The emotions I carry are too big for my vessel.
Twisting, no entwining with my veins.
Like vines engulfing trees they’re
Slowly choking me.

I carried in 20 pounds of groceries today...

Food I'll never eat.
Crawling back to bed I think
About the 20lbs I'm missing.

Everything is fine.
Going to the grocery store was...
Almost passing out

Weaving in and out of people
Staring. Why are they staring?
The metal under my hand as hot as my face.

It's suffocating.
This metallic taste.
I'm so hungry.

Everything is fine.
Is what I tell
Friends and family.

But nobody knows
I go straight to sleep
When I get home.

I want to die.
But I'm too scared.

So I silently cry under my sheets
With no energy to
Get up or eat.

Colours mean less to me than
The racing winds of autumn.

But to feel nothing
While dried leaves cascade
From trees that have more stories
Than me or any building
And crunch
Under my worn leather boots
While rich, muddled scent of earth
Pours into my being- filling me
Up with feeling that wraps
Around the heart- tingling
Chest and head
And hair tendrils

But to feel nothing...

Is to find that the
Winds of autumn are
Starting to fade
But even if for a moment I felt them
Even for a moment...
Is all I need to keep searching for them again.

My thoughts
Paint brilliant colors,
But
Chemical venom
Swells my tongue
And silence
Fills my mouth.

Ferns for my soul
Echinaceas for my childhood
Is what I told my mother when
She cried looking at my arm
That I had so thoughtfully inked
Botanical permanence.

I’d like to

But my brain's response is sluggish
And the me you know is not
The me that I am...

Right now.

Ivory, sheer curtains
Breathe- sunlit with passing wind.
Delicately brushing eggshell plaster
Before falling to original shape.

I wrap myself in their peace.
Matching breath to theirs,
And it feels like
I am being held by your
Love.

Is a dream I can’t have.

Away

Into sticky
Summer night.

The nape of my neck
Tickled by passing breath
Of flower scent.

Laughing with moon mother,
Was I mingling with constellations or
Reflections?

Surely I was dreaming.

Honeydew nectar pulls me into her *****.
Thick blankets of soil pregnant with rain
And rain boots.
Damp earth and
Silk moss beds cushion toes and rolling laughter
As I fall into spring.

I’ll sleep when time rises
In the quiet
Of Saturdays.

And as heaviness weighs
My web-veined lids,
I’ll breath in

The silence that
Is morning.

My only distraction
From impermanence

How funny is it
A simple salt was
Forgotten by my brain

The fluidity of words
Consecrating more than
A simple idea
Has slipped away

And what’s left are
Empty hands and
Silent mouths
Void of sophistication

Piercing, sun through glass bubble.
I look beyond
Through fog and moss
Curling around my legs
Like vines,
Desperately.

Pull me back to earth of sand and dirt.

The stars are falling.

Creating comets that streak my cheeks
And fall into a space that I can’t remember.

Forming at my feet are static clusters from their burnout-
Fading against the background into nothingness.

Dead heavy eyes stare...
Glued to stoplights lining rain-soaked streets.
An arid tongue placed, no permanently stuck against pink flesh bone
Waiting for when everything doesn’t seem like a dream.
She thinks blinking is a way to clear her seafoam eyes,
But no matter how hard she rubs
The rain falls harder and
Clarity seems like a wish
She dropped in a puddle.

She was born of a forest
And rests her heart  
Shallow in pooled dreams
Dripping further than her tears
Falling to soft earth.

She eats rosed lilies
And pickled cattails
All while
Her footsteps leave no absence known
As her lithe nymph body melts into foliage.

And her arms permanently reach
Into the void of
All unknowable things.
Grasping at gossamer threads,
Like thoughts that can't be spun together.

My mind plants a seed
In the thought of happiness.
I smile,
Even if just for a moment
I remember what the
Slick taste of honey or
Curling breath
Spreading concave against
My collar bone
Feels like.

Holding blue-silk wishes
I find myself drifting into
Sun soaked memories.

And I breath
And breath
And breath

In their promises.

Silence is a mouth that can’t be seen.
We talk while resting heads
On intangible planes,
Leaving no footprint.
Only when sun veils it’s embrace
Am I able to let go my breath.

Do peach petal tears stream down her heart?
Drinking sweet nectar from her lips,
My eyes fall upon gold coated truths
Forever pouring from her throat.

Everything is imperfect-
The space
Between your eyes.
The crooked white
Inside your half-smile.
The paper-cutting
Scissor bangs
That frame your face.

You chopped them late
In a dim-lit bathroom.
Flickering neon against the blade.

Tucking tongue under breath,
Chunks of midnight strands
Refracting grey-silver dreams
Fell to the floor like splinters
Hurled from breaking wood.

With crescent moons
Formed on each cheek,
The mirror smiled.

Intoxicated from the weight of euphoria,
Silence drips viscously into the soul
Until drowning is no longer a fear,
But an option.

Feet wet from nostalgia
Of ungraspable motions,
Time rests heavily on dewed eyelids...

The soul buries itself further.

Time allocates rebirth to nature,
But what of human kind?
Emerging from pink elastic walls-
They call it a miracle of life!
Only to end up as food for flowers.

And everyone is so obsessed
With making the most of their
Time.

What magnificent gardens shall
Accompany their Death?
Curtains of wisteria, rose-red poppies,
Flowers that speak a language
That disregards the natural flow
After sinking into that dark hole.

Delusional!
We don't rest in the garden of Babylon,
Or some fancy European botanical.
Tourists don't ooo and ahhh at the beauty
Of our Lives.

Remembrance after Death
Must be some kind of joke,
Because all I see are
Forgotten tombstones and weeds.

Your cotton-balled mind
Drowns out noise
While heals hit
Stiff, unyielding pavement

Everything is like
The annoyance
Of a mosquito buzz

And swatting
Is just a motion-
Like your legs taking you down the sidewalk
Like your eyes staring at the cracking grey
As you hurriedly move past
Impersonal shadows

When a butterfly floats past,
How do you feel?

The masses respond with vacant eyes,
"I feel empty"

She was a wilting flower,
Delicately fading
Into the depth of her sorrow.

Her eyes-pooled gossamer stars
Falling from constellation webs.
Bouncing on the tile before losing shape
In the atmosphere.

My soul was swallowed into
Her sorrow,
And stayed there.

And when I held her,
It was like trying to hold on to refracting light.

Sitting down I gaze at smoothed rocks,
Waving seas grass-
The breeze touches my cheek.
But I am not by the water,
And theses rocks and grass aren't of the sea.

They were imported from some plant
Looking to make money off the idea.
Stones nestling metal slats,
Sea grass swaying in the city breeze.

I have been staring at them-
contemplating my own existence.
It's like that of the rocks and grass that line Harke Laboratory
I'm out of place.

Sometimes,

I think of taking my hands
And ripping - splitting - cracking,
My ribcage in two.
                                                            ­            
The breastbone splintering apart,
My torso opening like a rotten tree.
The inside hollowed,
Like a lake that has been emptied
 
I've convinced myself that
Fragrant flowers
Would grow there.

That they would grow feverishly
In the gnawing gap
I had created.

And that time would preserve
What I had done.

Slips through fingers
Like moon-silk threads
Waiting to be drawn out
Into something beautiful

All I see is up
The pink flower stretches to forever at the sky
I stare wishing to be among the clouds
Its anterior filters the sun’s warmth upon my soft arms
I sit upon the dark, sodden, summer earth
I am all to myself. Alone.
At home under their stems
So benign am I encased by the pink flower

The pink flower trembles under slight hand of a summer breeze
Honeyed are its petals,
But dangerous is its center
Pricking my delicate fingers
If I am not careful
Yet I watch a dragonfly land on it with grace           
Fragile insect legs grip tightly at the miniature pointed peaks

Wind caresses wisps of hair around my petite face
I am like a fairy
Not knowing the wonders of the world
Only the kingdom of the pink flower
Moisture sweetens the air
Drenching it with the breath of nature
Almost as if a mother is breathing comfort into my small body