You said you loved my poetry,
That it was beautiful.
That it moved and writhed like a woman’s body
Under the cage of her predator, flesh pressed hotly against cold steel.
Said you loved how the light flooded out of me,
But you never mentioned how it left me empty most of the time.
You said you loved the fine lines of the words I wrote.
I didn’t know you meant the fragility I always wore
Like a permanent cloak.
You said you loved the melodious rhymes,
But didn’t mention the heartbroken prose that I weave
Between the spaces and curves of my womanly bones,
Eventually turned ugly
And withered with time.  

You loved my poetry so much,
When we kissed, you stole the words out of my mouth,
The metaphors and similes and imagery.
Left me empty of diction as you ran away,
The colours chasing after you like trails of blood.
Left me empty of all that light you loved
And caressed with your darkness.
Caged in your darkness.
Left me weightless, meaningless, loveless
As you take it all for yourself.

I am so empty now,
I almost feel nothing for you.

I hope someone someday
Loves your poetry.

Open your hands
Where there could be dust
There could be diamonds

Anxious.
Like the attachment style.
Becoming involved,
and over-thinking everything.
That's what you called that, right?
Over-thinking
these old insecurities that I can
never seem to
quite push
away
for good
while my pen bears its ink
down into and past the current
page because all my muscles
are tight
and my stomach is
sick
and my mind
is distracted.

You. You. You.

She'll pick you up,
put you down
once she's read your pages
and harvested your words.
Is it true?

I've been discarded before.

Tried to trap the bird,
what a foolish mistake,
and it flew away
leaving my hands full
of ashes.
I've pushed too hard
and clung too tightly
and lost it all
many times.

I get nervous, but I know my center.

I see your wings,
a magnificent ocean blue
which have been carved
through years of struggle.
Never think that I do not.
I would never deign
to clip them.
I would never make that mistake again.

But I, too, have my share of books
which I have picked up,
read fully,
or half-way,
and put down,
discarded.
I have lifted from branches
and flown further
when I've been trapped,
clipped.

I get nervous.

I want to stay,
more than anything,
but there is fire in my wings,
and fire in yours too.
We are certainly
birds of a feather,
so I wonder,
can we not,
could we not,
should we not,
fly together?

Silence twists around my throat,
serpentine in the inky light,
as the paint sticks
and dries beneath my fingernails.

Ideas claw at my solar plexus
threatening sycophancy
treason and madness
in a world of stale passion
and stuttering ignorance.

They wake up and shower,
****, shave, apply the mask
with painstaking detail.
They die before they reach thirty
and go on walking about
as if they know the secret
to eternal bliss-
it's possible that they do,
after all.

I mean, consider the alternative-
an artist haunted by the colors
that live in a winter sunrise,
a nomad reaching for no one
as he chases the sun
across mercurial landscapes,
a writer living through ink
because there's no other way
to quell the storms,
a human shedding expectations
for beautiful things
that will always be broken.

I am always wrong,
I say things that I don't mean.
*I do not love you.