It all starts to get a little heavy the longer you hold it.
I'd like to set some things down, free my hands.
Little by little.
Trivial first, then the troubles.

He wore a name tag, which just so happened to rhyme with mine, and after handing him his coffee, he asked what it was.
What compels a stranger to ask for your name?


I feel so vulnerable with my hair pulled up
Exposed..
Like people are peaking at the back of my earlobes through the blinds and I can feel the warmth setting on the nape of my neck like the sun shining through them
I want to wrap my curls around myself and hide..
Fade..



Did you hear the one about the school teacher who won the sweepstakes to be on the space shuttle Challenger, the one that exploded seventy three seconds after take off and disintegrated, littering the ocean with built up promises and reminders, palms holding faces whispering
"don't let fear hold ya back"




Every January people pray that this year, this year!, will be better than the last, and I feel good admitting that none of mine will ever be as bad as the year the girl broke my heart, my parents broke up, and my first semester of college left me broke. Rock bottom was eighteen years old and wishing they would stop coming.





I'm know you still have fantasies about the girl with eyes the color of the plants she nurtures, how maybe she was the one that got away, how you wish she still wrote to you. It's getting easier to brush off as the time grows. I guess everyone has that person, the idea of them never leaves your heart even if the opportunity has.






I have twenty one voicemails I haven't yet listened to and I'm just - not.
I know somewhere at the very bottom, your voice is waiting for me, asking questions you never really cared to hear the answers for.







I have stored memories that I have never once shared with any one because of how badly they hurt me. I try not to carry the repercussions around with me. I try not to worry my future self by sharing the past with my present myself.








I've always been a collector,
of wine corks,
grocery lists,
small cut outs from magazines,
of sparse compliments you give in passing,
I hold on to every one and still wonder if you think I'm pretty.
I'm still trying to figure out
why I don't accept them in the moment,
how to.










Words come as easily as sleep these days,
usually not at all.
I try to quiet my breath and stop the sniffles so that you don't worry about me, mostly unsuccessfully.
I am always curious as to why sometimes, you'd rather not know what troubles my mind.
Don't ask, don't tell.










I'll let you quietly love, if that's the language you know.











Do you check up on me like you do with her?
Search for my name,
hear my name
with the same ring to it.
I know I said earlier that it's getting easier to deal with the fact that you still have this looming ******* love for her but you know what, it's not.
Not at all.









Sometimes I feel like I'm seventy three seconds away from exploding, disintegrating, littering the world with my broken promises,
the reminder of my failure to survive the pressure.









But don't feel bad.
and don't ask, I won't tell.
I'll let you love silently, if that's the language you know.

Tonight I will kneel down and pray
for four leaf clovers to plant
myself in a windy city,
and fear that in the sea of tiny greens,
my little fingers will fumble upon one,
and wash me away from the level below it.

You see, I want more than anything to leave,
but I'm used to the low altitude,
got water in my lungs and I'm just so scared
that up there, there's just too much air.

Some nights I can’t cope with the fact that one day
I
And everyone I love
Will someday
Die

There is no way to put it nicely, the sobbing that comes from the already mourning of the soon to be skeletons walking and hugging and loving

I can’t sleep at night knowing one day I won’t wake up
I can’t breathe when I think about it and sometimes that makes me think I’ll be taking my last one gasping for air
Which makes the air even harder to catch

I can’t believe there were days where I wanted nothing more than to just not wake up
And today that fear is what keeps me up

I forgot to tell my mother goodnight before I retreated back to my bedroom and I don’t think I checked to make sure the back door was locked

Who created an existence so fragile
So miserable
Who gives us the pleasure of feeling such intense emotions and love for others and is okay with ripping that all away in an instant for some and allowing the grief for everyone else to linger until another loss distracts them

I don’t ever want to pick out funeral flowers for my father.

Lately I feel
Tethered
Tethered to the things that distract my thoughts like twiddling and texting and

T
E
T
H
E
R
E
D

To the time it takes for you to get home
The hands on the clock rotating round and round day after day, waiting for the sun to set and the headlights to shine through the blinds of my bedroom
Tethered
to the springs inside my mattress
Bouncing back and forth with each toss and turn like a ball on a string
The momentum slowing as it winds down but
Never once touching
The ground

Train cars are just mobile gallery walls
Telling urban stories of silent voices
Shouting out that someone!
Someone! Is here! Is alive!
The tracks rattle and the crossing arm lowers
Sit back and watch as the colors shift and change into a kaleidoscope of existence
Someone is here and knows you’ve been here, too.

I thought the nineties saw the last of leaving voicemails
I thought we left that mess of feelings back at the apartment on that bed
I thought I left your mind as well
I always felt we left too many things unsaid
You toggle back and forth between opening up and closing that chapter
You probably think the same of me
There’s an unparalleled sadness in getting rid of a book you didn’t get to read

the books of poetry I’ve found on coffee tables and book shelves disappoint me
young adult white boys writing about kissing and oxygen like no ones ever had a drag of a cigarette or thought about a girl or looked at the stars before
they’ve reduced poetry to single thoughts that they pretend are important
And the twenty something year old girls who took a creative writing class congratulate them with a poem of their own
Broken into
Small stanzas
With few words
That mean
Nothing

...

The dramatics are too much.
There is more to human emotion than cliches and empty romantic lines that maybe you should just tweet out instead of, I don’t know, trying to publish a book.

But the funny thing is, oh the curious little thing is, they are published in books. Everywhere.
And where do my rants about childhood trauma or abandoned hospitals or ecstatic adventures get me?

writing poetry in private waiting for someone to ask me if I ever like to write, and I’ll say, I dabble, and never show them a word.