There will be a time when it will end.
Be it parting
Be it death
So each passing minute with you
Pendulummed with sadness.
So many times
I looked long into your face.
I could hear the clock ticking.

Experience is only for poetry, as for poetry, it seeks
only to express love and knowing it will always fail,
while it privately yearns to experience it. Fast and long.
Pain is deep. Flanking fans. Stupor and drop. But as
for love, it only knows forever and laid in cement in the
culture of romance as poetry is it’s breathe.

my home
is not
the room
where i sleep
fitfully.
or the house,
broken memories
and walls
the color
of
****.

my home
is the
off-key
singing
with my sister
in her car.
the buttered popcorn
from the movie theater
that we ate together,
her and my brother and i.
the spring air
as we ran with her dog.
the monotone
of teachers droning on,
the bright laughter
of my friends.

home is made
of the little
bits of joy
that
we’ve left
scattered
behind
us.

you cant love a bird, silly
it has no capacity for love inside of it
it loves the freedom so much.
commitment is foreign to them

skeins spiral above coffee
where the screen remains unsewn and
blank as the seawater that
day before you flung stones and
disrupted the smoothness of my stomach
sending concentric voices
whispering to the shore where
tongues in conch shells
lapping say they won't be here long
we can break but we will not move
and I don't know how to tell you
that these letters we crochet
and stuff down wires with blunt pins
may stitch holes fraying in our hearts
but cannot knit a staff
that can part the sea

It took me seven years
to realise
the words in my mind
were too deep for
my mouth to dig up
I thought it was easier
to open my skin
and let the truth
pour down my arms

It took me seven years
to realise
nobody should be allowed
to touch parts
of your home
or hold pieces  
of your heart
that you don't yet understand

It took me seven years
to realise
I will wear these scars
forever
I'll carry them
through every smile
every kiss
every concerned gaze
I'll carry them
to my grave

It took me seven years
to realise
the pain carved
into the walls
of my castle
etchings of
attempting to disappear
are not a story of weakness
but a tale of
how I survived