pumpkin pie with apple juice
handmade scarves and the way your scent clings to me
poetry, chamomile tea
I sleep while the leaves die

I am beautiful.
I am gorgeous and flawless in my presence here.
Right now, I've made it to right here.
Every inch of my heartstrings,
Every ounce of my lifeblood
Is meant to be right here, right now
People say Carpe Diem but I don't need to
Seize an entire day,
Just this moment.
This one.
And this one.
And this one right here.
A perfectly polished present from eternity,
Crafted by the hands of God Himself just for me to
Experience and savor and
Breathe in - the scent of life
Smoke and green grass, honey, lilacs,
Homemade lasagna, his cologne, her shampoo.
I've made it to right here, right now
And every word from my lips is an amen to finish off
The prayer of another sunrise, another day
And every heartbeat is a hallelujah to praise another breath,
Another moment in this body
My skin is a tapestry of remembering,
Rose-pink lines bearing witness, well-worn kaleidoscope
Memories of knowing dark nights and grey, lifeless dawns
And the strong, burning scent of *** in my throat
But it's okay now
Because I will protect me
I have dragged myself from the depths
And it was scary.
And it is hard.
And it will be okay.
I am right here, right now
And this is my moment.
My moment to breathe, to feel,
To live.
To let my razors rust and
Know that the pills have forgotten how to poison me
And I will dance like when I was a child,
Before I knew what shame was
And I will laugh like when I was a baby,
Smaller than my mother's hands
And I will love like I have never known the
Sharp, sad pain of depression inside my skull
Because I am beautiful.
I am somebody's favorite voice and I am somebody's
Helping hand and I am somebody's
Shoulder to cry on and I am
Student, teacher, daughter, friend, helper, lover, woman, person,
Human.
And this is the portrait of a young lady
Who is not afraid to love herself with passion
And rebuild her foundation on rock bottom
Because I made it.
Because I am beautiful.
Because this moment is my amen to living.
Because I am right here, right now.
And so are you.

Gone.
G-O-N-E,
Four letters that represent the hurt
In me,
Cold cold rain , don't care if it don't feel so nice
When everything it touches
Is already made of ice
You left me empty,
An abandoned house on a sketchy corner,
Cracked sidewalks running down the boulevards of
My heart
Gone,
And my life ain't ever coming back.
Oh, stand me on a pedestal,
I'm made of marble, pale and smooth,
I won't break when you drop me - ha!
That's a lie, just like the tears in your eyes
When you said goodbye - gone.

My stomach aches
When I think of all those babies,
Ribs pressed out against dry skin,
Shrunken brains and swollen stomachs
Straining to escape a poverty
That makes minimum wage
Look like a fortune.
$7.25 an hour, when millions live on
Less than $7 a week,
Pennies that are left warming in parking lots,
Buying another day of life for gaping mouths.
Children are supposed to run, jump  
Play, laugh, learn,
Yet thousands sit blank-eyed
Staring at a future painted in
War-torn red, lonely navy,
And consuming, starving, empty black
Not having enough energy to
Lift thin, pale lips into a weak smile,
Let alone traipse miles of dusty sorrow to school each day.
My soul aches for tears shed in
Dark, hungry nights
Prayers uttered wordlessly
Into the crescent moon
As razor thin as their arms.

I love summer Sundays,
Cloudy, the threat of rain hanging over the town,
Pressing thick, humid warmth and heavy silence
Down the little side streets and carefully tended gardens.
Up early, sensing the sun starting to climb the backs of the clouds,
Feeling light and life dripping through blue spots in the grey.

you know you are in love when
you remember nothing about life
Except
that their fingers fit perfectly to yours

Octobre venira, et il trouvera
Nous ensemble,
Perdue dans la brume blanche.
Je tiendra ta main
Nous nous reposerons dans les feuilles
Y aura partout.
Nous croiserons le soir, et
Je t'offrirai ma cœur et tu la prendras.
Nous tiendrons la lune d'Octobre et
Nous volerons part ****.


October will come, and he will find
Us together,
Lost in the white mist.
I will take your hand
We will lie in the leaves
That are everywhere.
We will walk in the evening, and
I will offer you my heart and you will take it.
We will hold onto the October moon and
We will fly far away.

I try to waken and greet the world once again
Regardless of the soft grey mist
Blanketing my skin.
Made it through another moon shine night.
It’s dawn again and once again it’s dawn,
Drawn bow towards target of
Eyes forgetting darkroom mysteries of dreams
Colors line textures reinvented under deceptively distant
Slivers of lighted cloud.
Dawn again and I marvel at being an extra in a show
Played out a trillion times, trillions of eyes watching
When the curtain opens
It’s dawn again,
Heavy breath sigh,
Purple light on pale skin-
Braille beneath fingers still stumbling in sleep
It’s dawn again and once again it’s dawn.

You're alone. Well. You feel alone.
That's ok, but let me tell you why you are wrong.
I don't care about how you present yourself or what you wear or
How normal or different or quiet or wise or whatever you are.

I care about you. Just you.
I don't worry about whether you'll hurt me or whether
Sometimes
Things won't go the way we want,
Because I know eventually both will happen.
And sometimes, being a person and being a friend ******* ***** and you gotta just deal with it.

But what you see as your facade of bravado
I see as the mask of someone who needs help.
It's the little things, like the way you frown when you think no one is looking,
The way the scars on your upper arms have almost, but not quite, faded,
The way your anger is carried in shoulders too square, too tense,
The way your silence speaks volumes of confusion,
The way you look concerned for me and not yourself.
You are you.
You need to do what you need to do,
And sometimes that means letting other people (yes, even friends)
Deal with their own ****.
I appreciate the way you hold my hand when I'm crying,
The way you don't seem afraid, but...!
You ain't perfect, and I don't care.
I see that you're flawed and I love it.
I love who you are, and nothing is going to change that.

You're not alone. This is a planet of 7 billion people;
You're never alone in what you feel.
Everyone is the kid at the edge of the group, trying to play grownup,
Wearing too-short dresses and feeling too much responsibility.
We are all the little kids looking up to the big kids doing **** we didn't even know was possible.

You try and make everyone's day a little brighter, but
Sometimes people don't need your help to do that.
Sometimes, people don't want their world to be bright.
Sometimes people just want you to ******* and leave them alone to cry in the dark.
You don't see that you are not the sun, but just a star, and there are other stars and other lights.
By yourself you soon weary and burn out, but if you let other people help you, you can change the world.
But no.
You refuse. You are the guardian
That you always needed and never had,
And it's eating you alive.

******, what the hell am I supposed to say to take away the worry and stress and exhaustion of being you?
How in the name of heaven can
I
Take all of your brokenness and unshed tears and dark nights
And shape it into something deep and beautiful, not pretty, but beautiful?

And how can I make you see that we all feel that, some variation at least, and
You're only alone because you let yourself be alone?
I can't help you when you're living a life of self-imposed panic,
The anxiety you force yourself to face ripping through you like tsunamis.
Refusal to relax is a death wish that won't be answered for untold years,
All I can do is sit, and watch, and wait, and try to catch your burned-out soul
When it finally gives in, cracking at the
Stretched-too-thin seams.

I'm here for you, I promise I'll always be here, but I don't know how to heal you.
I'm sorry.
So sorry.

I know a word,
Six letters long,
That destroys.
I know a word,
Six letters long,
That kills.
I know a word,
Six letters long,
That encompasses an uncertain future
Of needles and lab tests,
A word that can't ever describe the feeling
Of knowing your body is killing itself.
I know a word.
Six
Letters
Long
That rips away vitality, leaving only
Empty ghosts in sterile beds,
Laughter replaced by hushed doctors and quieted sobs and
The incessant, steady beeping of a heart monitor.
I know a word,
Six letters long,
That leaves a husband crying
Over hospital bills at a kitchen table,
His son standing silent in the doorway,
2 AM.
I know a word
Yanking soft great-grandmothers and innocent children
From here to the ceiling of the clouds,
Six weeks, six months, six years
Stealing hair and smiles and health and hope,
Leaving a drawn, hollow skull
Staring
At the abyss.
A word,
That makes you feel powerless,
An ant trying not to drown in six feet of flood and fire.
A word
That has claimed countless lives,
Forced springs of tears to well in miserable eyes,
Produced pictures of black sorrow at
Rainy gravesides.
I know a word, six letters long,
Called CANCER.

I hate red.
Red is the color of his lips when he whispers in my ear,
The color of his dress that one time we danced,
The feeling in the back of my eyes
When I'm told I am not
The same to him anymore,
No longer worthy,
He is a bee floating from flower to flower
And I am the sunset-colored blossom too shy to walk away.
Red is the way I begged my sister to let me wear her crimson blouse when I went to see him
Because I know it's his favorite color
And I didn't care that she yelled at me later.
Red is the fire in my stomach that pours too much smoke into my lungs,
Leaving me choking on secrets, and fear, and
Emotions that don't deserve to exist because
I knew all along that this was going to happen.
Red is the way I should be angry but instead I feel numb,
Numb in a way that no scarlet late-night passions or self-inflicted bloodstains
Will banish.
Red, like the shadows in the night that are too unique to be ordinary black,
Instead creeping over tired limbs with a vibrancy
Out of place in the grey shades of my thoughts.
Red, the feeling of heat in my sternum when he said he maybe liked me,
The way my face grew warm with my sister's teasing,
The way my heart fluttered too fast,
Catching me off guard when he held my hand,
The confusion when he wasn't  comfortable with me,
The savage resentment taking over my mind
When he confessed his non-attraction to me.
Red, fading slowly to the dusty leftover
Pink-brown tones
Of roses left too long in a vase.
I hate red.

You are a waterfall
Cascade out of open Berkshire mountain faces,
Stone lips painted red by your words.
They say red is the color of love but I can't feel anything but
Empty
Indifferent
Inside when I see the blood in the corner of your mouth.
You don't care
Chase your narcotics with tequila,
Follow your *** smoke with an inhaler,
I watch you drift.
Do you remember 5 year old me
Hugging you round your knees and
The way you ran to grab me when I tumbled into the creek behind your house?
I do
Your hands are warm where they brush mine
When you ask me to refill your glass
I didn't know you drank ***** by the travel mug now.
4 ice cubes.
I lean in the bedroom doorway and watch the mice scurry beneath your couch
And I think about how those same warm, now-swollen hands
Built this place.
Forgive me.
I have intruded on your aging privacy,
Gray hairs in the 3-day stubble on your bloated chin
As you gasp quietly, eyes shut over decades of memories.
Your steroids have inflated your stomach more than the lungs they were
Supposed to heal and
You shuffle so slowly down the stairs I
Shift uncomfortably as I wait impatiently to get around you to the car
Fleeing the air of decay and the whiskey on your breath.
New England roads are good for thinking.
Surrounded by ageless forests I think of my aging family,
Of you, Grandfather,
Your hacking cough sounding like the Massachusetts thunder
Across the lake.
2 hour car ride to see the rest of the
Degrading homes once owned by
My father's father's family;
Your family.
I see a waterfall in the distant Berkshires.
We are part of 1 family,
But I can't feel the love I see in my father's eyes, red from tears at your impending funeral.

I cannot move, breathe, think, speak,
Legs splayed across cool sheets
That you departed from,
Your legs splayed in dusty sun
Far away.
Dim light filters through the
Dark blue muslin curtains we bought
Years ago,
Or it could have been days - each second is an eternity with you,
The curtains that reminded us of the night we met.
I can't bear to see the flag in the corner, tear stained,
Like my black clothes still strewn across the carpet.
All gone.
Somewhere in the back of my
Aching head, piano music plays and I
Believe
It is the song you played, the only one you knew,
When you asked me to marry you. I said yes
You hit the cheap keyboard so hard with joy
It broke, and all the keys spilled onto the ground,
Little pieces of black and white laughter.
And my heart swelled to the point of
Bursting
When you signed up, with your brave face and handsome eyes,
To defend me.
We both left unsaid the painful truth:
You would go away and maybe you wouldn't come back.
The day of your deployment my throat was so thick
I was choking on my fears, little dark stones of misery
Settling in my stomach before you even left, tainting the
Brilliant blue sky.
My wedding ring felt so heavy I would have
Sworn it would pull me right down through the
Hot, tar-scented asphalt swarming with camouflage.
I could barely whisper how much I loved you,
Tears dropping from my eyes, so swollen I
Strained
To catch a final glimpse of you, looking over your shoulder,
Your brave smile, handsome eyes
You blew me a kiss
I lost it,
My emotions pouring from my heaving chest, ugly sobs,
Let my eyelids sink over the image of you
Walking away.
It is my biggest regret, not watching until the
Last second.
If I had watched you leave, maybe somehow
You would have come back.

I hold hands with my boyfriend
As we walk - no - dance
Down the tiled halls of the purgatory called high school
But I'm not listening to his voice,
Not thinking of him,
Not his smile,
Not his eyes,
Not his hands skimming my skin,
Not even kneeling on his bedroom floor,
Being his *****, somehow
Reveling
In tongue and *** and moaning,
His hand on the back of my head.
I think not of his **** or
Anything it stands for - no - my fancies
Wander over the girl next to me,
My lust dripping like honey over her
Slender shoulders,
Collarbones,
Flowing over the gentle swell of her *******,
Around her supple waist,
Smooth hips and perfect *** unknowingly enticing me,
Seduction even more potent for being
My own secret knowledge.
My heart tumbles over dark precipices,
Falling from one side to another
Men - no - women - no - men - no - women
Women - no - men - no - women - no - men
An eternity of labyrinthine puzzles,
Guilty glances and
Late-night imaginings in shameful ecstasy
Before an answer settles like a
Stone that stirs up a muddy pool before clearing into crystal.
Both.
Not men - no - women,
But men - and - women.
And I will stand proud,
My dress and her skirt swishing softly as we walk,
My hand and his hand, together, as we talk.

The world is flat, a calendar picture,
Picture-perfect,
Afraid of being crumpled by the hand of a God and
Used to shoot trash can-basketball baskets
In a small, lonely bedroom where the only one keeping score is the
Parakeet statue perched on the broken clock, staring.
It's always 2 o'clock.  
2 o'clock on a Thursday afternoon in early November when
The whole world looks like it wants to curl up and cry  
So I curl up and cry for it,
13.6 billion years of tears dripping from green eyes
And a green heart meant for growing flowers and love songs,
Not crow calls and dreams that die in infancy
I float.
Salt water tears lapping around inside my ears
Maybe it will cover up the sound of screaming inside my bones
And the pretty girl swimming in my heart-lake
Laughing and stirring up the cold undertow of my thoughts and when I look at the sky
I see the cloud shadows against the blue,
Blue just a little too dark, little too deep,
Too deep, too dark,
The water beneath me too deep, too dark
I'm drowning and I haven't even left my bed
I wonder if that counts as talent.
Is this what it feels like to go mad?
2 o'clock my hands aren't attached to my body anymore,
They can't be part of me when they dance
Across desk tops looking for scissors and rummage through bathroom drawers to find razors.
That's not my blood in the sink,
It can't be because all my blood is locked up
Inside the red haze behind my anger,
Caught in sharp words like fish in a net,
Not my words but yet they fall from my mouth.
My room contains my screams
As they drip silently from teeth made crooked by too many lies.
The parakeet stares.
It's 2 o'clock but I don't know if it's a new day yet because the sky always looks dark
Outside my windows
So I shut my eyes and don't open the curtains.  
The world is collapsing,
The hands of God pulling down the picture,
Time's up, new calendar page,
I'm left behind,
Lost in the trash can pile of old words
And whispered thoughts.
The sky is too blue,
The water too deep,
I'm drowning.
It's 2 o'clock.

Silence.
Silence - raw, serene,
Loud silence that
Crushes eardrums and fingertips,
Sinking into creases in dry, cracked skin,
Collecting like silver-black rain
In drops on red lips, ebony eyelashes.
Silence - green and young,
Fresh and completed,
Bending around waists and ankles
Swishing smoothly through gold-brown hair
The color of ripe wheat waving mutely in a
Prairie breeze.
Silence - huge and dark,
Clinging like shadows to necks and ribs,
Tying the moon hand and foot
So her pale lips won't move,
Stillness reigning in the hearts of the maidens,
Corners hiding hushed scurryings
Of the night.
Silence - weird, wonderful
Creating fields of green rivers that
Noiselessly laugh, bubble quickly off to Dreamland
Leaving a world of weighted mirrors
That are filled with God's reflection,
Whispering words I cannot hear in
A perfect world of
Silence.

They say a journey of a thousand miles
Begins with a
s
  i
  n
    g
      l
       e
Step.
Well, this is my first step.
Right here, right now,
I say-no, I
DECLARE-
That I will find and cherish one-thousand moments of
Joy
This summer. I have 81
Precious, glorious days and I am
100-and-31 percent determined
To find life in each and every one -
13 bits of happiness by each midnight, to be
Precise.
I am taking a one-thousand challenge,
The same way people make one-thousand paper cranes,
Or try and count one-thousand stars,
Or have a bucket list numbered neatly to
Just
Beyond nine-hundred-and-ninety-nine.
I will find one-thousand things
That make me happy.
And maybe, just maybe,
When I reach my goal I will find myself,
Like elusive laughter floating away from the end
Of a
Rainbow.

If you can hear me,
If you can see me, or sense me, or
Imagine the taste of sea salt on my skin,
Know that I love you.
Deep and full, warm and soft,
I love you with the span of my hands and
The curve of my spine,
With poems and paintings and a smile
With clean sheets and a bottle of wine,
Come home to me.
Nest yourself in beside my sternum and let my heartbeat sync with yours,
Let my stomach fill with sunburst rainbow butterflies
When you giggle
Let me revel in your voice and bask in the comfort of your fingers laced with mine
It’s not Romeo and Juliet or the moon and the tide, but
I love you like 2 am pillow fights and baking cookies on a rainy afternoon,
I love you like listening to the frogs in the pond
and singing to every song on the radio,
I love you like galaxies colliding and old bookstores,
I love you like dancing on the sidewalk and neither of us can dance to save our lives
So we end up just holding each other and laughing,
Flowers twined in your hair and your legs all tangled up with mine  
And the sky is so so incredible it takes my breath away till I remember your eyes
Because I love you.

her skin is like the black coffee my mother
drinks
dark-smooth with an electric kick against my taste buds
and her voice is the soft breath of  
early morning rain
drip drip dripping
into a desiccated desert of a heart

Silver drops of starlight fall like a river
To gild your eyes and nose and hair
And make you sparkle, here and there,
With all your precious memories,
My dear departed giver.
Your smile lingers on my reflected face
With cold corners crunching up my eyes,
Building ice-green walls of mirrored lies
With nothing behind but another void,
An abscess of empty space,
Filled with stars of blackened lead
That stay awake, but yet unlit
For being confronted with ****** slits
They smolder redly, richly hidden
Until the darkness they can shed.
A sword to cut the twisted tines
That enthrallingly entangle
And hopelessly mangle
Was found in Love,
And now I shine.

My mask is pure
And white as snow
But my heart is
Black and cold.
Beautiful rythms
Flow from my lips
While my mind plays a
Sour note.
Where did the happiness go,
The easy, simple
Melodies of childhood,
The light and happy beats?
My style changed
As I grew up,
Higher and louder and faster.
An air of panic
Entered the flying stanzas
As my life started to
Fall apart.
Now the only music of
My soul
Is the melancholy dirge
Of lost hope
And broken dreams.

Nothing quite so exquisitely painful
As watching the one you
(Maybe)
Love gaze at a man far better than
Any woman you could hope to be.
Your heart wrenched with
Possibilities scattered to the spring wind
Like a thousand seeds of hope-sorrow.
He's better than you. She's better than you,
How could you ever hope to lure her from
A better man than any woman you could
Ever hope to be.
Golden-honey curls that will never
Wrap around my fingers are spread over
Notebooks full of love poems
To a man far better than
Any woman I could hope to be.

A drop of alcohol
Slips down my throat,
Giving me life
Helping me to float.
Heavy amber liquid
Resting on my lips
And crimson drops of blood
Drawing lines around my hips.
Oh how did you
Know my vice?
'Cause now I'm empty inside,
Though you're acting so nice.
No matter what you do,
Your face I'll always hate
Because you got me drunk and what
Happened next you still won't say is ****.

Time drips slowly down kitchen cabinets
Like cello music, sweet and dark,
Spilling over the edges of fingerboards and eyelashes,
Arpeggios of stillness cascading through the
Silence that is really music reigning the gaps between each whisper of breath and tick of the clock and soft drumming of raindrops on the street, an ensemble of intimacy.
I love it here.
I love the way it's vulnerable and honest inside your walls of false, forte confidence;
There are no cliché expressions of love at first sight, just the words of your heart,
Like notes played on an old piano, each separate and round and the tiniest bit halting but beautiful nonetheless.
They are rough truths, a little out of tune and not in quite the right key,
But they are the truth,
And that strikes more chords in my heart than a perfect rendition of well-rehearsed Beethoven harmonies
Fitting too perfectly to my rhythms.
And the cadence of your laugher flutters in my rib cage like
Triple-tongued fanfares,
The brush of your fingertips on mine
Sending vibratos of warmth through my soul,  
Yours eyes, honey brown, speaking as powerfully as a Stradivarius
Without even the smallest pianissimo whisper of voice,
My synapses firing in double-time, heart thumping adagio, allegro, presto,
Neither of us conducting, just riding out the jazz and operas and fiddles and symphonies of our love
I wish for books of blank pages to keep composing the
New melody of our lips, dancing along crescendos of
Instinct and softly thrilling secrets
On the gentle sonata of a rainy day in June.

when you bury me, please don't grieve
this is what i wanted
when my hands are cold and my lips blue and expressionless
don't cry,
i've shed enough tears for all of you
don't say it was a waste of a life -
i've lived my time and loved this world and
found joy in your smiles
please, leave me be
it's okay now

I hate winter. All my friends tell me it's great,
But they all get to sleep inside when the windchill is 12 below.
I guess I'm technically inside -
The shelter room is drafty and the heat doesn't work very well,
Sputtering and hissing like the alley cats
Behind the building
We don't have nearly enough blankets.
Just once this winter I want to not be
Cold.
Wherever I go out the air seeps through a second hand coat,
Feeling ***** and gray against my skin.
*****, dingy, cold
Basically describes me, my mom, the sidewalks, the weather, the city, my life.
I've only ever celebrated Christmas
With others who have lost their way, their homes.
Never the warm family event I know is right.
All the people at school love Christmas -
Their families all have enough money to buy gifts for them.
My mom asked what I wanted,
And I knew she didn't really want me to answer but I couldn't help it
"A phone-" I blurted out, before I could stop myself.
I almost cried when I saw the look on her face
Defeated, deflated, like someone had
Stripped away all pretenses of
Un-reality
She wanted to get me a new phone, I could see it in her eyes
But I'd also seen the bills this month.
There was no way that was happening.
"Look, Mom, I was just joking.
I don't need anything, the important thing is for the two of us to just be a family."
I forced a smile, seeing the lines around her mouth
Sag with relief.
She didn't know that all the girls at school had new phones
And new clothes
And perfect hair
And high end purses
And cars and Christmas tree and coats.
And they're not cold.
I hate going shopping with my mom
When we get to the checkout counter she has to pull out our food stamps and
Bridge cards and crumpled ones and
Fives to pay for scuffed hand shoes
And ugly sweaters.
I know she's doing the best she can but I always act like
I don't know her.  
Being poor is embarrassing,
A red stain rising to my cheeks that doesn't make me feel any warmer.
I pretend I don't care that the other people in the line
Stare,
Impatiently tapping their feet when
She drops her change
Morse code messages to 'get back to the streets, the shelter, to wherever you came from
What did you do to end up like this?'
You know, I got asked to homecoming this year. But I had to lie and say my dad was really sick and I had to stay home.
I don't even have a dad!
But I knew we didn't have money for the tickets, let alone a dress or boutonnière.
I just want to feel normal for once.
I want to be warm and comfortable
And feel like someone else loves me.
Have some new clothes for once.
New boots, a new hat...
It's okay though, really. I've survived all the winters before this.
It's just so hard, you know? When I know that I'm different, that my family is different.
You might be able to lie to a 7 year old, but I know that being homeless is
Different.
Bad.
Cold.

Self-acceptance, love, and peace. Willing to pay any amount.

Grandfather,
I'm sorry.
I know we don't talk much anymore..
Barely once a year.
You're old,
Your skin the weathered brown of a man
Who has lived in among the trees and your own roots,
Hard work and New England weather shaping the crags of your muscles and
The hills of your mind.
Grandfather,
I don't know you
You've gotten too distant,
Nothing more than a collection of colorful memories drifting lazily in
A summer lake.
Your face is familiar, but it is too large,
Bloated, with 3 days worth of stubble on your double chin.
Grandfather,
It's not your fault, I know
You've had a hard life
Your body has just finally failed you
And you pretend to not notice that you are too old to not notice your aging
You creep so slowly with your walker,
Looking wistfully over the water,
Seeing shades of yourself sailing on the breezy waves.
I hear whispered conversations of doctors offices and
Estates and wills and old family rivalries,
Too much for you to hold in your mind anymore.
Grandfather,
You don't ask for anything.
Maybe you don't know what you need.
Grandfather,
This is my gift to you.
This moment of privacy and silence
When you lean on the counter to steady your hand as
You take your innumerable medications
Your breath catching quickly in your ruined lungs and your eyes squeezing shut over 7 decades of memories.
I don't let you see that I notice your
Blank look or gentle snores at the table,
Or see how much you struggle to get down the stairs with a leg swollen to twice the normal size.
Maybe you don't see what you need
Or don't care
But maybe I can help
In my own, selfish teenage way
I can assume what you need,
What words might make you reconsider your stubborn
Indifference to your dying health.
Grandfather,
I love you.

she tells me the rain always feels like tears, even on days when the sun breaks through the clouds
her skin, pale with thirst for the light, dusted by the
darkness of escaping into herself,
a bare lightbulb illuminating her skull, shaved and shorn by
razorblades of hope that dissolve into waterfalls of
never being the one they want
never being the one that can break the chains
never being the one
she thinks she should be,
self-medicating with the flood of sobs fermenting in her eyes
blinding her to all but the sharpness of her lonely bed.
my head throbs in time with my heart.
just hold on.
you are not as alone as it feels in these chambers of self-solitude and
breakfasts of self-doubt indicate.
please
stand outside at dawn and let the rose colored light baptize you into a new
love
for this life - fragile sparks running down veins with the abandon of children
neurons pulsing with joy at the feeling of sun-kissed lips and
lake-swept feet and that moment the thunder sounds like a summons
to dance in the rain.
just hold on, to these precious melodies in your hands
to these unbreakable bits of spirit embedded like diamond in your soul
to this gift you have, this incredible ability to smile
and laugh and
grasp my hands between your palms, to sing psalms of baby birds and
rivers at twilight
to stare at the stars and listen to music and scream with pride from the mountaintop of
all the amazement and creation that is you
just hold on.


for me.

But while your eyes cut beautiful
Paper-snowflake patterns into her heart and
Desire burned red-hot holes
Into the fabric of her morals
You hands were twisting in her hair,
Tugging at clothing and pushing delicate skin against the carpet.
Her intimidated silence was never
Consent;
She can't look in the mirror anymore.

The heart of an angel
Condemmed to Hell,
Was as fragile as glass,
And shattered as it fell.
She denied what she had seen,
But it was far too late;
Try to find yourself,
Try to accept Fate.
She wept and pleaded
To no avail,
This was her life
And she must prevail.
Her broken heart reformed,
But it was no longer clear as glass.
A smokey cloud engulfed her
As her profound shame supassed
The limits of her mind.
So she took the only course of action,
And I watch my angel cut herself,
Staring at her reflection.

You have to understand
I don't do this for me.
I don't do this for you or
Even for us.
I do this because I have to,
Because if I don't write and dream
And scheme and sit by
Clear rivers and streams putting words into spiral-bound notebooks,
I will die.
Don't worry, I'll still be around
Walking and talking
But my soul cannot, will not stand being a dusty attic of
Odds and under-appreciated ends,
A broken menagerie of witless thoughts
Not able to fly with only one wing
I need these words to live.
I need half-full notebooks and stanzas and
Scraps of rhythm and rhymes;
My blood runs inky black,
Full of midnight prowlings and
Pens on paper,
Pen, paper,
Pen glides on paper,
As smooth as black ribbons
Draped across the snow,
Black thread
Stitching up white silk.
The lines of words
Imprint themselves into my brain.
I breathe language,
Feel my heart beat with songs,
Dream in the rythm
Of poetry.
Eventually, the
Ink
Forces its way into my veins,
Carried throughout my body
So that I bleed
Ebony rain.
It infiltrates me
Until I am crying
Midnight tears.
My hearts pumps the
Unformed phrases around and
Around again
Until I dissolve,
Becoming a mirror of darkness
On the floor
To inspire another writer.
'Tis the fate of the poet:
To become one
With one's work
And dreams
And life
And soul.

Today is a mad day for you too, isn't it?
Don't worry, you're just as crazy as me,
Shhhhhh.
We can't let anyone know that we see it in each other
Your crazy thoughts drift out of the back of your skull like
Candy-colored ribbons all bright and dripping
With their different-ness,
Just like mine.

How the **** do you go from calling me
Baby girl to
*****?
Keep your soft kisses to yourself
Even when the thought of my hips
Let's you whisper in my ear
All the things
You'd love to see.
Stop.
I was yours only as long as
Your smile was wide enough to let me fly
Even cages of gold are still metal enough
To damage the wings of a butterfly.
I made myself vulnerable to you.
You grasped my trust by the neck and
Carelessly let your fingers tighten.
And yet...
I was the problem,
After you forced me to my knees with shame and
Promises that could never be and
The flush in my cheeks when you said how you'd touch me -
I was the one who smothered your heart
When you held your arms over my head so
All I could see was your scars,
And I cried for you
Apparently that makes me abusive,
Telling you to respect my body after I
Let you see the parts of me that inspire
All of my fear and shame
Makes me unstable.
Tell me...how can you go from
Loving my eyes to hating the truth in them
When we stare through the doorway to
A future I shut and locked the window on -
Don't give me the key.

Ignore the shattered windows all around you-
Your skin cannot tear open.
Ignore the cracked concrete and broken mirrors -
All your bad luck has already been.

I struggle to find the words for what you mean to me
My soul strains to lift the darkness from your heart
You deserve nothing but light.

Instead of empty, incompetent words, let me give you this:
Warm hugs when you're cold;
Holding your hand when you're scared;
Let me wrap all your fears and follies up in my love and make a stained glass window of your fragile hopes.
Let me give you a golden-coin moon and diamond stars hanging in an indigo velvet night;
Your own words, cracking open my bones and reflecting back my love;
The taste of sea salt in the cool air of dawn;
A cup of tea steaming in a quiet kitchen.


I know this is not enough.
It is all I have to offer you.
It cannot mend your cracked reflection
But I promise-
From where I'm standing
Even the sunlight pales to your beauty
And I swear I can't see anything broken about you.

You are a poet.
Spinning inky thoughts into letters and lines,
Books of snowy pages feeling the  pulse in your fingertips
Burning midnight oil to release the boiling soul
Locked behind your lips
You've never cared for rhyming,
Choosing to play to the beat of a drum
No one's ever heard,
And you are a poet
The way your tongue carves the air
Into notes of ancient melody
When you laugh,
The way the heat of your palms
Burns on my skin long after you're gone, the memory of your flesh against mine potent even through
My layers of lies,
The way your whispered secrets
Tangle in the cotton-batting darkness like bats
And creep through the silence
To trickle into my heart
Trying to lift the greyness in my arteries
And replace it with the purple light of your words
You are a poet.
Unfathomable wisdom swirls deep inside your lungs,
Waiting to bloom forth in
Fire fly flowers and nuclear bombshells,
Combustible and burning like a chain reaction as
You awaken minds and hearts.
You are a poet,
Brave and bold and courageous,
Ready to spread your wings and
Scared as hell of the world on your doorstep
Sometimes the waters lap over your head as you
Struggle to breathe the dense airs
Of confusion and insults and city smog
Yet like bubbles rising in champagne
Your speech cannot be contained
You try to condense the whole sky
Into the word blue,
And somehow when you say it
I know exactly what you mean
Because you are a poet
And the song of your throat is no match
For the song of your ageless soul,
Unable to be trapped in the common cages of
Drudgery and 9-to-5 and ordinary-ness
Let yourself go,
Don't be weighed down by small people,
Let yourself fly,
Don't be grounded by small worries,
Let yourself breathe,
Don't be choked by intolerance,
Let yourself live,
Don't let yourself strangle the gift of
Poetry resting in your nerves
You are a poet,
And I  am the breathless reader never able to get my fill
Of your words,
Please fill me to overflowing with your presence,
Please spin your rhythms and stanzas between my ears
Like garden-spider cobwebs bejeweled with dew
Please
Let me revel in the star-bright bits
Of the universe that drop in polished pebbles from
Nervously bitten lips
Please
Let me read and hear and
Know
Your poetry,
For It is the window to a life I've never lived.

when i was a child -
each moment of breathless butterfly dances
brushed down my fingertips like so many
feather-light drops of stardust, twirling leaves were
full of mystery and strange fire-color and too
crackle-crunchy to resist
and the little stick piles were firefly homes, hiding spots of summer evenings,
and each tear on my mother's cheek was a small
wound that my kisses could heal.
when i was a child -
i had dreams bigger than the world. i would
save the animals from extinction, go to the moon, travel the world,
not thinking that growing up would make reality grow
over the tender places in my still soft fragile bones
brittle masks growing over an honest face
tangling upwards like overgrown roses, flowers lost behind the thorns.
i know fairy tales are for kids but -
they stick inside my ribs the way memories sometimes do
glossy, rainbow printed pages, full of magic whispers
teddy bears and small heroes
type too large for
me now, just a children's book. i wish my hands were soft and tiny enough to gently crinkle the pages again.
i wish for a child's eyes again.
if only i could see the dandelions as possibilities, not weeds
and the snow as strange and wonderful instead of
just a pain to drive through
if only, if only -
when i was a child
i imagined i would be a good person
when i was a child if only i could
have seen me now

She is radiant. Like sunshine
Lemon-yellow, summer sky, too-wide smile beaming into my ribs
Newfound confidence burning it's way out of her bones
Boiling over into her laugh.
I love the way her fingers tip-tap on the tabletop,
Skittering away from me, my heart in her hands and
Here I am not caring if she drops it because
Her fingerprints will stay.
I gave her my dress because she didn't have one.
I watched her put it on and
Felt the pang of envy that it never hugged my hips like that
She looked in the mirror and gasped with the realization that she is
Beautiful - her reaction so viscerally alive and moving that
I stared unabashed, in awe at her and blushed when she caught my eye
I told her it was just because I was glad she liked the dress.
And she believed me.

58,000 names
Chisled into black granite walls.
The hallowed ground in front of
This sacred, special place
Has seen roses, rings & letters,
Wreaths, money, trinkets.
It has been watered with tears of love,
Of grief, of pain.
A wilderness of emotion and memory
Is tied to the smooth dark stone.
Name after name,
Row after row,
Slab after slab,
Wall after wall.
Behind each etched name
There is a story of bravery,
Of courage, of hope;
But at the same time
You can read the grusome headlines
Of the unfeeling papers.
You can see the blood and the smoke,
The eyes of comrades
Glazed over in passing.
You can hear the gunshots,
The agonized screams of the doomed.
Is this a place of life?
A place of death?
A place of worship?
A place of pain? Of sorrow?
A place of memory?
A place of love?

A bad day when her hair
Blew in the wind and he
Caught
Her, she too naive to see
His biting teeth, hard angles,
Sharp elbows and knees
Why didn't she run to the safety
Of soft bosoms and the swell of a hip
Like an ocean wave.

the ghosts of your glances drift through me like snow,
getting tangled like spiderwebs on my ribs
until the ache under my breastbone reminds me
i can't breathe
my lungs are full of your smiles

Kiss each autumnal day;
Savor it.
Feel it's cold raw breath on your chapped lips,
It's windy embrace tangling your hair and
Twining around your fingers,
Begging you to stay and twirl and dance
In a field of dying grass;
Taste it, like ginger and peppermint tea
Left sitting on the edge of the worn wooden steps
Overnight, gathering the taste of frost and moist earth
And the peculiar scent of red-yellow leaves
With their brown edges rotting away into nothing;
Sense it, like the geese and the blackbirds
Just know to be carried away to warmer air,
Like the small animals just know that it's time
To stay deep underground, buried beneath the
Soft white blankets of snow;
See it in the skeleton branches and
Damp yellowish grass and iron grey clouds,
Watch the trees drop their leaves
And the crows sit like silhouettes in the tops of the oaks;
Hear it in the soft breezes and cold, whistling winds and
Dry, rustling grass and shrill birds, trying to find warmth;
And taste and smell and feel and hear and sense and savor
The grey-silver rain that drops from the heavy-bellied,
Purple bruised clouds and breaks against your chilled skin
And dews in sparkling diamonds on your eyelashes
And slips between trembling lips and
Runs in streams and rivulets down your spine and into the
Hollow of your neck and across your wrists and in
Little waterfalls from your fingers and chin and nose
As it washes away the stains and scars of life
And rinses your mind clear and focused and
You open your eyes and through the
Blurry sheets of rain, the street lights are dimmed and
The ground glistens and the only sound is the
Drumming of raindrops and the
Thrumming of life in your soul.

The dusty old notes
Twirl 'round the room,
Bringing false sunshine
Into the gloom.
Memories form
In the back of the mind,
Laughter and smiles
From an earlier time.
A teardrop falls,
Making no sound,
On white keys turned yellow
And black keys turned brown.
Nothing is left
Except for the pain,
And as that gives way
Only nothing remains.

I watched the moon divorce the stars, running
slipping away from the pinpricks of
Truth
floating aimlessly in human consciousness. My heart
ached
with sorrow, wishing I could re-pair the moon
to the heavens the way it was
Meant to be.
The disappearance of the lunar landscape from my
blurred vision, hazy with long days and aching feet,
left a hole between my ears
Just like the hole between the stars.
darkness demands to be seen, in its
unseeable
Shadowy force, pushing its way into veins full of
moonshine.

We have a dancing love,
He and I,
Dancing on the windswept heather,
Laughter ringing over the sea
Him and me.
We have a quiet love,
He and I,
Curled by crackling fires,
Poems whispered on a cloudy eve
Him and me.
We have a wild love,
He and I,
Sparks flying from rich red lips,
Shaking the branches of the willow tree
Him and me.

We don’t talk anymore.
Your name is still at the top of my contact list even though we haven’t said
hi in a few months.
Each time I try, the blinking cursor reminds me of when you brought me pecan ice cream
because I broke up with my boyfriend.
I don’t think I ever paid you back like I promised to.

I’m measuring this life in heartbeats and torn atlas pages
and miles of dusty country road,
The space before the inhale of breath
Feels like my lungs are freezing or burning or rotting away

I’ve been pacing through the friendless emptiness of this room for so long that
I think the floor boards are beginning to form fault lines
Over the cracks in my heart
and some nights I miss you with the magnitude of an earthquake.

Can you miss someone who never realized you’d miss them?

I’m digging trenches to outline my ribs because
my chest is more useful as a garden than a graveyard and
I don't want to let your memories be buried here under the
fragments of shattered mirrors you cleaned up in my heart,
Bits of bloodied tissues on your kitchen floor that night I
forgot to love myself because I was too busy
loving the way you laughed behind the velvet curtains

Loneliness is just knowing that the people around me
Won’t hug me when I’m breaking like you did

Your eyes would tear galaxies into my bones, bracing them with
The DNA of a friendship
Your smile haunts my thoughts like a song I’ll never remember
Even long after you’ve forgotten my name,
I don't think I will ever forget you,
Not when I see your face in the strangers on the street and the
ordinary letters of your name

Sometimes people drift out of your life and there is no way that I know
to make the loss of a friend
nostalgic, or poetic, or romantic.
They have their life and I have mine, and I wish it was somehow
closer to their late-night stories and too many drinks under the moon

The worst part is I’m not missing a kiss or brush of hand against your arm
Because we never touched like that,
Just a brushing of souls at the quiet light-speed of understanding.
I cry because the last time I cried like this you brought me pecan ice cream,
And I know that you don’t know that my favorite flavor
Is chocolate now.

She smelled like cigarettes
And the way the yellow street lamp sparked bright on her yellow teeth almost made him shudder, keep driving
But he didn't care, he wanted -no, needed
It
Her
Needed to see the back alley dust in the creases of her elbows
Needed to feel the visceral pull of
Skin on skin, fingers twisted in hair
To feel he was alive.
She tasted like cigarettes.
She never was able to kick them
Wanted a pack a day but could only afford
A smoke every 6 hours
Every 6 hours, like clockwork
Stumbling through the back door,
Desperately reaching for a light.
She counted herself lucky that her only vice was smoking
(the ******* the corner opposite had a
nasty coke habit)
Yet he didn't care what she tasted like,
Just that he was tasting her,
Feeling her,
Drugged on the way her eyelashes caught the light and the way her breath
Rasped the slightest bit when he grabbed her hand.
He was a regular, got good treatment
She knew to treat him good, don't complain
Still she couldn't help but feel degraded,
Worthless when her face was pressed to the ground,
Focusing on breathing and trying to shut out
His little gasps and noises as he got what he paid for
Still she couldn't believe where her life had gone,
On her knees, ignore the fact she was
Half an hour late to her smoke break, because she was here making a living.
She can only buy her cigarettes because  
She knows *** sells.

Dear you,
I know it's difficult.
I know up think your family dislikes you and
You feel like you have no friends
It's a struggle, I know,
To wake up,
To get up,
To stand up and stare and
Pretend to be interested in the people around you.
I know it hurts when you feel like a
Black-and-white character
In a technicolor Disney world.
I know.
Dear you,
You've had hard nights,
I know
When I say "stay safe"
And all you can reply is "I'll try"
When I beg you "please, live"
And all you can answer is
"but I don't want to"
I know.
I've been there, deep down inside my own heart
Where goodness and blue skies are a million miles away
I know it feels like it will not
Ever
Get better,
Feels like you're choking,
Feeling like the world is melting
I know.
But dear you -
You have made a difference because you made
Me
Feel beautiful.
Curse me, hate me, never speak to me again
But I will never forget that.
If society says you do nothing of value
For the rest if your natural life
You will still be great because you made me
Feel like I was worth something.
I will be seventy, eighty, ninety years old
And I will remember the way you made me
Feel
And I will smile
And know that I'm beautiful
And that makes you worth it all.

Insecurities and scars, well worn and in need of love.