"She was an
unusual dresser.
Every night,
she wore bruises
on her heart,
love on her lips,
pain in her eyes,
and ink on her fingers.
They called her poetry."

darling—

i almost made it out
the house
down the slanted
           concrete
                      steps
i nearly passed the garden gate
with tired
        ivy
            crawlers
for a moment i thought i was free
no ghosts
       no ashen memories—
But bags in hand i couldn't help
and took
     a glance
            behind.

(read forward, then backward, line by line)

I ran.
Not knowing what else to do
There was so much blood on my hands
It was mine
The kitchen knife
Caught in my chest
Guilt
Consumed by
Fear
I was heightened by
Adrenaline
But running on
Wasn’t enough
While trying to stay calm,
Losing control
It was me that would end up
Dead. Because
He was
In front of me
The whole time
It was too late
Trapped
I found myself
Locked in chains
My fate was
Death.

I go outside to escape my self
and the end and the inevitable
and I sit admiring the night sky
until the stars become the scattered
words I’m trying hard to understand
but seem completely unable to.

I look up into that dark blue night
and I wish it was the ocean.
I wish the world was a fading purple
sunset. I wish the world was
the moonstone blue of the sea.

I’m drowning in the night sky instead,
in all this vast intangible vagueness.
There’s no edge, no shore to the sky,
just stars and then stars and then stars.

I want to be on the shore again,
feeling alive, feeling maybe, just maybe
there’s a little hope in the waves that
have always been able to comfort me.

See, the sea is full of lonely moments,
losing moments, shipwrecked moments,
but it is also the place of liminal on the shore
moments, meeting moments, happy, maybe moments.

But here I am, sitting beneath the sky, not the sea.

I came out here to escape yet all I’ve found
is the inevitable in all its dark, vast, uncontainable glory.
I look away because I don’t want to see it.
I look away, because now it’s the end,
I’m not ready to leave.

I gather handfuls of cold to my chest
and take it all back inside with me.
I dream of the ocean. I long for the sea.