The Life We’ve Made

                                         
                                            See things do come around,

                                            and make sense eventually,

                                            Things do come around,

                                            but some things trouble me

                                                           -Ghost, Kid Cudi

Because tears are a sign of weakness:
we fawn at the sea turtle for shedding
her tears as she buries her eggs to hatch.

How brave, we say, as she drags her body
 across the sand. How lovely
to show warmth in a cold, sad world

 full of death, full of violence.
But the body knows when its about to die.
The body acknowledges when it is the end

and death circles you in small amounts of coziness
until you accept your fate. In a story about passing:
 I found myself standing on the edge of a grave –

 the stale smell of orchids, the metallic scent
of crushed grass, and the sight of a body
encased in a refined wooden box.

 Here, I tell myself
 grief is an ocean we must return to.


--Dominique C. Santos

Life on Loop

Armed with the knowledge that we knew nothing,

we braved the world hopeful; lost but not yet unhappy.

After a midnight drive, we’d have a bottle or six,

with two or three doses or more. We’d sit on the hood

of the truck and whistle until the sun finally rose,

celebrating thoughtless daze—O what I’d give

to relive them again. Like a warning, one day

Jericho said: “Alienation, the point where a human

bonds with anything to make existence bearable—

man’s failure to connect.” He was studying Psychology

in college and was torn between taking medicine or law.

I heard he’s a doctor now specializing in neurology,

and married somewhere in Baltimore. He did alright,

I thought, and I’ll probably never get out of here.

The truth is I go up the hill often. You see, it’s difficult

to want to come down when you’re high up there

all the time. Like an endless loop, in my mind Jericho

is still speeding and I am about to disappear into light.

In my hands I hold the only solace that pacifies

my listless days. I hear nothing. All the rest is noise.