It's been a hard road looking up at the throne...

But he knew that no matter what beauty lay behind, it must remain there. No one could go forward with a load of aching memories. Not even him, with years of training under the hardship of broken dreams. So from now onwards, call him Stargazer because instead of silly stories, he will recite the names of constellations. Those freckles on his face? They are roadmaps to the sky, and the bruises that he carried were supernovas in disguise.

Here's a promise even I myself don't quite believe. But that does not stop me from whispering it every night before I fall asleep. Someday, those aches and burns I feel inside my body will heal. I can't really know when someday will come, or what life will look like when it finally does, but in a way it doesn't even matter because someday isn't what I have. What I have is right now, this moment, when things aren't okay yet, but in a way they are already, because in the end they will be, and as long as that's true, it's enough for me to fall asleep. 

Feed me, ruin me, defend me...

Devoid of all light, the room is saturated with the anguish of his despair. A deep well of stormy emotions that seems to snake its descent into the soundless black void. Down here, only silence can be heard. His tears have dried on his cheeks, and he lies on his back, eyes open but unfocused as his ever-inquisitive mind desperately searches for answers. Even in memory he will find this moment unbearably intense, and he's aware of this now, while it's happening. He has never believed herself fit to be great. But now he has a new life, of which this is the first moment, and even after many years have passed he will still think: yes, that was it, the beginning of something new.

Never be alone...

I want it like a fiend...

Out of my mind, how many times,

did I tell you I'm too good at being alone?

There is something about words. In expert hands, manipulated deftly, they take you prisoner. Wind themselves around your limbs like spider silk, and when you are so enthralled you cannot move, they pierce your skin, enter your blood, numb your thoughts. Inside you they work their magic. And I'm here to say that learning to believe in the power of my own words has been the most freeing experience of my life. It has brought me the most light. And isn't that what a poem is? A lantern glowing in the dark.

Dancing in the mirror, singing in the shower...

Before I found this place I was feeling so blue...

I know a place downtown, 

if you wanna go?

I'm going to show you how this amor,

is gonna love you harder than ever before.

We're gonna get sky-high,

and create a new world,

where somebody might die, 

but nobody gets hurt.

And I need some relief...

My peak? Did I even have one? Sometimes it feels like I hardly had had anything you could call a life. A few ripples. some rises and falls. But that's it. Almost nothing. Nothing born of nothing. I'd loved and been loved, but that is something quiet, personal. Nothing you can really show. I look around and I see a singularly plain, featureless landscape. Almost feels like the video games I play. A surrogate avatar crunching blindly through a labyrinth of dotted lines. The only certainty was my death.

The old Karr, the boy of the big laugh and the easy ways, literally shed himself, a pile of skin and soul on the floor, and stepped this new, brittle, sharp, a razor-wire knot daring to be unlooped. He wonders who would be up to the job of unravelling him. Even if with thick, numb, nervous fingers. Country fingers. Flyover fingers untrained in the intricate, dangerous work of solving Karr. When he'd hold up the bloody stumps, you'd sigh and turn to your secret mental notebooks on which you tallied all his deficiencies, forever noting disappointments, frailties, shortcomings. And it was quite a hefty book indeed. 

You're never going to see me again...

This year my only goal is to listen more deeply. So the space around me fills me up, and when I will want to write, it will pour out of me. And I don't want to only listen to the person speaking to me across the table, but simultaneously listen to the air, the chair, and the door. And go beyond the door. Take in the sound of the season, the sound of the color coming in through the windows. I'll listen to the past, future, and present. I'll listen with my whole body, not only with my ears, but with my hands, my face, and the back of my neck.