I’ve learned to hate the moon

I’ve learned to bite the hand that feeds me

So it’ll leave me alone to decay

It’s hard to understand a need when you have no intention to survive

It’s hard to interpret a kiss as a one of death or a one that means goodbye

It’s hard to be so untrusting that your own opinion seems tainted and a lie

I’ve learned to hate the massive waves of unforgiving water

That smack themselves against the rocks and erode them over time

Sucked away their minerals and leave them low and soaked, high and dry

It’s hard to watch injustices from nature that have happened in your own life

I’ve learned to love the sun

How it covers my shoulders in freckles from me being careless

How it gives me shelter from this world until I get too comfortable

Then I am left red, like all other romances and forms of violence

These things always seem to bleed together for me

I’ve learned to beat a dead horse

Down into the ground so it can be given a proper burial

Because a subject may be over but a feeling may not be

And I’ll spend my entire life grieving

That’s not to say I don’t keep moving

I just move with a limp

It’s hard to capture a feeling even after feeling it for so long

It’s hard to get sleep when my brain is singing these familiar songs

It’s hard to block out the white noises and dark thoughts

Because I’m sure a black sheep like myself is used to getting lost--

as soon as night draws in and the stars scatter across the sky

--like random movements of dice, I shake my palms

and pray to stop getting snake eyes

I’ve learned to love the accidental progress we make

I’ve learned to use idioms as guides and understand blessings in disguise

By observing the poets who hide in cafes to the ones who stand tall at open mics

Work based in pain, sure, but stay tuned for the one that says, “I’m still alive”

And it all plays out under the theater stage of time

Where the role of your mind may fall ill and you always see an understudy

Yet you’re somehow still surprised

By your own capabilities like remembering your lines