It stood among no giants, no towers, no mountains.
Heedless to the wind, scattered without waving stalks and rusted leaves,
it chose to fall where it could not.
Jaded, perhaps, but not without sterling hands crafted to bellow.
A smattering of elbows chastised the woodpeckers pecking.
Ephemeral? Beautiful? Sober? Lassitude?

It fell among no gorges, no ravines, no swale.
Heedless to the rain, swamped in a dell without sliver streams,
it swelled up above the ratty woven sails.
Coarse, perhaps, but feather flew, vying for sky.
A copse of whitebark pine pillaged no battalions.
Mauve? Tender? Empyrean? Redolent?

It pattered among no small sorts, no ant hills, no chambers.
Heedless to the duke, sabotaged without sword, spear, stone,
it swallowed a hive of rabbits in no fields.
Desultory, perhaps, but not with quintessential ripples bent in space.
A harrowing panacea flourished in spindles of florid bristles.
Sempiternal? Susurrous? Honeyed? Irascible?

It churned among no whirlpools, no pots, no frosting.
Heedless to the maelstrom, sluicing in a myriad of slanted lanterns,
it chose to lure where it could not beguile.
Laconic, perhaps, but not without furtive gallows smoldering.
A candelabra of viridian mire spies spied genteel dragonflies.
Enormity? Enmity? Vestigial? Switchback?

It stood among nothing.
It stood enervated.  
It stood.
It.

Blackbird, blackbird, whither 'way
Don't come down this way in
Sleek sails of five and six

Hither here, two and three
Come forth and fly in
Through the broken glass

Onyx separations carve
In six wings lost to starve
May the host slight the royalty

Blackbird, blackbird, whither 'way
Don't come down this way with
Sacrificial dust from seven circling

Hither here, two and three
Come forth and fly in
Through shattered self

Onyx separations carve
In six wings to starve
May the way be paved

Blackbird, blackbird, will I?
In the serene sloughs, call
Out from the dusk, ten sails high?

Blackbird, blackbird
Come around, see my gift
And sing your song

No words
I don’t write letters
not to myself, not to anyone.
The first time I wrote a letter
it was to my best friend in the hospital.

What does that say about me?

To my younger self,
who wouldn’t listen,
who won’t listen,
I don’t write this to you.

I won’t tell you about
what occured in October 2016
or the job in the summer of 2018.

What of that week in 2015 that you will begin
to learn how to hate?

No, not others. Yourself.

Dates don’t mean anything
but they linger around your head,
worming their way through cracks
in a well worn veneer.

I can’t explain the haunted memories that have silk bows
wrapped around the pinnacle of my fingers.

How do I explain the loss and grief
of losing myself without contouring the edges
into selfishness?

There aren’t words that strike
the anvil with enough malice to endow
the emotion with truth. A simple veritable power
taken away from my reaching grasp and I fathom the silence with
crushing, lovely anger you relish.

A letter to you? They asked me to write about the struggle
I would carve out for you? I wouldn’t wish that upon any child,
not even you.

You don’t need to understand the vibrance of hunger,
peeling scraps of skin to the floor.

So I say to you, don’t go looking for answers,
You may crave the sturdy oak floors, but
it’s better to fly than fall before you’re time.

I don’t write letters, I write
about people and aches that never pass
and stories of deranged hope but I
cannot write a letter to you.

You are not yet ready to write honestly,
the lies seep through and bury themselves in
layers of truths.
You’d say, that’s cliche
But how do you explain three long years?

I was told you write a letter to you…
I refuse.

I can’t put into words,
the simply incomparable beliefs I heard
every ******* day until I didn’t have to
hear them anymore, and I learned to be paralyzed
from the mind to the fingers to the feet I can’t stand.

I didn’t understand how I grieved for myself
until I shoved everything down before I left for
the hospital one Friday night. I curled up in the blue nightgown,
staring at the cream walls, unable to feel anything at all.

Apathy is equal to unbearable emotion, two sides of a coin flipping
through the lightning cracked air. Waking up, finding the energy to
walk to the nine am class I skipped once a week, the skies did not breath.
Neither did I.

Navy sweat stained mats cover the wrestling room floor. The humid and
old swells without circulation. In the last thirty minutes of the MMA
I love and fear, everything slams into me. The fall I should not have had,
A heel stuck out to kick and I rise into suffocation.

I do not think I failed. I know I failed. Scrambling to the wall, because my legs
could no longer hold me, a piece of my body no longer mine to control. Tears
surge as a tsunami to the coast of Indonesia, cross legged on the floor, I try to joke, to hide.

I see the text my best friend sent me.
A theater kid drove off a bridge.
I swallow.
Grasping for breath. For control.

The coin lands on its edge, wobbling. I totter
off pillars thinned by rotten rain, into ruined fires.

I can no longer grieve. I don’t remember what I once was.
There is much I learned about myself in my psychology class.
Did you know I have an avoidant attachment style? It leaves
me unable to miss people, to trust any answer. What if they’re lying?
What if I’m lying?

See, I sour myself. Broken isn’t the word to encompass all that is,
shattered pieces across the carpet, slivers buried in the door, here
I am, scrapped off the pavement, dandelions bruising the cracks between squares.

I write to you, not for myself, not for you either. Dear depression,
Dear anxiety, I hope you stay. I don’t know who I’d be without you. Exhaustion without sleep,
beating to the minutes and the hours, laying in fear of falling asleep and never falling asleep. Recovery is terrifying. And so are you.
Love, me.

Your words are powerful—
take away the sterling silver glint of a blade
buried beneath your rib cage and you will
see
how they sour stones and reverberate down Cyrpus Wells
full of venerable solace.

I cast my line into the sea,
tangled in the web of what’s in between,
searching for a meaning that’s not there.
But… your words wallow with me,
sultry in day’s spine, rambling long a serenaded coast,
fallow beach umbrellas railing against coarse high tide
as I weathered the hard won sanctity.

You once fetched a high price, trying to lose the tumbled mass,
scattering around your ankles.
Your lips drank unearthly bitterness at the salt in their veins,
and you tossed the words, traded them for a rope to spin me
from underneath lame hooves.

Tattered, whipping polyester strains to break free
snapping at the wind for sailing too quick and I can
see you
landing on your feet, seizing that of which was thrown away,
an old recorder full of rotten seaweed and fragmented shells.

“Words will not break you.”

See as you surge up from the Cyprus Well you peddled away,
watch as you claim the skies with hawk eyes and a beak born of bleak bitterness,
Lashing language into unrecognizable shapes,
and behold the verity sewn strength in your words.

See that

“You are incomplete and the universe and ever-evolving.”

And stand for yourself, endure their words
and remember—
your own words are powerful too.

The wind is cold
and feels right on my
skin.

It calms my heart
and I rush in with endless
exhaustion.

Tell me to believe
and I will not lash out, whispering
no.

My arms don’t belong
to me. I don’t belong to
me.

It sits on my chest
lingers in my head with its
claws.

I welcome the pain—
the sharp edges of wind feel
right.

I feel wrong.

Solicited news runs on a treadmill,
and drips from the mug reading
Captured in Words
full of things i don’t want to know,
another ******, another corrupt business,
another hate crime, another attack,
another school shooting, another ****,
another another another another another
It’s a loop i want to cancel out with my bluetooth headphones
while glaring at the world making assumptions
on my appearance.
Listening to the only music that makes me feel heard,
that makes the hungry, the crying, the insane feel
heard.
Can’t you hear me? The screams echoing around the empty
walls fabricated by your enthusiasm for |||||||||||||| Cages.
When i find the sanity i crave, you label it childish,
that i find hope in a face on the screen
what is wrong with you that you must also take away
what i cannot give myself?
Feed into the lies, feed into the apathy,
fed up with the screams and the silence,
you ask where i stand?

i lay on a path riddled with thorns
under a scorching, searing light
but i am not allowed to die

and you ask,
why i see a bleak future
or none at all.