4. Boys I Didn’t Tell There was Kevin. And maybe Marcus. A boy with green eyes at church camp— who sat too close, who didn’t pull away. I said nothing. I folded desire into my palms like contraband. I carried it home and buried it under my mattress. What might they have said if I had spoken? I’ll never know. But sometimes I still dream they whispered yes.

3. Running Springs in Snowlight The snow had dusted the parking lot like powdered sugar over a childhood dream. We lived in Running Springs, and that morning, the world felt kind. I raced downstairs— my breath caught between the hush of snow and the hush of presents. I can’t recall the gifts. Maybe a truck. Maybe a game. But I remember the tree, and the warmth in Mama’s hands. It was one of the last magical Christmases— before I learned that magic has rules, and I had broken them just by being myself.

2. Mama Sang to Me in the Car We’d ride in the Buick, windows cracked, her voice slipping through like sunlight in dust. “You are my sunshine,” she’d sing, her hand patting my thigh. “And you’ll never know, dear, how much I love you.” I didn’t. Not then. I was too scared of the world, of my own soft voice, of the way I wanted to dance. But I remember her love like the melody— simple, steady, and true, even when the world wasn’t.

The Roads Back: Poems from Anderson by R Hughes 1. The Road Down Scatterfield I drove Scatterfield again last Sunday— the asphalt softer than memory, strip malls rotted into absence, fields brittle from the June sun. This was the road where I once begged God to make me normal. This was the road where Mama whispered prayers instead of asking why I cried. I passed the trailer park where Troy showed me a switchblade and smiled like someone who knew how broken boys became men. The ghosts don’t scream now— they hum beneath my tires, singing a low song of what I survived.

Poetic Reflection: Samuel, Lying Awake in the Dark The window is open, and the stars fall in like seeds. You sleep beside me, your back a warm hillside my breath grazes, a place I know now with the soles of my soul. I was not raised to speak the names of men in my mouth like psalms. But your name tastes like soft bread and river water and the silence I’ve been aching for. They say a man is a stone and must not feel the fire. But your fire did not burn me. It made my blood sing. Tonight I held you like I hold a shovel in spring— with purpose, with weight, with the hunger to shape something that lasts from soil and sweat and need. You said nothing afterward, but I heard everything in the way you sighed— a thank you, a question, a door you dared to leave unlocked. I will not speak of love. Not yet. But this— this was not just skin and salt. This was a prayer in a language I never learned but understood. And when the morning comes, I will still be here, ready to speak it again with hands and hips and breath. If you'll let me.

April’s Last Light (A Seasonal Meditation in Verse) April ends not with a thunder, but with a breath drawn long— a hush between the lilac’s bloom and summer’s crowning song. The dogwoods whisper white goodbyes, their petals like soft rain. The orchard sighs in blushing pink, then greens itself again. Beneath the trees, the garden stirs as shoots break through the loam, small exiles from the dark below who’ve clawed their way toward home. The bees have not yet fully come— just scouts in looping flight, who flirt with dandelion gold before the fall of night. The frogs begin their evening psalms in puddles rimmed with mud, and lovers hide by willow trunks to trade the first small blood. The barn still smells of winter hay but open doors let in the scent of rain, the breath of fields, the musk of greening skin. Each fencepost casts a longer shadow, each boot sinks soft in sod. The moon, not full, but brave enough to rise where others nod. A boy walks barefoot through the rye— a girl with fire in hand burns last year’s stubble into ash to feed the waiting land. And oh, the geese—those vagrant prayers— still cry as if unsure that this is home, or something like it, neither wild nor pure. By river bend, the sycamores shed bark like second skin. The water runs with melting snow, and secrets deep within. The stars come late. The stars come soft. The stars arrive alone. And crickets try out summer’s tune in half-forgotten tone. Here ends the reign of April's light, a reign of lace and thaw. She bows to May’s more sumptuous kiss— half tremble and half law. And in the soil, still barely warm, the future starts to swell. It pulses under boot and branch— and does not need to tell.

Letter X What we Carry

Letter X – “What We Can Carry” Shared. Unsent. A letter between two men who loved each other in a thousand unnamed ways. From You: I’ve turned the word “love” over in my hands like a stone, smooth from years of use. It doesn’t mean what it used to. Not yearning. Not ache. Not a life I dreamed of and had to grieve. Now, it means this: I want you in my life—fully, honestly. Not in the shadows of memory, but in the light of real presence. Even if it’s messy. Even if it hurts sometimes. I’m not asking for more than you can give. I’m only asking for what’s real. If we’re going to carry each other, let it be with both hands open. Let it be with eyes wide and hearts humble. Let it be what it is—friendship, maybe something more ancient than friendship— without apology, without shrinking. But if that’s too much… Then tell me. I won’t hate you. But I’ll let go. Because I need truth more than I need almost. You’ve always been braver than me. Clearer. I read your words and I feel both loved and undone. I don’t want to lose you. That’s the clearest thing I know. And yet, I don’t know how to be everything I wish I could be. But here is what I can offer: I will show up. Not perfectly. Not on cue. But truly. I will call. I will visit. I will hold space for you that is not stolen from someone else’s time, but made sacred in its own right. You’re right—we can’t live on maybe. So let this be what we build: A friendship with history in its bones and grace in its future. A love that is not afraid of names it cannot fit. A bond that remains, even when we are tired, even when the world pulls at us from every side. I choose you. Not in the old way. Not in a way that asks you to wait. But in the way that says: You are mine, still— in memory, in presence, in whatever form we can hold with open hearts. Together: We do not know what shape this will take. Only that it is. And that it matters. And that we will tend to it like a small, flickering fire in a clearing— safe, at last, from the storm.