So he’s problematic and that’s what a lot
of people like to talk about today,
but if I ripped my chest open you’d
see his stitching all over my heart.

No one tells you that one day you’ll
be 32 and lying in bed at night and
unable to sleep with your muscles
inflamed from all the living your 22
year old body used to do with little
effort and with your heart inflamed from
all the living your 12 year old soul
didn’t know what to do with.

I thought I was enjoying music when
I was actually soaking up a
handbook to heartbreak and hell and
like any new set of rules or guidelines or
vocabulary, it doesn’t mean anything until
you’re in the place to use it, and eventually
I was in the place to use it and on the
darkest of nights with my heart in hell
I only had to remember to hold on.

I had a dream I was listening to a
bootleg of an unreleased song called “Warm”.
He was singing at the top of his lungs,
the rasp hitting my ears like leaves in the wind.
He was elongating the “a” in warm
the way he elongates the vowels in “Mother”
but it was full of joy instead of pain and
I could hear his voice coming through
a smile as he sang over the backbeat.
Waaarm!, he repeated, Waaarm!

And my heart was warm.