A good morning
Is feeling your
Small sticky hand
Wrap around two of my fingers
Telling me you missed me while you slept.

I've always found hands
                              to be an attractive feature.
                                                        ­            Long and slender.
                                                        ­                                  Gentle and tender.
Rough and overworked.
                                        Exploratory; searching.
                                                      ­                      A place of comfort.
Or
           Grasping.
                            strangling
                                              the life out of  
                                                                      my heart.

What are you putting on?  Speed Stick Ocean Breeze I say. Old Spice anything is better he says.

Over the next two months I take care to put on his deodorant because Old Spice anything is better.

How could ever sit across from you with a coffee and watch you look at me with those eyes? The ones that see me, past everything else. The ones where time slips away and everyone else in the room disappears. Where we fall into our own personal secret bliss. The ones who knew me before they really knew me. The ones that scan me gently and remind me I am the delicate thing I yearn to be. Eyes staring down at me from above filled with tenderness and awe. Eyes tracking my movement across a room, studying me, committing every inch of me to memory. Those eyes that crease and close when you laugh at my jokes. Eyes lingering ever on mine just a little too long that say, "you are mine."

Watch you smile at me as we catch up on life? With those lips that whispered light kisses across my body. Murmurs of professed love pressed into my ear lobe. In sync sighs of satisfaction and contentment. That grin, smiling down at me, teeth just peaking over the edge. Those teeth grazing and nipping. Claiming me and saying "you are mine."

How could I watch you pick up your drink with those hands. And not feel the ghost of every fingertip ran across my skin. A thumbstroke across my thigh under the bar table. A firm grip on my wrist checking my pulse for signs I am alive, that I am real. Catching my chin and cupping my cheek, tucking my hair behind my ear. Hands that claim me and say, "you are mine."

We would hug goodbye.
And we would go our separate ways.
Inside I would scream
I am yours.

I cannot hold in my palms

How many times

You've placed self doubt there

if you called me right now
would I even answer?
do i know better?

the thought of listening to your
sweet honey voice
makes my body tremble.
knees weak
heart beat
nauseous.

i don't.
i would answer.

i would hold my breath.
clench my jaw so tight.
knuckles white.
smile through the phone,
pretend that i'm alive


i'm just not strong
enough
to resist you
today
or
ever.

I awoke
folded up like a purposeful piece of origami
placed delicately between two bodies.

Happiness

You asked for my biggest secret. I later told you that I look like my father. That is not my biggest secret, but it approaches the truth. I have his hazel eyes. He's the reason that I can carry a note. The smirk on my face belongs to him.

I wear it shamefully as my mother always told me she hated that I inherited his mannerisms. What I know that she does not, is that I inherited worse.

I call my biggest secret my "father's rage."

I can see my father's rage in those hazel eyes, pooling around my pupils. I can hear it in the notes I sing, an airy whisper from my lungs. I can see it when I turn to the mirror and scowl back at his face.
The truth is I carry my father's rage like a trapped scream in the back of my throat. A festering wound that does not scab over. Bubbling under the surface of my skin.

I plead with myself every day
to try to keep it at bay. Control the pain, control what I say.

Protect my children from the fate of inheriting my father's rage.

My apartment starts to shake
as yet another train rolls through
downtown.

I can't hep but think of you
and how
much like these trains
you rolled through my heart.

never slowing down
until coming to a screeching halt.

I watched them in silence as tears fell from eyes.

The truth is
I'm alive.

But I stopped breathing
A long time ago.

Tucked into your arms.
My heart sighs
and then softens.
Settling in to rest.
Home at last.