And oh the day when Heaven was so simple as a warm summer day

and Hell no more than a cold dark winter's night.