My heart is heavy with grief
It’s been exactly five years today
Since my mother’s death
Every time I remember that day
It makes me want to cry
My father was devastated
When he saw his wife on the ground
My sisters crying as they gathered around
I could not, would not cry at her grave
It was bad enough she was gone from my life
It was bad enough I would no longer be a part of her life
It was bad enough that I disconnected from life
Only thing kept me going
Was being with my poet friends
So I would like to say thank you once again

©Kaila George 2013

It's easy to write about warm people. It's simple to just let their love and compassion flow effortlessly out into the world. They stumble upon the perfect one, THE one, and fall in love even if they don't know it. And for a while they don't, because that's the beauty of it. They don't know, and then suddenly they do and they realize that they're complete and whole now, that they've found someone who fills the cracks in their soul.
It would not be so easy to write about someone who flat out refuses to admit that they are not already complete. Then he appeared. I couldn't see him, but I knew he was there. Oh, this is a game then, I thought. I'll see what I can figure out about you.
I'm Isaac.
I heard it so loud and clear. Shivering, I whispered, nice to meet you, Isaac. I let images flash through my mind as though I was trying to settle on the one that fit the personality walking at my heels. He's blonde. Which is odd. My characters aren't usually blonde. But he's blonde in a way that he can hide. At first I thought he'd walk slowly, shuffling his feet as though he was so focused on what was inside his mind that outside of it his coordination was all off. But then I realized he was keeping up with me, and I am quite a brisk walker. Isaac is one of those people who builds walls. He doesn't know it, but he does it. Everyone else notices. They notice, but they don't care. The only time people run into his walls are when they try to complement him on his playing.
Oh, did I mention he's a musician? That's why he's built the walls. As of now, I'm pretty sure he's a violinist.
But anyway, when people compliment him, try to tell him how the ways he plays that violin opened a well of feelings within them that they didn't know existed, he stares blankly. They blink, thank him again, and hurry off, wondering if the reason his blue eyes were so confused was that they'd lost their ocean of feeling to the music.
I wanted him to be chubby, perched somewhere on the border of adorable baby fat and visibly out of shape. But his shadow behind me is tall and bony. Not athletic, not chiseled or lean, just wiry. All sinew and nerves. Like when he plays, he might rip.
Then I'm home. Mom calls down stairs and asks how my day was. It was fine. Boring.
I know I left Isaac outside, but he doesn't want to come in. So it's okay.

I came into this world,
Your one and only.
You left me to Mom to take care of me.
You wouldn't hold me when I would cry.

I got older,
and you got remarried
To a woman who bared three more kids for you.
Your words became abusive
and you blamed your mistakes on me.
You still wouldn't hold me when I would cry.

I am an adult now,
and a stronger one since you tried to break me down.
While everyone else thinks you deserve Dad of the Year,
I know your phony antics.
I also know now that I don't need you to
hold me when I cry.

But I thank you for distancing yourself
because when you did,
I learned I could stand on my own.

Outside the wind strikes up an angry storm
The door falls to it's knees
Faltering
to it's ferocity
"I almost died you know...the pills were all I had ya know"

The bottom sways and the ceiling drips with the flood of a thousand sentences each picked from a
different bag
"The baby, she fine, but, she deserve better"

God bless her heart
Eyes meet
Sharply
Recklessly,
the way Destiny always takes
that one corner
too fast too soon
when we're driving pas the Orange Groves
orange blur
Dammit
before I even had a chance to smell
their elixir
Tongue sways out sloppily
It's okay...it's okay

I go outside to reach
to perhaps
feel
something a little more dangerous
then the doldrums of the same wall
same
tree
same
trash that piles beneath my boots
I'm met
with
growls

Hand shakes loaded with dice
maybe blood
or maybe some fur
Hot
sweat dice
rolling between my fingers
I never smelled those blossoms
Not once
The wind beats at me with it's
own finicky retort
"I was dyin in the hospital, ya know
mah leg was ripped up,
and those pills,
were It man
they were It
man"

The dice slide out of my slippery palms
I'm rewarded with snake eyes and whimpers
the Wind finally dies underneath the fields of your hair
Smoke hits the wall
and curls in and out of your pink daggers

"My baby, she ain't dead, I thank god every day for that
Bless Her tiny heart"

Pink daggers with one triangular eye
resting atop your
bleeding stomach
A perfect red river makes it's way
down your
long fleshy arms
covering the dice that sit loyally
aside your shadow
the dice that
Permanently  remains on
the
Snake Eyes
that never blink

"I thank god every day"

I asked for a city, you gave me its parts.
I wanted a machine, an unrelenting automaton.
You gave me its people.
You gave me their emotions, their creations, their charity, their sin.
I never asked for all this.
I never asked for the thought-provoking ramblings of a beggar.
I never asked for the rhapsody of a lone saxophone player.
I never asked for the smell of rain on asphalt.
All this,
the thoughts of a young philosopher on a train,
the gaze of a hopeless romantic at a café,
the glimmer in a woman's eyes as a car passes by in the rain,
I asked for an emotionless machine, an unwavering citadel of apathy.
I never asked for this.
I asked for a city, you gave me its parts, Thank You.

People surround me, touch me, crowd me.
But my eyes are locked on you and your lime green head phones.
Your eyes are empty; you walk sullenly in step with the crowd.
I try to quicken my pace, I have nowhere to go.
The sea of people is drowning me.
I can not lose you.
I must catch you, hold you, tell you it will be alright.
Someone taps my shoulder.
"You dropped your pen."
"Thank you."
You are no where to be seen.
The mass has swallowed you.

My feet are dragging as my eye lids flutter
the sun is heaven on these sore, tired muscles
technique is a bitch, can get screwed the wrong way
when sloppy and slow, swinging and heaving
shoulders are achy, but by tomorrow, good to go
working muscles I haven't worked in a really long while
shit, even these tweezers are heavy
damn near cried tge first night when I ran into the wall
thank God for tylenol and the shape that I am in
In a few more short hours, I'll be feeling good again