When stabbed by life
inside twists and turns
inside corridors of experiences, I bleed.
Bleed from heart onto page.
bleed with emotions that turn to words.
Some words bright red echo pain felt
when dark energies attacked self.
Other words pale are filled with emptiness
putting me in state of contemplation.

And as my breath bandages up my wounds,
I awake to see the sun rising.
I awake into the true gift of who I am...
A poet sage.

Dangling, hung by a thread
unraveling
slightly faster than it is
repaired,
but only slightly.
Like letters that are just
barely
out of focus,
so close to being illegible,
so close to becoming just
lines on a page in a
packed-away notebook
that was once an alter
for self-possessed ramblings.
A hand, a thought, a smile,
just out of reach,
clinging to a phantom of a
former reality,
grasping at the dust
kicked up by
feet dancing deftly away
as they have always done.

I write this as she sleeps
next to me, with me,
but not with me,
as a testament to the light
she spreads across my pages,
chest moving
in and out,
in and out,
breathing kindness into
these words with her own.
The object of my attention,
affection,
she will rise tomorrow
to the surprise of post-midnight
poetry, hopefully
bringing a smile to her face
as she does mine,
and our small habits
across hundreds of miles
unfold
to become larger rituals,
grander ceremonies,
separated by mere inches.

Anxious.
Like the attachment style.
Becoming involved,
and over-thinking everything.
That's what you called that, right?
Over-thinking
these old insecurities that I can
never seem to
quite push
away
for good
while my pen bears its ink
down into and past the current
page because all my muscles
are tight
and my stomach is
sick
and my mind
is distracted.

You. You. You.

She'll pick you up,
put you down
once she's read your pages
and harvested your words.
Is it true?

I've been discarded before.

Tried to trap the bird,
what a foolish mistake,
and it flew away
leaving my hands full
of ashes.
I've pushed too hard
and clung too tightly
and lost it all
many times.

I get nervous, but I know my center.

I see your wings,
a magnificent ocean blue
which have been carved
through years of struggle.
Never think that I do not.
I would never deign
to clip them.
I would never make that mistake again.

But I, too, have my share of books
which I have picked up,
read fully,
or half-way,
and put down,
discarded.
I have lifted from branches
and flown further
when I've been trapped,
clipped.

I get nervous.

I want to stay,
more than anything,
but there is fire in my wings,
and fire in yours too.
We are certainly
birds of a feather,
so I wonder,
can we not,
could we not,
should we not,
fly together?

These words are like
flower petals strewn across
a forgotten floor.
A contrast in a desolate space,
but chew them,
examine them, love them
and see their origins
birthed in poison.
They escape from their captor's
skin through long trailing tendrils
of ink
much in the way
the ***** pollinates the flower
and is never seen again,
much in the way the words are warped
by alliteration and savagely
captive in metaphors
like they belong in a simile
like they belong under the skin
the way a past made up of
a universe
can never quite make
anything whole again.
They don't quite belong in a
barren place such as this,
but can never move,
for  their venomous
cover would surely taint
all that is green and
full of life.
And if a wind, a breeze,
should lift them from
their resting place upon the floor,
they would surely float and dance
along,
in all normality,
in all the ways they should,
and will wither
and shed their toxic pieces
along the way
to cause coughing, sneezing,
and noses ****** like the watering can
that sprouted these
heinous flowers.
And they will fall
again.

I inflicted a wound,
you showed me where the words cut.
How could I not see that in the
beginning?
How have I been so blind to
that side of
myself?

I get wound up,
like what happens when you
twist a slinky and that one ring
pops out,
never to go back in properly again.
A ball of anxiety sits in my stomach
daily,
but when I love
I get scared.
I get eaten up with fears of
being abandoned,
it tears at me to the point
that I can't even think straight.

So it comes out
eventually,
I lash out to those I love.
It must be their fault,
right?
But I know others can't be blamed
for my feelings.
I know that.

I've learned many lessons the hard way,
that was one of them.
It must be an unconscious thing
since I didn't recognize it.
As all, I'm still learning parts of myself,
I'm still growing.

I've also learned not to make excuses
when confronted with my wrongs.
This is simply my best explanation.
There is no justification I can make
in causing pain,
not for anyone.
I can't convince anyone that I can change,
we all hold beliefs on that.
But I am not the same person
I was
a year ago.
That's a fact.

I should not have been blind to this
for so long.
I can already see more pages in my
past where I have unknowingly
smudged the ink.
Places where I was blind before.

It's time to get to the root cause
of this.
It's time to apply the careful
introspection to a once dark place
of unknown anger.
It's time to dig into this childhood
pain,
this childhood cancer that eats me
alive,
this place where any sense of being
left
causes self-shattering tremors,
and rip this part from me
whole.

I need this to work.
It is no one's fault but my
own
that I have not accomplished
this yet.
It's time to bleed
so that I may finally
grow.