Confidence, empowerment, strength
don't matter when he's calling to her.
She feels his eyes on her.
She's afraid
and maybe it's not his fault.
It's not his fault she's afraid,
but she knows what he can get away with.

In her world "he" is synonymous with violence.
It was a man who beat her mother in front of her.
It was a man who stalked her mother
until all her hair fell out and they had to move towns.
It was a man who first threatened her with a belt.
It was a man who loomed over her girl-body
and took it without asking.
It was a man who berated her until she quit her job.

She's afraid and it's a surprise to him.
He doesn't understand.
He thinks he's flattering her.
He thinks she likes it.
Why wouldn't she?

The policeman asks her, "Who did this to you?"
but all she can tell him is,
"It was a man", as she cries into her hands.

She prays for a son
so she can teach him respect, honor, gentleness.
She prays for a son
so she can sleep at night without worry for a daughter's fear.

She curses the mothers who teach their sons not to cry
and the fathers who teach with fists and belts.
She curses the government for using the bodies of young men
as a weapon.

Ask me why I stay
and I can't tell you.
There's not much reason to linger
like I do,
except to learn from pain
and maybe grow to be better.

Make me learn
that I ask too much,
care too much,
trust too much.
Make me change
my sweet, innocent,
and naive ways.

I want to make someone writhe
in pain as you have made me,
wringing out my heart
with your careless cruelty.
You make me want you
as you make me hate you.
It's a desperate tug and pull
between my head and my heart.

There has to be someone out there
who will be conscious of my needs,
but maybe it's good for me to learn
not to need someone,
and to merely enjoy their company.

The voice in me is dying,
the very same voice that used to
scream my desire in my heart, my flesh,
my fingertips reaching.

My head is so quiet
I am afraid of it.
I no longer understand its depths
as I once did,
having spent days upon days in its darkness
without fear or light or help.

New demons must be lurking now,
unexamined in the deep,
waiting for your ultimate rejection
to unearth them with the erosive power of my tears,
carving through my ego
to the blackest terrors of my soul.

I face every hour
with the knowledge that he could leave
at any time.
Every moment we have
has never been so precious to me.
I struggle every second
to accept that he will go.
Somehow, he has given me the strength
I never had
to watch someone I love
walk away.

She looked at me softly
with strands of golden hair falling
around her face.
Two white teeth slid
over her red bottom lip.

Her eyes held mine,
they gripped my soul
with their sadness.
It was something in the skin
around her eyes
that showed the pain.

"They aren't bruises," she said.
"He didn't have to use his hands
to hurt me.
Smart, patient, quiet men
know the worst ways."

I learned from you
that I can't go on caring as I always have.
In order to survive in this world without going mad
I must adopt apathy at times
or struggle with accepting the things
I can't control.

You lie.
You're blind.
You'll leave.

I can't change any of these things,
no matter how much I care.
Knowing this gives me strength
to cover the boiling depths of my soul
like a balm.
There's nothing I can do
except love you until
you walk away.

When you leave,
I'll be able to breathe
knowing that
I did everything I could.

Mine is a word
that does not apply to you.
It implies that
no one can take you and,
if they do,
I will have been wronged.

No, you are not mine.
You are not a thing
that anyone can claim.
You are a free spirit
who has trouble expressing his needs
which makes you
as much mine
as a handful of smoke.

I will lose you,
I know.
It's only a matter of time
and of who will find you.
You are not mine
as I am not yours,
but it is not who will find me
as much as it is
who will I find?

You could buy me the moon,
you could buy me the stars,
you could buy me my dreams,
but none of that means that you love me
if I can't feel your soul pulsing and dancing with me.

My soul is the wind.
It is never stagnant.
Some days you are a rock I'm scraping against,
trying to move you
one grain of sand at a time,
but if the wind can't move a rock
it passes on
and pushes up against something else.

I tried so many times to walk away,
but you are the moon
and I am the sea.
Your blank face
moves me in my depths.

By the time you turn around,
looking for something real,
I'll be nowhere you can follow me.
I wonder, who is using who?
I keep running back to you
and you pretend to care.
We both have needs,
but this has been a one sided game
for too long.
I don't want to play.

You showed me how broken I was
and opened my eyes to
how I lost the only man
who ever loved me.
I was an attention whore, once,
just like you.
I wanted everyone to love me,
even when it wasn't real.
I couldn't see the pure, true love
who sat patiently,
waiting up for me at night.
I was a fool.
I still am,
but not like you.

You think you're doing better now,
and you are,
on the outside.
If anything's ever going to change,
you have to fix your own fucked up heart
and listen to the scary, dark places of your mind.

Why did you pick me?
Do I look like the fool I am?
Why did you push me to love you
and then run away?
I chased after you,
holding my love out to you.
You hid behind other women,
afraid to feel anything real.

I know you'll try
to runaway forever
from life and feelings and love.
I stopped running
and said goodbye to you.
I turned around
to find something real.

It's another one of those nights.
Every time my phone vibrates,
I hope it's you and am disappointed.
Every guy but you has texted me tonight.

When she finally left town,
you started calling me again.
I guess you had to fill your lonely nights somehow.
Tonight I wonder who you're with
and I wish you cared
who I was with.

Every time my phone vibrates,
it isn't you.

They're everything I should want
and
I'm bored.
What's wrong with me?
Destined to only fall for guys
who are wrong for me,
broken,
and don't love me.

You know I love you
cause I'm trippin' over it.  
When will I be able to let you go?

You're the only person I want to talk to
at the end of the day.
With others it takes so much effort.
But you don't feel the same.
If you loved me as much as I love you,
you never would have left.

I used to date guys
because they liked me,
and I wanted to be liked.
I've only fallen hard like this
a few times.
It started out like normal;
you liked me
and I hadn't put too much thought into it.
Now, because of you,
I'm so much pickier.

I wonder if there are only weak men
and, if not,
where are the strong, capable men?
I haven't met one.
Would one even look at me if I found him?

Did no one ever say no to these guys before?
They don't seem to understand what it means.
I don't want you to call me,
I don't want you to kiss me,
I don't want you to touch me
or look at me like that.
No.

I only want you
and I don't know why.
All these other guys have
material things, jobs, education,
sensible goals,
but you,
you make me feel free.
You make me feel like
I'm not alone.

You're detached and confused,
pushed your pain down inside
where it's slowly eating you alive,
waiting for the right moment to become you.
You don't want to depend on anyone
for what you need, so you stay aloof.

I wish I could show you that
that's no way to live,
but hopefully you'll figure it out on your own
someday.
I wish you would let someone be
perfect for you,
even if it's not me.
I wish you could let someone in,
that you weren't afraid to love completely
as I love only you.

I have a hard time turning my back
on someone like you.
Someone with no tomorrow
can't make any promises.
How could I have thought about
forever
when you can't promise me right now?
I'm in between letting you go
and letting myself love you.

In my mind,
you were the guy curled up on the cement
in thin clothes and no jacket
on a cold winter night in the mountain city
with no kind faces nearby.
I was shaking you awake in my mind,
trying to help you find somewhere to go
so you wouldn't die all alone in the cold.

You can't promise me anything,
don't have much to give.
I used to be afraid of losing you
and I still wish I could hold onto you
forever.
I know I can't.
You are the wind
and I have no wings to catch you.

What matters now is being here,
being calm, and present, and clear headed.
I can only hope that
when you look into another girl's eyes
you see me,
the cold pale hand reaching out to you in the darkness.

Friends.
We're supposed to be friends now,
somehow, after everything we've been through,
but as I lie next to you in the dark
all I can think is how I wish you'd put your arms around me
and you do, asking if it's okay.

It's what I want,
so I guess it's okay, right?
Except for the overwhelming screeching,
breaking sound of my heart in my ears.
You hold me there in the dark
as I breathe, try to empty my mind,
and give you the reins.
I keep silent, making room for your thoughts and needs.
I know what you want
as you stroke my stomach in the guise of friendship.

I love you,
I am in love with you,
I never once stopped loving you,
even when I hated you.
I let you kiss me, I let you do as you wish.
I feel like your whore, but
you tell me you love me,
that you aren't in love with me,
but you love me.
My head implodes as my heart breaks.
Are you a whore if they say they love you?

I know you're afraid of failure.
I know you're afraid of losing it.
I know that I pushed you too far
and asked for too much.

I am making myself invisible this time
so you don't do it for me.
I'm letting you go,
one moment of self-control at a time.
I just wish I could kill that little voice
of hope inside me chirping that
if I change and give him what he wants,
he'll want to be with me.

No, little voice,
he is broken
and he isn't trying to fix himself for you
anytime soon.
He's doing what he knows how to do,
in his mind the safest thing;
nothing.
You can't fail at doing nothing.
You can't live doing nothing.
When nothing is all there is,
there is no meaning, no light,
no pain, no real joy.    

I wanted to be your something,
I wanted to be your everything,
your bright light, your angel
rescuing you from the darkness,
but I pushed you, I asked things of you,
and I ruined everything.

All there is left to do now is let you go.

My feelings have been
a pebble in your shoe
for far too long.
How inconvenient,
feelings.
Especially when one finally gets
what one wanted.

We spend our whole lives
looking for something.
Everyone has their own
holy grail.
Once you have found it,
what is there left to do?

I regret the day
I agreed to be yours.
I wasn't ready.
I barely knew you.
You barely knew me,
but you were so insistent,
I believed that you could love me.

Once, I got a tarot reading.
It showed all my dreams coming true,
everything I ever wanted,
the best hand one could hope for,
but there was one card that implied
that the story wouldn't end there.
It seemed to say,
"Here is the world.
Now what?"

I am weary of holding this heart in my hands,
begging someone, anyone, to relieve me
of this heavy burden;
loving myself.
This heart must be shut away now,
behind bars perhaps,
the ivory, heaving bars of my chest.

I fold.
You can have your sleepless nights,
your meaningless affairs,
your dreary, empty, lonely days
full of hangovers and misery
if that's what you want.
I don't care anymore what you do
with your life,
with your body,
with your heart.

Just go
and take your fear and uncertainty with you.
There is no place for love
when pain rules your life.
This heart of mine will keep beating,
safe away from you
behind ivory bars.

I guess moving away
changed me.
Now, I enjoy having a clear head
more than being fucked up.
Being alone is a lot easier
when you're not afraid of the silence,
when you can stop thinking for a moment
and breathe in.
I spent too many nights
coming down crying
alone.

There were moments when I was fucked up
when I was amazed with the beauty of feeling
but, when I'm sober,
I have that feeling all the time.
I'm not afraid to be alone anymore.

Fear has been replaced with clarity,
a calm understanding that
this isn't forever
and that being with people
isn't that great anyways.
I've accepted that we're all just in it
for ourselves
and that's okay.

I love people but
they won't always love me back.
They seldom do.  

I didn't know what it would be like,
moving away.
My friends never did anything terrible to me,
they just stopped putting in the effort
to be friends when I wasn't around
to get fucked up with anymore.
I thought life wouldn't change so much for me,
but it has.

Now I can see
that the whole world is open to me
if I'm okay with not staying comfortable.
Now I'm free.

I was named for the wind.
Should I forget who I am
and where I come from,
all I have to do is close my eyes
and feel.

The wind is never stagnant,
it moves on and on,
pushing past all obstacles.
The wind does not settle in one place,
it is always free and wild.

The wind has seen every corner
of the world,
has touched the skin
of every person,
raked it's claws through the fur,
and inspired the roar,
of every terrifying beast.

I was named for the wind
and so shall I be,
as my namesake;
free,
to run over cliffs and mountains,
through the forest,
and over the sea,
to touch dessert sand,
and fly with the clouds.

The wind has no family,
no friends,
only brief moments of
ecstasy
with each living thing.
Someday, my body will wither,
but my soul will still soar.

I was named for the wind
and so shall I be.

I've been waking up every day
for quite some time
with the idea of fighting her
lingering between my
closed and open eyelids.

I imagine how good it would feel
to take all this pent-up anger
and let it loose on her tiny, bony frame.
I know it's not her fault you lied to me,
that you left that night
after picking a fight,
left me crying with no one to turn to,
so you could get drunk and fuck her.

I'm not really angry at her,
even though she's a bitch.
I'm angry at you,
but I want you to love me.

I need to let it go,
to let you go.
Even if you loved me,
it would never work.
I have other options,
but I've said goodbye so many times
I don't know if I mean it this time.

My feelings for you
are getting weaker and weaker
every time I give to you
and get noting in return.

I cradle you in my arms,
my lost boy,
because I wish someone had
cradled me in their arms
all those days and nights
I spent blinded by my pain.

I love you,
my lost boy,
even though you hurt me and hurt yourself
because I know your pain so well.
We make ourselves alone
because we don't know
how to not be.
All we've ever had is ourselves,
to comfort, to love, to save from the edge of the abyss
over which we've peered in terror and delight so many times.

We are strong in ourselves, but
with others we are afraid to be weak,
to be vulnerable, to trust, to depend upon others.
We refrain out of fear and the inescapable wisdom
that no one will be what we need
because we don't know how to let ourselves need someone.

I need too much,
you need too little
so we are forever stranded in this limbo
of uncertainty,
me reaching out forever
with the hopeless cry of a child on my lips
and you withdrawing inwards endlessly
with the silent cries of mad despair.

We are lost,
but somehow we found each other.
We love only as we know how,
though that can never erase the cold creeping
of our past into every moment
we spend searching the eyes of others,
looking for the warmth we may never find.

Pain is blinding
and love is blind
so we lead each other
nowhere,
groping, groping,
in circles perhaps,
trying to feel out the truth
that might exist beyond our
red-blue lids.

I can see it,somehow,
in the way a guy
holds himself quietly in public.

I can tell those
who have looked,
who have seen,
the void leering back at them,
having dispelled all the charades of happiness
the world has tried to sell them
and placed before them
the harsh realities of existence.

I have a sense for those
boys and men who have
sought to throw themselves into
that dark void for no other reason
than to attempt to feel something profound
or to feel nothing at all.

I saw it in his eyes that day
on the beach at the river
as he looked at me
with a quiet fear and uncertainty
that would forever tarnish
any chance for happiness he might have.

I see it because
it's the same fear and uncertainty
that lurks within me too,
seeking to destroy that false happiness
that comes from conforming
and turning one's back on the void.

To feel is a beautiful and often
overwhelming thing.
Everyone seems to want to tell you
how it should be.
When you listen to them,
you forget how your nerve endings sound
when they scream with ecstatic joy.