“I am slowly cutting you out of me, piece by aching piece.”

There is a story to tell in even the mundane, and beauty in the most unsuspecting.

And you have fast become my weakness, even as you remain my source of strength.

To be looked at and not found wanting – how beautiful to be enough.

My skin holds echoes of you; in every line, you used to trace and empty space you used to fill.

I accepted all of you – except for the vital part, that couldn’t accept all of me.

And when I lie broken with my face pressed to the earth – I will look to the cloudless sky, and reach out for it once more.

In the pause between your breaths and the space between your heartbeats, I think I heard forever.

This heaviness inside my bones tells me, I still carry the weight of loving you.

And all I wish is that your happiness would reach beneath the surface of your skin, grow deep roots, and bloom.

Tears like flame slide down my skin, they burn like the memory of you.

I constantly wonder if I’m enough, do you? Tell me I’m not alone in my insufficiency.

Broken wings may be grounded now, but they will taste freedom again.

Walls and brick have never felt like home, the way your gentle bones do.

I want to lay down spread out and be the one to fill all the spaces empty – and occupied by her.

I breathe out light pleasing, soft, and warm – I’m still learning to breathe out fire.

Healing was not found in mending my brokenness, but in finding peace among the pieces.

I’ve never had inner turmoil about all this. You find a lot of people these days who cannot stand to be alone. You could lock me up in solitary for weeks on end, and I’d keep myself amused.

Don’t want to end up a cartoon in a cartoon grave yard.

I’m maturing as a man. I’m maturing more inside the ring, but at the end of the day I’m still Adrien Broner.

And when the other half get the idea it does no good to work because somebody’s going to get what I work for. That, dear friend, is about the end of any nation.

And when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work, because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that my dear friend, is the beginning of the end of any nation.

When I got to the end the top was down.

I was in a fashion show and I had on a strapless top.

At the end of the day, nine times out of 10, they are going to win.