This one is for the doctor who called me “delicate”
I think I missed that word in the thick textbooks about disease I’ve seen
This is for the lab technician who lost not one but two vials of my blood
Because I really wanted to help that new nurse figure out veins again.
This is for the stupid slogans on the walls
A fichus with the word peace under it, I'm cured.
This is for the geriatric room with the low table they always put me in
An arthritis patient means elderly woman, right?
This is for the negative tests and endless questionnaires about my health
Checking how often, how severe, and how much I care.
This is for the four empty orange prescription bottles sitting neatly on my desk
Red pills, and yellow pills, and white ones, oh my!
This is for the loud groan of pain in the morning I make before I even wake
Because why shouldn’t my roommate wake up when I do?
This is for the symphony of my cracking joints and creaking bones
Because violently trembling when you walk up stairs is so very ****.
This is for the manic googling at 4 AM,
Does this symptom mean anything? Is it just a quirk or side affect?
This is for WebMd, bless their hearts,
Who think that sniffles mean polyps and headaches mean cancer.
This is for the flights upon flights of stairs I climb each day,
Cats are considered ****, is panting like a dog?
This is for the cramping and shaking hands everyday
Because as a writer and artist I never even use them right?
This is for my mother
Who’s waited patiently with me through every doctor’s visit
This is for my best friend Lauren
Who missed three classes to take me to a clinic
This is for my nephew
Who is too big for me to pick up without grimacing now
This is for the wine I drank
And the bedroom basement I climb out of
And the backpack I heave around
And the school lunches I leave in toilets
It’s for the nights I have to stay in and the ones where I make myself leave
Because the only thing tough enough to stop me
Is me.
And I’ll tip my hat to myself for putting up such a good challenge.
It’ll just make it even more satisfying when I knock it the **** down.

What I want from you,
what I need to see and feel from you
at this moment,
isn't what you'd think.

I don't want to hold your hand, sharing a book in the other
while we read Frost or T. S. Elliot.
To be embraced, to breathe you in like the scent of home.
To **** all night long and not stop even after I can feel shivers wrack your body.  
Because none of it has ever been real.
Not for you.

You lied to me.
Not with words but with your expressions.
Your silent smiles,
your quiet support was a safety blanket,
ratty and warm with age.

Your eyes pooled with compassion,
you brushed my hair back held back the loneliness
when I lay on your bed shivering with fever.
But on another day, when I lay there resting and well,
you told me to get out.
To leave you alone and stay away.

You exiled yourself
and punished yourself.
Buried your body and mind in your work.
And when you ripped yourself from me
it looked effortless.

I want proof you aren't a robot.
I want to rip at your skin with my nails, really dig in,
to prove you can be hurt.
I want to pry that grin from your lips,
and wring blood from your lying mouth.
I want to press bruises into your skin,
But this time not with my kiss.

Now when we come and go
From each other's lives and from each other's beds
There is warmth, comfort,
But at the center of what is and what will be
nothing is there.
I'm reaching across a gaping void while you watch
and apathetically reach back
without really trying.

I’m more like a flower than a person.
I’m wilting, losing my petals, drying up.
I’m in a vase with others, and they seem to be doing fine.
They are blooming in vibrant shades of pink and red
With proud leaves catching the sun from a window near by.
They let off fragrant fumes to passers by
And everyone stops to look at the gift nature has given.
But then they notice the small dying flower near the back
And think, that should be pruned out
It would improve the over all look of the arrangement.

But maybe I am run away with this metaphor.
I am more like a china doll than a person.
I am fragile, painted, and stationary.
People see me and they know I have no real purpose
I cannot be played with, like other dolls
I cannot be taken around the world as a child’s companion,
I must sit preserved on the safety of a high up shelf.
A toy for children that can never fulfill its purpose
Because to do so would break me.

Or maybe I am more like the old pictures of an ex
The ones you keep hidden under your mattress.
I am only viewed and handled when you are lonely,
When no one else is giving you attention I am your last resort.
But when you look at me you remember why we no longer see each other
Why I am a memory rather than a lover.
I am too much work to be anything other than a smile
One that says things used to be good
But now call for us to be apart

Possibly I am like a song you have heard so many times it makes you sick.
The one you used to love, played over and over when you felt blue,
But eventually you realized my lyrics were contrived
And my message irritating, my beat not that catchy.
When you hear me now you think, ugh, more of this?
You still know all of the words,
You just wish that you didn’t, because my song means nothing to you now.
My beat is a reminder of a phase in your life,
One you don’t wish to revisit.

I could be more like that hamster you got in the 8th grade.
The one that seemed adorable with its fluffy hair and tiny nose,
Until you realized how much work I am,
How our relationship was one sided with all the work falling to you.
Cleaning my cage, feeding me, bathing me,
And doing everything you do for yourself, for me as well.
And it just wasn’t what you signed up for,
So after a few months of boredom you let me die,
And held the little funeral for appearances sake.

I am more like my illness than I am like a real person,
Or at least at times it seems I am to you.
I need more help than most people,
I can’t go out all the time like most people.
I need rest, and need breaks, I need a helping hand
To prevent my body from falling apart.
So I think maybe the metaphors are pointless,
Because you are tired of me complaining
And you aren’t listening to me anymore.

ive been drawing for you all day
impermanent scrawlings on the white board
im just trying to keep my hands moving
so my students dont have to see me weep
because today its not going to be pretty
one of those hard lump in the throat ones
i would have taken pictures of them
the doodles
but you know how i am with technology
all thumbs if thumbs werent the only thing you needed
you keep coming to me in my sleep
and in a cold sweat i search the house
for your wet foot prints
and now your visage is imprinted
in orange and yellow dry erase
camera phones clicking behind me
performance art that hurts
wild and swooping gestures
leaving tracers to be erased