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.

My home is a tiny cabin in the woods,
My voice a timid trail of smoke from
The quaint log chimney
That would never reveal the pain
Hiding under the shiny tin roof.
You hold my bleeding heart
Carefully, like a baby bird just
Stretching it's wings, and you
Stitch it back together with your  
Whispers of strength
Like quiet raindrops on a tin roof,
I
  t
  '
   s
    
      o
       k,

         I
          '
           m

             h
              e
                r
                 e
                   .

Unraveling the threads
Of my tangled, sticky lies,
Tearing the delicate cloth
Of my fragile, broken life.
One by one,
The stiches pop out
Exposing the wounds
That they know nothing about.
A single salty tear
Trickles down my face
As a single crimson drop of blood
Is dripping from my wrist.
This cruel and viscious cyle
Will never have and end
As my sanity unravels,
Alone and with out friends.

There is something so wrong
About a crush. An invasion of privacy,
They never asked to be trapped inside
My skull,
Their name rolling silently on my tongue.

Whoever my future lover is,
Know that I will not like you.
At all.
Never ever never
Ever.
I will never like you.
Like is so bland of a word as to simply disappear in
What will be the splendor of
Shared lives and hearts.
I don't care about the words used
To define our relationship, all
I want is to know you.
I want to share our secrets at 3 am over a crackly phone connection,
When only whispered "I love you"s hold together our
Vulnerable hearts as one.
I want to memorize how your eyes
Crinkle up when you laugh and I need you
To see the way my lips turn down and my eyes go dark when I'm not looking at you
And when my heart goes
Thump-thump-thump in the middle of the night
I want your cool hand on my forehead.
I want us to lay together in a dim hotel room and
Kiss quietly as we shyly reveal our worries and shame to each other.
I need you to be gentle, not because it's my
First time but because I'm not sure I'm ready to be loved and
I need you to find the hope in my skin when you trace my scars and
I want to hold you close and tell you how much you save me.
Let your hands wander and
I will answer your gaze with a mouth parted in an
Itch to fit my lips to yours.
Whisper your moans that I know come from your heart when I send
My soul drifting over your hips.
Let me love you
Let yourself love me
Coupled by shared heartstrings on a summer night, watching the moon.
Whoever my partner is,
I will not like you.
I want to find traces of your heart in your collarbones and
Search out your soul between your ribs and
Kiss you like your lips are the oxygen keeping me alive even as we gasp for air and
We will be each a temple for each other's hands to worship
And we will love deeper than our
Skin pressed together and
We will live fuller than pounding hearts and bodies twined together and
We will love more than the sun and the moon together
Just because we can.

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

Time drips slowly down kitchen walls
Like thick strawberry jam left to cook too long on the stove,
Boiling over.
Silence that isn't really silence reigns the gaps between each whisper of breath and tick of the clock and soft roar of raindrops on the street,
Heavy silence pressing  on my shoulders,
Grey like the clouds, smooth and supple
As bare skin at midnight,
Rich, like good chocolate that leaves a sharp aftertaste.
Kitchen walls, soaked in summer memories, green like summer foliage,
Air trapped in damp and warm confusion inside windows streaked with rain,
Eyes that stare too long before glancing away too quickly.
Watching.
Waiting for two hearts to
Acknowledge
Each other.

i walk down the earth,
barefoot,
feeling the old souls of grasses long
cut to dust
the sunshine like wine against my lips
honey on the skin that still hasn’t forgotten
your fingerprints
the outline of my feet stand tired in the dirt, wandering aimlessly
searching for something to drink to
fill up the gaps in my bones
am i home?
i think the answer is yes, since the sky here is
bluer than your eyes
and the dirt yields to my toes

i lost the moon
trying
to count the stars away

She writes of the falling days -  
Rumble, tumble, bump down rock slides and
Stutter limbs along cliff edges -
Knows them well, like the back of her
Tiny, fragile hand - too young and too old all at once.
What is there to stop a small girl from
Climbing a mountain to the sun?
oh...
   wait - you could stop her (you did),
with a heart just as stony as her
Mother's diamond wedding ring
You took her and ravaged her mind like
A lover - lacking in love.
How many times have her hands  opened and closed - like
Flower petals, prayer books, lips, legs.
Opened and closed, forever
seeking, searching for another path up the
Mountain.

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.

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

My heart drowns in the depths of
Hopelessness
When your eyes won't meet mine anymore
Because the blue has turned
Sour,
Summer blueberries rotting under
Sunny skies.

She hated herself.
Her friends all told her how beautiful and talented and wonderful she was,
And she said thanks,
Mirrors rising behind her eyes so they only saw what they wanted to,
Not the poisonous
Self-loathing boiling beneath the skin
She sliced open in secret, in bedrooms and bathrooms,
To let out her fear.
Her darkness was so close to the surface if
If it was a snake it would have bitten them,
The way the razor blades bit into soft hips the she thought were too ugly
And into her tongue, to stop her from
Spilling all her painful truths.
Open-handed words ***** slapping hitting her head
Against the wall of her daddy's office
She hid that mental bruise with fake smiles for weeks as it faded,
Like her scars faded to be replaced with new ones,
Like her heart faded until she was just going through the motions.
If someone had bothered to research the skeletons in her closet
Maybe her mother's scream wouldn't have ripped through an octave and a half in shock when she found her daughter
Hanging like a forgotten Halloween decoration in the back bedroom.
She left a hole in her sister's heart the size of her smile and
Her grandfather couldn't talk except to mutter "What a waste!" and
She broke her best friend down to dust, not knowing that he cried his strength away at her funeral and his tears fell on her casket.
The air in the church is full of echoed voices, hushed
"She was beautiful"
"I loved her"
"Why?"
Maybe if the voices had never believed her lies,
She would still be alive.

Anyone else notice how our news
Is full of death and pain?
5 murdered, 4 in prison,
3 dead in accident, 2 missing,
1 heartbroken.
I'm waiting for the
Day when I can see something other than blood and grief on
The screen in front of me.
Show me a heart.
Show me a soul.
Show me love and life and joy and
Laughter.
I don't need proof that the world can be ugly,
Only that it can be beautiful.

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

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?

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.

The air is molten,
Slow-moving and thick,
And filled with the heavy
Fragrence
Of white lilacs,
Like incense in the temple
Of the sun.
Memories float,
Seen through plate-glass
Windows
In people's souls.
Melodies lazily dance in
The summer sky,
Laughing notes that fall
Like trickling streams in
Scales,
In singing
Crystal waterfalls
That wash away the
Dust of life.

A white silk dress
Like snow cascading
To the dusty ground.
A needle ******
The pale arms of
Sleeping Beauty's twin;
Drops of blood
Raining down to land
On her tear-soaked
Satin skirts.
She falls, deep
Into a forever
Enchanting rest from which
She will never wake,
Laid to die in a
Pristine, ****** gown
With the bloodstains
Reflected in the
Casket lining
From her white silk
Dress.

I'm not perfect, I know that,
But I wish I didn't feel like a
Leftover,
Trash,
Tossed aside because my hips are too wide
And my stomach is soft and rounded, not flat.
I'm not perfect, I know that,
But I wish I didn't feel
Awkward,
Stupid,
Stammering because I'm in love,
And my day is made with her smile, not anything else.
I'm not perfect, I know that,
But I wish I didn't feel like a
Freak,
***,
Whispered about because my heart has fallen hard
And it's for a pretty girl with glasses, not a football player.

I breathe in this silence that is not
Silenced,
Air alive with heartbeats and
Clocks ticking too slow,
Eyes meeting over
Sticky plastic tables,
Snapping away like an awkward blind date,
Fingertips drumming impatiently.
Wait.
Calm.
Be patient.
Tick...tock........tick...............tock

I can't, I won't, my son laying
One floor, 3 hallways, 12 rooms away,
But we are relegated to the hospital cafeteria as if my husband and I are naughty schoolchildren,
Interfering.
My red shirt crumples beneath
Nervous fingers,
The same shade as the blood given
To my son, not knowing it contained
Death.
Why can't I fight with my son,
My son,
Shining brightly and boldly as the sun,
Infected with a blood-borne killer we were never warned about.
Hemophilia is a tough diagnosis,
But my careful worrying wasn't enough to save him from a
Diagnosis of ostracism and certain death.
AIDS.
Oh God.
Breathe.
Can't breathe.
Time moves too fast, my son racing towards eternity
Alone.


White sheets and sterile beds rob
My son of all his sunshine,
Lips blue and pale like my husband's jacket,
Nothing but incessant beeping and bustling nurses who can't fix him,
Clock going tick, tock, tick, tock.
I see red.
Red dripping into and out of his arms through silver needles,
How do I know that this is safe,
No one knows if this is safe,
This is our only hope.


Tick..tock.....tick........tock.
White coat of the doctor moving too quickly towards us,
We run.
My heart thumping red and my stomach yellow bile and my eyes leaking blue.
Hospital room not room enough for all my emotions,
All of my tears,
All of my grief,
All his last breaths.
My son.
No longer my sunshine,
Just a pale winter afternoon,
No sun beneath cold sheets of snow.
My son.

Time moves too slow when everyone wears black,
Like molasses dripping from a jar into
Metallic air and earthy graves.
Like ash clouding out the sun.
My son.
No more my sun.

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