You are the girl that sits with me,
the mirage of long blonde hair thrown over your shoulder,
Shoulders alittle too wide for your liking
But,
To me, perfect.
The perfect place to set my hand, or my head, or my words.
You kept them soft.
All of me, soft.
For moments.
For months.
For years.
It never ended, that spot on your shoulder,
The way I felt about it.
The way I feel about you.
You
are not that girl anymore.
And I
do not need a shoulder..
But the pillows still feel like you at night.
The brush you used to comb my hair with
still soothes me, even though the needles
have long been thrown away.

You don't understand.
And I wish you would.
Maybe if you knew,
You would return, just once.
Let me rest on your shoulder just one more time.
If anything, just to prove that the shape has changed.
That maybe your arms have been scarred with the ink of your husband's tattoos.
Or that they have become muscular with the weight of carrying your newborn son.
Maybe I could say goodbye, then,
If I could feel that they had changed,
And you along with it.
But I can't.
And you don't.
And my pillows still feel like you.

So
I fall asleep every night,
Still dreaming of your arms.

I can't change it.

Maybe one day
You

Will decide

To release me.

Your voice is the roundtable
I choose to sit in.
Eating loafs of bread,
Warm and hot.
Your breath is a heartbeat
Echoing mine,
Without a single sound.
Don't leave me,
The trees whisper.
They need you, also.
Don't leave me,
They whisper.
I am absent
Without you.

I just feel alone.

A single weight held tight across my jaw.

A timelapse of sorts.
One that repeats itself again and again.

Again and again.

Again and again I wish.
For more.
For less.
Less weight.
Less surrender.
A single shield is all that is left of me.
If I raised the sword, would I collapse?
A single wall falling in on itself.

I am a single wall, falling in on itself.

Why? Is the gold-leaf not enough?
To show favor? Gain favor with the gods?
Whomever they may be.

The sword falls.
Clatters across my side.

There is too much weight today.

One I can put down.
The other, I cannot.

I swallow the sword as I swallow the pen.
It never feels like enough.

Break wall, break!
Tumble, sword, tumble!
Clatter life, clatter!
Make noise, for God's sake!
Make some noise as you fall!

Make noise as you fall.

Do something, Lord, something.
Don't let this be your last breathe:
Your last exhale into an open space.

Yawp greatly into that rotten apple sky.
Cast your own poison into its folds.
Leave something behind.
If it is rotten, then let it be so!

Let it be rotten.
As rotten as you are.

Maybe something will grow from the soil.
Another apple perhaps.
Or a single tree.

I would prefer it.
Leave something behind, by God!

Leave them
Something

I am being made new.
The egg, cracked in half.
Taped together with scotch tape and super glue.
The yolk entirely devoid of its once-consistant home.

This is emptiness.
This is being renewed.
This is what it is to feel and not feel.
To be and not be.

The hand dips me.
Reaches for me.
Dunks me in a solvent of cement and tissue paper.

I am rock.
I am eggshell.
I am tissue paper.
I am two parts vulnerable,
one part entirely indestructible.

I weigh 1000 tons.

I would sink in a river.

I miss the yolk that once inhabited me.
Golden yellow:
So much promise. So much desire.

A gray mallet cracks me open.
It ecavates me.

I miss my terrible weight.

A hot glue gun binds me back together.
I am neither egg nor rock nor air nor yolk.
I am all and none at all.
I am egg soup.
Egg solid.
Egg squared and solidified.
Egg smashed and built again.
        ...The limitless persistance of life.

And then you spoke to me.
A soft voice in the darkness.
One I'd waited for for far too long.

And I told you not to move:
Not to stop talking.
I broke the spell--our spell.
Like a balloon, so afraid for you to fly,
I held you too tight.

I didn't craddle you properly.
I didn't let you fly and return.
…I couldn't.
I knew you would leave me.
And I am sorry.

I am also sorry that you hurt me along the way.
That I let you.
I let you form static electricity around my heart again and again as you laughed.
You laughed at me, in the dark.
Inaudible were the words, but I found out later.
I found out who you were, later.

I found who I was, too.

I found out that I gave you more than you deserved.
And I hurt you far more than what was called for.
And I never let you go.
Not then.
Not now.

This time I hold the string
not to keep you with me
(You have already flown away;
You flew away without my permission.
And you flew away with it, too.)
I hold the string because that string is love.
And you were my first.
And I would never want to get rid of that part of me.
I couldn't if I tried.

So I hold the string to remember;
Because there is no sky that could contain the both of us in this lifetime.
But I can hold who I was when I was with you.
And I can hold who you have made me become.

And I can remember you.

You taught me how to properly let go.

But most importantly,
You taught me how to properly

hold on.

"Don't you know?
Poetry ain't my thunder today,"
I tell them.
It ain't my muse.
It doesn't fill me with sounds and suppositions and beautiful, beautiful melancholy today,
No.
No,
It hurts me.
Stabs me,
No,
Rolls me like dough in it's
maleable, hardened hands.
You
Are weak.
I
Am strong,
It says.
It snears,
A lion lurking over it's rounded and bloodied prey.
No.
Poetry ain't my friend today,
Friend.
Poetry won't save me.

Not today.

I want to get out
To run away.
Far from here.
Far from you.
But you are a mirage that travels with me,
A line of coke the addict can't fight.
You steal inside me, like a bear in winter.
You are biding your time,
As I bide mine.
For the fight.
The eventual fire of our meeting, yet again.

It's the same fight.
The same surrender,
Again and again.
A repeating cycle of fists thrown backward against the wall.

Tell me if you have time for this, still,
After all these years,
Because I'm not so sure that I do,
Anymore.
I'm not so sure that I owe you the audience.

Stop traveling with me.
Stop biting me with your sharp claws
And even more twisted stipulations.
I'm over you.
At least I think I am.
At least I'd like to be.

Why can't you be water under the bridge?
Evaporated under a resilient pink sky.
Why can't I be the pink sky?
Soaring over everything that is temporary.

One day I will be.
I know I will.
I just wish it was today.
But instead
I wait in trepidation for tomorrow.
I wait for the day that your shadow stops stalking me,
The day your voice stops echoing in my ears.
Won't the mirror break?
Won't you stop calling if I stop picking up the phone?
Only time will tell.
Only time knows your true power.
Or maybe you die with me.
Maybe you end when I end.

If that is so,
We have many more miles to fight.
Many more miles to see.
Many more fists to fly.

I just wish you would surrender.
I just wish you would surrender so I didn't have to.
Why can't you be the half that breaks?
Permanently this time.
I'm begging you, break away from me.
Break into pieces.
Break, so I no longer have to.