There have been millions of souls before our own
And millions will fall behind
I'm risking so much, of all I have shown
Even to the best of us, love is blind

We are like a misshapen door
Creaking and wobbling unsteady
We have one hinge hanging on and one on the floor
I know now that I'll never be ready

Sobbing and choking on words I have said
The shaking of heads and deeds that are done
Then comes the silence that I so awfully dread
I am unsure now if you are the one

You spit fire at me, melting all that I see
The lines of scrimmage are dimmed and blurred
Who is right, you or me? There is no in between
With my heart wounded, I am deterred

Then we sit in the quiet unsolved
I cry for a bit, I don't care how I look
It doesn't matter, our fighting never resolves
The way I am left hurt and shook

Is real love supposed to make you wonder?
To make you question everything you thought you knew?
Because I'm drowning in the rocking waves and thunder
Rather than frolicking in the flowers I thought love grew


****** if I do, ****** if I don't with you my dear
Because no matter what I choose, I am at fault
It's either only having you for the rest of my years
Or choosing them and in my wounds pouring salt

So I try to soak in all the words that you've shared
I realize I'm growing up more than I admit
And I know that you have always dutifully cared
Then I looked at you with more insight and wit

You've loved and supported me all this time
Even when I was in someone else's arms
Even when I still had my own mountains to climb
And in the most when you knew I could have been harmed

I don't want to know who is wrong
I don't want to know who is right
I can feel a sense of where I belong
I know where I want to spend the night

There are days
when my soul feels
stretched out
like a ribbon
emotions
           hang
                  ing
from a thread
on the line,
like laundry, for
all to see, on pegs
vulnerable
           in storms
letting wind caress
and sometimes whip them
         round in beaten time
like a tempest
They tend to
get bruised, secretly
battered internally
as the surface of me smiles
and marches on
Vocal chords tightening
as the larynx longs
            in primal urge
     to take out the words
in one long
      graceful arc
             of purge
On these days I
need to sit
in the cloudforms
of my mind's eye
      and let myself feel
  what I cannot show:    
the daily coldness gnawing
    at my innards
      blow by icy blow
In these hours
I must let the tears
well up and run down
             until the sting of salt
penetrates the glacier
let the significance of
unspoken words
rise up from
the deep dermis layers
into my throat, my tonsils
up to the palate and tongue
               out through my lips
to the heavens,
releasing the unsung
         those words caught within
the walls of my neck -
they almost make me choke
exhaust contamination
from heavy, unseen smoke
  It billows up and out
and soon, like
hard-worked magic
this morse code is busted
because I am sick of feeling tragic
I command clear
communication
      to filter through
the spasms of fog
in drops of dew
I command my words to be heard
in tiny spikes of sun
And all the while
            in clear spirals,  
                    a prayer commences to
                        be spun:
for the harsh
               and bitter
be flushed out
             in unabated, icy rush
for my soul to rise up
           for the cleansing
in aching spirit blush
for the painfulness
of silence
to be ground out
upon the floor
for the shadows of
the violence
to be obliterated
to the
       core