Paper Boats (Or An Introduction to Some Poems I Wrote)

My life stopped lending itself to poetry a few years ago and so I've since manufactured my sadness in these factories that rose up all over my skin and had little neighborhoods form around them only to watch the industry fail and the buildings collapse and the neighborhood give way to violence and drug addicts. Alleyways you don't walk down even in the broadest light of day. Yes, it must have been this way because I was absolutely sadder this past year than I ever have been before and the poetry never came. I saw glimpses of it when I had dreams of daughters we never had crying for their mother to name them after a sad song they heard on the radio once or of times you muttered to me when I was half wake about how you saw these massive portraits painted of us. I thought I saw poetry hiding in the corner of a restaurant. A girl told me stories of building paper boats and sailing them in the puddles from monsoon season in her back yard and once I found a poem inside me the night of April's funeral, but I'd give it back if somehow she was still here with us. So, if you know who's running heaven these days, tell them that I'm ready and willing to negotiate. And fuck, I was pretty sure there was some sort of metaphoric sentiment built into the night I had a pistol pointed at my chest, but in retrospect, I'd rather you just go find the boys with the gun so that I could have my faith in humanity back.

If I could go back in time to when I wrote sad little poems, I'd punch myself right in the fucking face because it gets worse man. It gets much, much worse and the sooner we realize that, the sooner we can just start dying, and I know. I know—blahblahblah, nobody gives a fuck about your broken heart, but you know something? Most days, I'm not even sure what I'm upset about.