I found the lonely and built a cabin there.
Learned to live in it.
Decided I was better off with a roof over my head,
Even if some bad thoughts leak in when it rains.

My poems are not a safe place to be.
But despite the danger, you seem to linger here.
The rafters hang with stripped electrical cables
but this building has never been up to code.

I hope you have your helmet, dear -
for everything is falling down.
Look how the light shines through broken window -
you could almost mistake it for beauty.

You offer me a bucket of wet paint,
but there are no longer walls to wash.
They've all crumbled now.
The frames are all that's left.

They look like skeleton, you see.
Like prison bars or Greek columns.
Am I dungeon or am I Panthéon?
Tell the truth this time, my love.

No matter, I suppose.
We will fade to nothing soon -
You, my poems, and I.

Like everything I love the most,
I too, wither among the frost.

It bites at my skin
flows cold through my veins
like hospital iv

They call it seasonal
They call it affective
They call it disorder.

I call it "aching for the warm."

I have always hated to see my breath linger in the chill

as if to see my own exhale
is to see my living
is to see my eventual end.

Too many things die when the snow falls

I pray that I will not be one of them.

Pretty Boy calls my body “Hourglass”
Funny, I’m not the one wasting my time.

(He got some things right, though. My body is not soft. My body is not fruit. My body is hard. My body takes its time.)

Pretty Boy wants a grain of sand; doesn’t care that he has to break the whole thing to get it.

While he’s at it, Pretty Boy takes more than he originally intended. Takes more than he was offered.

He Takes
and takes
and takes

and doesn’t give a ****.
He broke that too.

Now I’m all washed up in this lake of glass.
Well, it’s a good thing he likes long walks on the beach.
Or ***** as he calls it
“it,” of course, being me.

Pretty Boy knows exactly what not to say
to get me to sleep with him
Pretty Boy is confused
wants to know why I 'do not like' him.

Now I could tell Pretty Boy:

A. that I like girls
B. that I’m seeing someone
C. that I’m just not interested.
D. that I —-

But this is not multiple choice.
This is extended response.

One where I repeat the same thing

over
and over
and over

to all the Pretty Boys.

He tells me that I will make one hell of a poem
One hell of a story

And he says it like a threat
Like this is the first time I will consider the literary value of my being

But he is sadly mistaken
Because he will never write as many love poems about me as I have written to myself

The summer I stopped reading his letters
I wrote myself a poem for every day that I was stronger without him

I wrote the vows for the holy matrimony of my two good thighs
I wrote the preface for every novel I may someday compose
I wrote love songs to the children I will never bear.

My poetry has known every part of me in ways he never could.

You are a strike anywhere match.
But you have always burnt out much too fast -
Disappeared before I even had the chance to hold your glow.

You, with your beautiful flicker
out and in and in and out
of my life

You dear, sweet nothing.
Whispered passing in my bad ear
I could never quite make out your meaning.

You - filled to the brim with sulfur
with wood splinter
with flame -

You never answered my question.
Were you meant to burn out?
Or else ignite?

.

1. Love fully and without fear. Love is the most powerful verb you can teach to someone else.

2. Do not be passive. No one will give you a badge for standing down or sitting still.

3. Tea and Yoga are not for the faint of heart. People who can remain calm enough in times of peril to make a nice *** of Earl Grey are more powerful than you can even imagine. Yoga can and will kick your ***.

4. You do not have to be religious or even believe in God to appreciate the value of the Bible, or prayer.

5. There is no such thing as false hope. Your hopes and dreams and goals and deepest desires are all valid. No one can tell you otherwise unless you let them.

6. The only person who can truly love you entirely for who you are is yourself, so you had better do a good job of it.

7. If the letters you write always sound like apologies, do not send them. Take pictures and send those instead.

8. Do not let yourself be reduced to a set of numbers. You are so much more than careless red ink.

9. Abandonment is never beautiful. The only beauty is in the peace you may take from it.

10. Live fully and without fear.