I am free but I am trapped
How much is experience worth when
Every Friday night is entertained by bruises and bedsheets washed away the next afternoon by Jack Daniels
This is not who I am and I wish you could understand this but
Here I am stuck
Trapped
I was hoping you'd hear
Here I thought I was swimming in the most incredible ocean
Independent, free, wild, and unknowing
It just took a while for me to remember
Sipping on salt water can only keep you alive for so long.

I was once read a faerie tale
And I'll never forget that night I heard the words,
"All magic comes with a price."
I should have been prepared for the earthquake
Following the day your lips met mine.
I've always wanted to know what you see in the stars;
Are they to you the ghosts of those you've abandoned?
I hope the crescent moon's mocking smile makes your hands
Shake while I'm
Climbing all the mountains you never dared to hike.

Restless and awake,
The clock tells me it is 2am.
This is truly the time for dreamers.
Surrounded in silence,
intensified loneliness,
thoughts palpable.
I was once told
to forget tomorrow's uncertainty yet
Past situations resurface
and bring about distress.
There is no logic in afflicting such a burden;
One that is caused by one's regrets.
Those times cannot be brought back,
Cannot be relived,
But, oh, how they can come back to haunt you.

My mother once warned me
not to watch and wait for water to boil.
I guess I never learned
I should have learned
by the way you interrupted every
mangled promise.
I've been counting all the clocks I've seen
since you told me we'd ran out of time.
You are the reason I now know
it is possible to drown without water
because sometimes I visit the beach
where we had our last barefoot slow dance,
And only then do I find solace
in fantasizing the day I'll forget your name.

For so long my biggest fear has been
Breathing in fire
But lately I've found myself
Addicted to the fumes.
You once whispered a warning,
Lips teasing the nape of my neck,
A memory that still sends chills down my spine.
I wish I'd never been told the danger of
Such a transient element.
You see,
I've been stalked by a rain cloud for years
Of whom I am hoping has sauntered away
For good.
Yet I still find myself wondering
If either of us will someday be
Standing alone in a room
Accompanied only by a fire extinguisher.

Someone once explained to me how vulnerable they felt
looking at the night sky and
I've been spitting up galaxies since that night.
Sometimes I have dreams where I am
Tying knots in the fabric of the universe
And orchestrating meteor showers
But I've stared at this piece of paper
For so long
you'd think I'm trying to purge myself
of the memory of those words.
I feel like I've been hanging apologies
Like ornaments on a Christmas tree
Since you told me
I am the girl who is crying "fire" in the middle of an ocean but
The way I see it you're just trying to build a new house
On top of an old one that hasn't even finished burning down.

I don't know when and where our intimacy turned into strictly contact but
Its been years and I'd still prefer to shuffle barefoot along broken glass
Because I don't remember the last time you kissed me goodbye.
You've never asked me to stay the night
And your bed is starting to feel more like a concrete slab
But your hands are a prison I haven't been able to escape.
No matter how much you love someone
You can't make them love you back
I can't ******* bear to think of you leaning into anyone but me and
Now all I can do is speak goodbyes to everyone I meet because
Every time I've spoken the word "love"
And genuinely meant it
It's started to sound more like an apology.
I once opened your door to tell you I could not kiss you anymore
But you swallowed the words right out of my mouth.
Remember the time you told me
You wanted to witness a train wreck?
Well, look at me now
Look at me now.

You are a bottle of champagne
saved to be opened on New Year's Eve and
I am the bruise you woke up with
From that drunken night that
you'll never cease to regret.

I am a monster who is trapped
in varying levels of confusion, desperation, hypocrisy
Slamming doors in the faces of anyone
who offers me a purpose.
I question if love knows the word requited
because of how many times I've been able to find
purpose
But only in the bottom of an empty bottle while
Sitting tongue tied in a vacant room,
Fantasizing about the peacefulness of the cemetery a few blocks over.
Maybe that's why God stopped listening
I've looked into so many eyes
So many god ****** eyes,
explained my ghosts
struggling to make sense of the monster I am.
It's not that I've lost touch with empathy,
But putting it into words
Would be describing depth perception
to a blind man.
I once watched my father spend hours in front of a mirror
I couldn't tell if he was laughing or crying
but I've grown so familiar with his actions.
I am a monster and not by choice,
who was broken with love only once
and since then I've learned to walk with cracked bones.

Boxed red wine and the stench of cigarette smoke
seeping through the cracked door of the back porch
brings back memories of childhood
Another hole in the wall resides next to the liquor cabinet
the size of your father's forehead
You wrote a novel on your wrists with your fingernails
about the stitches he needed from the fall
You wept to me
Saying the fissure in the wall felt
like the countless hours your mother spends
in front of the computer screen playing spider solitaire
She forgot to ask how your first day of school was
for the second year in a row
You don't remember the last time she slept
You said every night spent in that house
taught you what the inside of a coffin feels like
The photograph next to your bed
of a smiling family of four
taken on your seventh birthday
Whispers a story of a mother who refuses to speak
the name of her firstborn child and
Writes its own eulogy
about a light that was put out
fifteen years after it was ignited.
You said time does not heal wounds
it just furthers you from who you once were
what you once had
Now you wake up every night gasping for air
after dreams of a devastated car wrapped around a tree.

You once admitted to me you'd never want to be like your father
You've grown to look just like him
Maybe that's why I don't recognize who you are anymore.
I remember that night you finished off half a bottle of *****
You kept crying and muttering into the bathroom mirror
"stop looking at me like that".
And to this day I swear
The thunderstorm we heard that night
Was evidence of God
But I still don't know if he was weeping for you
Or for me
Because every time you spoke the words
"I love you"
It sounded more like a cataclysm
Than it did an affirmation.
You once admitted to me you'd never want to be like your father
Yet you left me without saying goodbye.

My favorite pastime is imagining
How you managed to stumble home
That night Whiskey left you alone,
shivering, white knuckled,
unable to remember how to spell your name.
My phone rang that night,
Although you never spoke to me after leaving
that slurred, three word voicemail.
Your laugh is a resident in my mind
And I know my name seems to sparsely visit yours
But I just can't bear the weight of emptiness anymore
After you replaced me
the same way you replace old bed sheets.
I just hope you'll one day know how it is
To be struck like a match
Just to be used and thrown away.

I sometimes think it is unfortunate
That nothing escapes my pen but tales of an unrequited love.
I wish I could write about
Why I have not stepped foot in a church
Since the day I found catharsis in the word "alone",
The first time I truly felt safeguarded
Or the first time the word "divorce" shattered me.
I wish I could describe
The smell of a chilly fall night with crisp air and rain-dampened pavement and how it inaugurates autumn
Or the remorse felt toward a child who let go of his balloon to be left to the mercy of capricious winds on the Fourth of July.
But instead I am stuck incapable of writing anything but run-on sentences about Loss,
Why the burn of whiskey tastes better than that misconception of 'home'
And turning cracked pavement into metaphors about heartbreak.

Tonight, months later, I lay here accompanied with only
The leisurely winds teaching my cigarette smoke to dance
And a rage as present as the hole your father put into your playroom wall when you were five.
Did you mean a word of it?
The night we spent together on a stranger's front porch
Because their car wasn't in the driveway
It was you, me, and that bottle of whiskey you'd stolen from your mother's liquor cabinet.
You were tracing the lines of my palms
Whispering promises into them
Until intoxication brought us slurred words and sleepy eyes.
Since that night I've wondered if mountains would choke
On the echoes of me screaming your mangled promises into them or
If the trees would suddenly blush in shades of gold and red; a temporary Autumn.
I never knew how it felt to drown until you left me choking on the sound of your name.

I asked you to paint me a picture,
So with lines of watercolor calligraphy,
You showed me your father's broken glass beer bottles.
I asked you to paint for me, something tragic,
So you painted those bottles, sealed,
With messages inside.
I asked you to paint for me, something beautiful,
So you painted the bottles, along with their messages,
Sent sea bound and somber.

10 weeks since I last saw you
9 since we've spoken
8 since I moved away
7 was my lucky number but once
6 weeks passed I lost hope in reconnecting
5 nights in a row now I've spent laying awake until
4am wishing I could go back
3 months ago and fix everything between the
2 of us if only fate would allow us
1 more chance at mending the broken past

There is a reason why you drink so much coffee;
I can see right through your veneer
But I suppose everyone's lips would curl while being handed a mug of caffeinated bliss
If they, too, were kept awake by the abrasive screams of regret.
Your presence feels like the first time I was unnoticed and passed by the ice cream truck as a child.
We used to lose ourselves in conversation
But Time has burdened us,
And She continues to drag us further apart.
Do you still feel it?
Or was it hopelessly unrequited?
That night our lips first became familiar with each other's
I couldn't tell the difference between what was happening
And the first time I watched the sun rise.
Now I am undecided if you are a  breath of fresh air or secondhand smoke
But I don't want to talk unless I can relive those days
When I was unable to distinguish between your voice and Sunday morning church bells

You confessed to me your past and present burdens then let every inch of pain drip out of the ocean that is your mind and I thought about how much easier it would be to have been bedridden for four years before being forced to run a mile on command than it would have been to live the times you spoke of. I cried a whole night and since then never understood why we are deceived by what the foolish would recognize as the 'good' in this abject world. If I could create sentences that would steal the torment from your eyes I would commit to writing a thousand novels, all in calligraphy, so I could die if only assured you would never cease to smile.

Fallacious words and
Temperate attention
Still I am a moth who never learns
To stay away from the baneful light.                       Time is dragging us
Your justifications cannot                                           further and further
Substitute reasoning.                                                       ­     apart.
Countless times
You've intoxicated me                                                    I am drowning
With our effortless chemistry.                                            in your
I feel like I am burning                                                endless deception
But I am in no position
To claim physical pain.
So feed me more synthetic flattery,            We seem to be parallel lines,
If I had to choose between                                     the only constant
An honest lover and a dreamy liar,                we are capable of holding
I'd pick you again and again.

I am tired of this pervasive madness
I am not so sure one can sense it
Although it bursts through my meridians
As it is now
It is our ineluctable destiny
And I have grown to be so familiar with
Your temperate attention

I dare you
To think that I would not tear down
Your mother's curtains
And spit on her jewelry
While you are weeping at her grave
But I knew god ****** well
That somber room was no place to call 'home'
If my trembling hands could speak
They would tell me I am
Estranged.

I hate the taste of your mouth
More than a hurricane hates land
But I am hypnotized
With the way you can deluge me
With the subtlest of touches.
I wish the memory of you would fade
But I still wonder if
The dust in the forgotten parts of your bedroom
Ever make you yearn for me was I do you.
So carve your apologies into the wall
Until you have no fingernails left.
I'm tired of being stuck in this ruthless affinity
To the way your lips greeted mine.
I am tired of being attached
To even the mention of your name.

I never found compensation
For the love I gave.
By my side you promised you'd stay.
So I question why it is that at 4am
When I'm overwhelmed and
Open my window
To jump out and run away
I remember I have nowhere to go.
Who you were before you became insolent.
I was once subjugated to all of your requests;
Selfishness has never been more alluring.
Perhaps, in a way, you've extricated me.
Conceivably, I am thankful for that.
Perhaps one day I will learn, again,
To forgive.

I did not know love
Until your scent drenched my pillow.
I never knew how it felt to drown
Until you left me choking on your name.
Unable to find comfort in your sweater,
The only tangible piece of you left behind.
You were never bound to me
And I never asked you to be
But the way you spoke the words
"good morning"
Once made me betray god daily;
Singing praises of the way
Your fingertips used to greet my spine.
I no longer fear the monster under my bed
I only fear seeing you in a grocery store
Years later,
And the possibility of you telling me
You do not remember me.