i know i’m a ******* crazy house
filled with trick mirrors and jagged edges
i know i plant land mines
within my walls
shrapnel in waiting
for the next unsuspecting soul
trying to set foot within my world
i know i have built a labyrinth
throughout my whole body
a place where only
the keeper of my boxes dares to enter

i know i hide myself away
trap everything i love about myself
inside boxes locked within boxes
locked within more and more boxes
six-sided steel cages
mimicking russian nesting dolls
everything precious to me broken down
to its basest form
stacked away in opposite corners
because pieces of who and what i love
shouldn’t make me bleed

but they do

this room hidden deep inside my rib cage
comes wrapped screaming in caution tape
just as i do
nobody seems to heed my warnings
i know what i am
i know i will make you bleed

i can’t breathe trapped inside my mind
every breath i draw suffocates me a little more
i am dying in this life
nobody sees my slow death by circumstance

nobody sees how i am bleeding
i stand in pristine snow and wonder
how it remains crystalline
crimson should surround the place where i stand
my footsteps should be stained in red

there is an athame shoved deep beneath my sternum
it’s sharp blade slowly whittles away
pieces of what is left of my heart
the pain is so consuming
it doubles me over when i am least expecting it
brings me to my knees in surrender
i am bleeding out inside
dying a slow death
caused by loss of everything that i have loved
nobody sees

i am surrounded by those
who are suppose to love me best
i know they do
but they don’t know me
nobody does
shared dna doesn’t mean ****
when i know how to play the game best
masks and words are my weapons
i have hidden myself away far too well
i have only myself to blame

i wonder how i am still standing
people tell me all about the strength they think i carry within
commend me on my perseverance
i want to punch them in the face
tear their ******* tongues from their lying mouths
i am a conundrum walking among the mundane

nobody knows what i am
nobody knows what i am capable of
i am bigger than any natural disaster
i am more terrifying than any chupacabra
i will eat you alive
snack on ventricles for sport
and walk away laughing
wiping your blood from my lips
nobody knows

i have become my own worst enemy
i hurt the ones i love most because i love them so much
my love for them kills me
leaves them suffering
me consumed with guilt
i want to scream my truths from a rooftop
want to disperse the burden of being me
onto the unsuspecting
release my burdens of guilt
relieve the suffering
yet i remain silent
carry this consuming pain within my small frame
alone
always ******* alone
nobody knows

i’ve been told
that time heals all wounds
i have found that little nugget of wisdom
to be complete
*******

time is cement
turning things you wish weren’t true
into concrete

time is scarring
wounds scabbed over
ready to be torn open repeatedly
at the slightest
remembering

time is an *******
20 years later
walking through hallways i had hoped never to see again
to look up and see a face
i had hoped never to see again
a face i still see in my nightmares
a face
his face
your face
i name you
nate tollefson



i had traveled 18 times
around the sun
when you shattered my night
the dark took on a new meaning
for me after you

locked door friends pounded on
yells ignored
the fact that i was unconscious
ignored
me ignored
you saw me as an easy target
what you did to me that night
fundamentally changed the way
i let my lovers touch me
to this day
i can’t sleep in clothes
fight or flight can’t be tangled up
when danger arises
i can still feel your weight on top of me
when i wake up screaming
soundlessly
nightmares you handed to me on a silver platter

i kept silent about you
rumors flew after the party
everyone wanted to know what had happened
had we hooked up?
i would just close my mouth and shake my head
afraid of the words that would tumble out
trying to name an act
i couldn’t have stopped
an act i didn’t want

i had been a ****** that night
i wasn’t after you left that room
i bled for 3 days after
torn and hurting
suffered in silence amid the swirling gossip
whispers behind hands into eager ears
until something more interesting
than you and me
a locked door at a party
bloodied calvin klein underwear
grabbed their attention away
they may had forgotten quickly
i still haven’t

after all, you were a star
football and wrestling built your pedestal
a warrior decorated in red and gold
walking like a god among men
why would you need to ****?
yet you did
**** me

i had to look at your face every day
for the next 2 1/2 months
only once after the fact
did you even acknowledge my presence
i was nothing but a number to you



i am now 39 years old
life has led me far from you
yet the stain of you has remained
you handed me a life sentence that night
one you will never know
yet you handed yourself one as well

no matter how successful you are
no matter how much money you make
no matter how beautiful your wife is
no matter how charming your children
no matter how perfect your white picket fence

you will always be
a destroyer of night
a stainer of souls
a robber of trust
a murderer of innocence
a ****** of bodies and hearts
a ******
you
nate tollefson

i am an oxymoron

i can’t breathe in this life
that i’m living
but i still smoke cigarettes
they are the only thing that brings something
barely mimicking calm
to my body

i am an oxymoron

i am exhausted but i can’t sleep
for pain and nightmares
are my constant companions in the dark
i stare at the stars
drawing my own constellations within their brightness
finding shapes and solace
among the old light

i am an oxymoron

i have been whittled down to nothing more
than lean muscle and bone
still i can’t eat
food isn’t tolerated by my body
i eat words for breakfast instead
and spit them back up
roped together in patterns
that are my own sustaining

i am an oxymoron

i am bursting with words
but what i say and what others hear
are nowhere near the same thing
i am a ghost walking among the living
misunderstood and set aside
no one understands my verbal gifts offered up
so i shut my mouth and instead
swallow down everything i am

i am an oxymoron

i have passed from the world in which i belong
into a world where everything looks real
but nothing is as it seems
alice lost without her wonderland
i am alone among the masses
i have become the mad hatter

i am an oxymoron

i have watched myself get fat
over a broken heart
my daughter told me it was okay
round is a shape
my squishy made me the best cuddler ever

i have watched myself grow lean
over a broken heart
all excess shaved away
i can fit into a pair of jeans
and still turn heads
just enough left in all the right places

i wear a ring on my wedding finger
not as a promise to another but myself
it was given to me by my sister
simple silver with one word on it
“believe”
i’m not sure that i do anymore

i have hidden a word inside that band of silver
“believe” may be our family word
it isn’t mine anymore
hidden behind a word balanced on hope
is my chosen word
balanced on reality

i am a secret walking out in plain sight
the word “forged” now balances out
that ring of silver
i am too old to believe in fairy tales anymore
i have taken all that makes them “believe”
turned it into black metal in my bones

i am becoming something they don’t want to see
smelted iron burns fire in my eyes
i vibrate at a frequency that they can’t recognize
i have been chiseled down to only what is essential
excess has no place in my life
it has become me separate from them

i am not polished or neat anymore
fire scale has reworked muscle into iron
layers of oxides left after the burning
i can see the reshaping of my skeleton
ashes covering hard angles and planes
this is my drawing down

i am proud of my hardness
i run my hands over new territory
familiar landmarks made fresh under sooty skin
nobody recognizes my rebirth by fire
i don’t need them to see me in my new skin
but that doesn’t stop me from wishing that they would

*******
i scream inside my head
*******
for not being what i needed you to be.
*******
for not loving me the way that i love you.
*******
for not needing me,
for not finding those places in me
that i was offering to you.
*******
for leaving me alone again,
for giving me nothing but memories.
*******
for the broken promises.
*******
for not trying.
*******
for giving up on me,
on us.
*******
for not caring enough to try,
for taking me for granted.
*******
for making me bleed.
*******
for seeing me bleed.
*******
for leaving,
for walking away,
for being on that list.
*******
for letting me love you,
for letting me give up everything for you.
*******
for giving up nothing.
*******
for leading me on.
*******
for taking me,
for not wanting what you asked for.
*******
for letting me love you.

we are made / breath and bone / heart-sinew-muscle / bound together / divided by / the thirty-one names / for line

not all syllables / are beautiful / ordained / not when what it comes down to / is desire

a band / stippled by tongue / braille spoken / melting / how i want to burn holes into your skin / with my mouth

in profile; lineation / longing to taste you / wet mouth against / hard skin

what is the fuel of desire?

small touch / from silhouette to smile / innocuous; not innocent / reaching furrow to groove / as if time and space / were ending

with edge / nails raking creases / angry red welts / lineament / delineation outlined / lust with a sensation / drawing on that / which has been ignited

magnetic; electric / figurations of these abstract currents / contoured by a liquid look /  first glance / underlined with promise / your name / safe in my mouth

i stop breathing when you smile

so much time spent / in a shared space / desiring that which is denied us / borderline days laid with fire / as long as nothing has happened between us / boundaries walked on tip-toes / our memories are cursed / with what has not been

the wait will be fun but it will not be easy

in our fall there is gravity and grace / that lust and rage / should dance in attendance / we become stardust / streaks without limit score moonbeams / this is the first time that Vega / the fifth brightest star in the sky / has been jealous

those who restrain desire do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained

celestial configurations / are no match / for the molten fire / your heated fingertips / dash across  my velum canvas / wrinkles tracing peak to bar / you stripe my skin in red / not in punishment / but lust / demarcations cease to exist / we are undiscovered frontiers / your rule to my figure / scratch your history into my bones

i want to taste you again, like a secret or a sin

how do i fight a war
armed only with words
when everyone else
is carrying steel?