Everything I know about being a man I learned from the mountains.

From late nights spent in sleeping bags on rocky hillsides,

writhing, while earth's jagged edges jammed themselves into

the softest corners of my body.

In the morning, Dad would ask how I slept,

I'd lie and shout "Great!"

silently hoping sacrifice would make my soft spots

craggy and rough, like slate or slag.

I'd stand, awestruck, in the shadows of titans,

swallowed by their legacy,

marveling at their unyielding, unforgiving, truth.

Mountains, while stern and cold,

are steadfast and reliable.

At the very least I know that when I fall asleep at the foot of a mountain,

it will be there, same as always, when I wake up.

Everything I know about love I learned from the beach,

from forgiving sands ruled by the sea.

The ground here is soft and inviting.

The beach welcomes all strangers to its shores,

and it makes room for every part of me. 

At night, the tide rises and sweeps away the sand.

When the contours of my body are washed out to sea,

the sand still waits, supple and suggestible,

to enfold me in a surface both alien and familiar.

The beach dares me to dwell here,

promising me a permanent place on its shores,

but sandcastles crumble.

The beach is always at the mercy of the sea.

There is a reason that the mountains and the beach rarely meet,

no polarity can endure its opposite for long.

Yet, here I stand, composed of two poles,

daily they grind against each other

while I strain to avoid the atomic repercussions of their inevitable split.

Growth is friction and fractures.

What is sand? If not the shattered remnants of the mountainside?

What is the mountain? If not grains and gravel subjected

to the metamorphic touch of heat and pressure and time?

I was nine years old when she told me

"You are shaped like a jelly bean"

She was shaped like a string bean

Wispy, and long,

And she mocked me

through a mouthful of greens.

I called her a "butthead,"

And pretended the truth didn't sting,

But when I got home,

I ate a whole bucket of jelly beans.

Look,

I know I'm not literally the meal I had for lunch today,

But my love handles,

Still define me.

Both, a collection of lipids and

A collection of stories,

And every pound on the scale

Is another day I rather not remember.

Three pounds here.

Every time they assumed I was stupid because of my size.

Five pounds there.

Each stroll through the dairy aisle a child pointed, and snickered as I walked by.

Twenty pounds,

That day in the Walmart parking lot when she told me, if I was just fifty pounds lighter, she might actually be able to love me.

Forty pounds,

When we were told my mother had cancer, an inoperable tumor latched to her colon, hugging her spine.

One hundred pounds.

Ten years later, when we were told she suffered for nothing.

That the tumor was a benign cyst.

That the doctor milked us for money.

That the radiologist never had the courage to speak his mind.

I swole up with rage when I realized

That nights she spent bent double over a toilet

And days she spent caged in a coffin of blankets and flop-sweat fighting of that chemical cure,

did nothing,

But cause lifetimes of collateral damage.

She took pills for pain,

While I threw back the leftovers

To fight off sadness and fear,

As the threat of loss ticked up the needle on the scale until it broke.

Hunger

Swallowed me whole.

See, I buried,

Beneath the weight of days I'm dying to forget. Mountains of me,

Standing between the man I am,

And the man I want to be.

Just once,

I'd like to feel light.

Just once,

I'd like to shed this chain mail I've woven out of Red Vines and self loathing.

Just once,

I'd like to renounce the darkness I've swallowed fistful by fistful,

And rise so high,

I greet the warmth of the sunlight I lost when I turned my back on the east.

Just once.

Hey,

Uh,

Is anyone else here

Hungry?

Take a look at these hands,

While they appear clumsy

And meaty,

Do not be deceived.

See, while I've been waving them around

Awkwardly pretending to know what to do with them when performing poetry,

They've already been in and out

Of each of your pockets.

I'm a thief.

I steal indiscriminately,

Wallets,

Loose change,

Knick knacks,

And countless parts of you.

See,

The key to being a master thief is to take what won't be missed.

So, while you cling to your things,

The car you drive,

The watches you wear,

Those shoes you bought uptown,

I steal your stride.

I see the way you cock a single eyebrow when you're baffled and think

"Damn! That'd look great on my face."

So,

I take that too.

I take your taste in tunes,

The way you bump Beyoncé in the best of times,

And Conor Oberst when it feels like your life is crashing down around you.

I take the tales you tell,

Of late nights spent with Stephanie Sorrenson in fragrant forest glades,

Boasts of boyhood battles

Ending in bloody backyard brawls.

I even take the hardest times, meager Christmas mornings your mother couldn't scrape together enough dough to fill an empty stalking, let alone all those other

Empty

Spaces.

I take your stories,

The ones that make you interesting!

Soaking up every

Special

Piece

Of YOU,

To fill the porous parts of me.

Then, when I get home,

I lay out pieces of other people's lives to bathe in tears and tannins,

And soon,

I start sewing,

Weaving all of you together,

Into a grizzly leather face.

I become a nightmarish

Patchwork

MONSTER,

Made up of both the fictional

And the familiar,

And though in town

I may be greeted by nothing but torches and pitchforks,

The truth is,

This act of falsified completion,

My corrupted creation,

Cobbled together with nothing but these clumsy,

Meaty,

Hands,

Well that's the closest thing to an act of God,

Any of us will ever see.

I remember my first box of crayons,

And the waxy scent

Of color.

I whirled though page after page

Of coloring books,

As I left my mark on every sheet

Of recycled paper.

Daily,

I filled the face of our refrigerator with twisted balls of color,

Chaotic scribbles

That equated me.

Then,

In first grade

We learned about lines

And what belongs between them.

Each day,

The teacher would leave a single chocolate

On the desks of the children who got it right,

And while in love doing things my way,

Greedy children

Crave Candy.

So,

I fell in line.

In high school,

I sat in lines of desks,

And wrote diligently

Between the narrow lines of a

College ruled notebook.

I squeezed myself

Into a line of burly boys

Who played vicious games

Between painted lines on grassy fields,

While crowd lined up to cheer us on,

As we destroyed each other.

As an adult,

I tow the line,

And wait

In lines,

And drive down roads dotted

With lines,

I didn't put there.

All the while, living tucked comfortably

In a valley,

Surrounded by rigid mountain ranges,

Drawing even more lines between earth,

And sky.

The other day,

I found an old coloring book,

And even though I put color

In all the right places

I didn't feel like my work belonged on the fridge.