(If you knew this place as I know it)

I am not just me. I have never been just me. I am a patchwork of everything that has been done to me, and that has nothing to do with being just. I am not perfect because I have never experienced perfection, my life has never been picked through for the best footage. I’m bearing the weight of the dailies, every last one of them.

I am not a story. My body is not made of letters, no meticulous thought has gone into me, I have not been drafted and re-drafted until there are no spelling errors in my bones. That does not mean I cannot create stories. I may not be made of the things I write, but the pieces of the world around me are enough that I can give a little of myself to many while still being whole.

If you knew myself as I know me, you would hate it, too much, too little, unevenly and over-dramatically. I don’t know myself at all and too well, all at once.

If you knew this world as I know it, you would love it. Love it and hate it, hate it because it’s going and love it because you’re going with it. I will keep telling myself that different does not mean good or bad, but I’ll still miss picking a crimson leaf out of a stream of sunlight in the middle of snowy fall.

You would miss it. You would miss sleeping. You would miss not being scared. You would miss being able to love everyone. You would miss thinking that everyone was willing to love you. You would miss your friends being free and knowing what you wanted for Christmas and not worrying about being afraid to look in the mirror.

You would miss six feet of snow in November.

And you would love it. You would love knowing more, knowing better, knowing more clearly, more complexly, and more meaningfully. You would love knowing that spellcheck and calculators that do long division exist. You would love re-learning how to imagine the world, to question everything, to accept and believe, to understand a life that is not your own.

I am not just me. I have never been just me. I am not lonely. I am not alone.

(I'm sorry if I sometimes need reminding).

A conflict crippling beyond my will,
My mind, my own capacity,
Abating to the point of dread
A broken soul, now broken inanity

The words I can't resist to restate
Again and again and about
Can I have the will to keep it--
The meaning, now to saturate

I sit in my muddled state of disarray
Contemplating the worst--
Or perhaps,
Just honesty

I love my scattered, esoteric mind
I love to squirm as I think at night
Alone, I know, not just in presence
But in ethos, judgement, sense--all the rest,

Still who can help but want another
A mind to love for lonely days
Any mind vaguely the same, just wise
Who could think in ways of deep insight

Can both be given?
In my life of ungraciousness
My world of willful sorrow
My feeble ways of petty days

A weight held fast in the heart

That's what my conflict is made of.

Are we all just the same
Confused minds, without a name
With muddled thoughts, upon the loft
Too proud for happiness, just the same
It’s a wonder--I suppose it’s a shame,
To sit as waves reverberate
I’m of particles! I control myself
Yet can’t, it’s the question of doubt
Do I believe? Can I say without fear,
Faith will protect me, dying’s not near
You say you do, and I too hear
The biting echoes
Strumming tears

Sometimes I just want to go to a garden
And take all the flowers I can clutch in my hands
The sweet-smelling, luminous, simple and poisonous (when ingested)
Then scurry away before the gardener knows
Though I’ve taken bits and pieces of grueling work and pride—
To her or him—it’s far more than that, it’s happiness—
And a little bit borrowed from a friendly, flowery neighbor
Is hardly worth complaining about, maybe even worth a smile
And I press the gentle, fragrant ones
In the hard covers of my favorite books
They’ll last forever, I’m certain
And *** the radiantly eye-catching ones
In the places so obvious—
A mantle, pedestal—always in the corner of my eye
I’ll probably put the poisonous
Far away from any man
Hidden in the depths
Still covered yet, concealed to the end—
But the simple things in life
Are what I hold so fast to me
I squeeze the stems and sniff the petals
And know now to truly appreciate them

When is suicide romanic?
Tragic?
Appalling?
These questions bear their wait
In the back of my spinning mind
Here I squeeze the grip of a butcher’s knife,
Not in the moonlight, but the ever-graying sky

When no ears can hear the reverberating echo
From your cries in the lies where you lost yourself so deeply
When no one is willing to think of you
For fear of ruining their day,
Then is it perfectly unselfish to at upon unendurable pain

In the blush of the night
And the rolling, roaring peal of thunder
The dark clouds express the torment
Far better than my pathetic cries for condolence
Yes, I’m cherishing my thoughtful misery
As if it were unalike any other
But I know it will end so quickly
If I’d just jump the roof, ****** the dagger

With the unbelievable, deafening, so blinding silence
I know that nothing can lance the quiet
With my towel in hand
My last plunge in soon to come
In the endless depths
Of sorrow’s irrevocable ocean