Later Is a Myth, Forever Is a Threat

Listen to me, you beautiful, tragic, hopeless cases.

If you clicked on this, you already ignored the warning on the cover.

Good.

Because this isn't a poetry book. It's an inventory of the wreckage. The bloody receipt I'm leaving behind.

Fifty-eight short poems about the apology message still sitting in your drafts. The number you deleted and still know by heart. The person whose name still does something to you when it turns up in a song. And all the years you handed over, waiting for things to settle down.

Don't read this if you still believe in the word "someday."

Someday is a myth with great PR. It's a forged check you keep in your back pocket that is absolutely going to bounce the second you try to cash it.

Ask anybody who's dead.

You think you've got time. You think someday is a real place on the map, somewhere north of here. It isn't. It's a mass grave where every dream, every wish goes to rot.

And forever? Forever is worse, because it sounds like a gift. It's a panicked ransom note we shove into the hands of the people we love because we are terrified they are going to leave us to freeze in the dark.

Neither of them exists.

We are a dying breed. And we are out of time.

Stop playing it safe in a game that is rigged to kill you anyway.

Turn the page.