There was a certain face today that did not return my usual gaze into the mirror. She was a faded, sore woman; one who saw the world through dull eyes and assessed her surroundings amongst a static hiss of white noise. She followed my gaze only vaguely, her frame worn thin as pale, sallow skin clung loosely to the bone. Behind a frayed curtain of an unkempt mane, perhaps there was the smallest trace of a youthful beauty hidden behind her decrepit, hardened shell, a trace that exposed itself discreetly and seldom. I told myself in vain that I did not know this worn woman, that the dull gaze she stared with under no circumstances belonged to my own face. Surely, I thought in a mindset detached, This woman’s misery is mere stranger to my own.

Stranger. The word comforted me, knowing that this wretched, coarse woman, was nothing to me but a stranger, staring coldly from the mirror so grimly into my eyes.

My most persistent friends
have become six hours of jetlag
and the fading buzz of airline coffee--
as black and unforgiving as our red-eye flight,
as we wander German streets-- Füssen,
where the air is always crisp
and graceful, even awkwardly emerging
from an ugly winter.
Neuschwanstein castle sits mockingly
in the horizon-- the locals pass it by,
as I, some baffled foreigner
from Nowhere, Ohio,
where the streets bear gas stations
and the shameless scars
of recent construction (always
building, nothing built)
stand in disbelief.

Our thirst brings Jenny
and I to a Getränkeladen --
I sip on my first taste
of Apfelsaftschorle
as a roaring crowd
of local teens barge in,
with the violence of
a tornado we'd see in Xenia...
They speak in a crude,
indistinguishable slang
that Frau never could have
taught us
in room 322

Jenny hovers mindlessly
by the door-- contemplating
a bottle of Coca-Cola,
as the teenage stampede
shoves her off to the side--
fleeing out the door,
having bought nothing,
as the storekeeper sighs in disbelief.

They tore through
such a quaint little shop
with such an aimless recklessness,
one wouldn't think
a centuries-old castle
looms nonchalantly in the distance...

I was thirteen years old
and clueless--
Ben, who I believe is now
in juvie, and Ryan
stand on either side--
dumpy teenagers
in baggy clothes,
speaking in a crude,
brutal slang
that was invented in its usage.
We loitered every street
that would tolerate us,
in these exhausted Ohioan
suburbs, we tore through sidewalks
bearing unremarkable houses
in a sleepy neighborhood
with no grand castles nearby.

Our lazy strides, our ******
banter-- from Füssen, Germany,
to Who Cares, Ohio--
whether there's Neuschwanstein
or a Speedway to conquer,
there's never anything to do at home.

*So wie ist das Leben...

I am neither
a war trophy
and indulgence
nor a hobby.

Because I live in a country
where women are no longer
legal property of their husbands,
I am, as of current
unavailable for mail order
due to the radically progressive
notion, that took years decades centuries
to develop
that a human female is, as a matter
of fact, a human.

You can, for a vicarious experience
leer at me
like cheap jewelry
then, appalled, denounce me
as too ugly for your usage
when I give the implication
that I am sentient.
And of course, I must be modest
Lest my tantalizingly average looks
provoke some poor man
into committing a crime
against humanity.

I dated some glassy-eyed narcissist
a while back
in a regrettable period of youth,
who indulgently stated
that his three favorite things
in the world
were food, music
and women.
(Charmed to be a novelty)
And a privileged, modern woman like me
Shouldn’t mind being consumed
like a pain-staking meal prepared
especially for him,
Or replaced in his tri-annual rotation
like the discovery of a new favorite song.

I continue to be
a favorite
thing, as somehow in 2012
the term “feminist”
continues to be the social equivalent
of “kitten strangler.”
And because my father
can no longer sell me
for a flock of sheep,
I no longer need to be more human.

Sing the anthem of the lonley people, maybe we could find
eachother within a barren labyrinth
forged within our minds...
Say what you want, I still mutter your name
on these restless, silent nights, as I think I've forgotten your face...

It's a useless endeavor, to cure this void--
Born with a hole in my heart, I've stared like a ragged child
into vast and uncertain a universe
that will never hear my name, hopelessly trying
to learn its ways...

It's people like you and I, my friend, why seven billion isn't enough.
I've wandered to every corner, searched every stoic face
for an exception.
It's a loneliness that is incurable-- one that stares longingly out of windows,
stands silently in roaring crowds, sighs wistfully in empty rooms,
and weeps bitterly onto old bedsheets, watching and waiting as the world rushes by.

A sensitive creature-- every touch leaves a mark
you hide in the shadows, observing...
You see a world that frightens you, a world so stark--
the black and white shocking to your greyscale.

You run through the forests to clear your thoughts
running into Mother Nature's arms of soil
you forfeit the existence you've accumulated,
Screaming as your brain begins to boil, but

All I can say, is tell me what your eyes are seeing?
Don't throw away the thoughts you leave behind.
Tell me now, how this ugly world must look,
to your beautiful mind?

I used to think
that those who swept
their issues ‘under the
rug’ were weak
and lacked the maturity
to address their problems.

Now, thanks to you,
I think that that anyone
who disdains
sweeping anything
under the rug—
is just lucky
to never have had any
problem
immense enough
that if their mind slips
for a second long enough
to so much as think about it,
it makes their insides curl.

Bitterly
I miss the naiveté
of not understanding
the appeal of living
at the mercy of the timer
rather than tempting
the bomb.

Got tired of pretending that this worn pillow
could ever be the soft hollow of your shoulder
Stumbled over to the mirror to see how much life has faded
and the face staring back agrees with everything you said

A muted tongue drained from every word said to you
"I love you, why won't you look at me?"
Supressed into silence, and belittled into guilt,
"The little gifts in life are not for all to enjoy."

My most persistent friends
have become six hours of jetlag
and the fading buzz of airline coffee--
as black and unforgiving as our red-eye flight,
as we wander German streets-- Füssen,
where the air is always crisp
and graceful, even awkwardly emerging
from an ugly winter.
Neuschwanstein castle sits mockingly
in the horizon-- the locals pass it by,
as I, some baffled foreigner
from Nowhere, Ohio,
where the streets bear gas stations
and the shameless scars
of recent construction (always
building, nothing built)
stand in disbelief.

Our thirst brings Jenny
and I to a Getränkeladen --
I sip on my first taste
of Apfelsaftschorle
as a roaring crowd
of local teens barge in,
with the violence of
a tornado we'd see in Xenia...
They speak in a crude,
indistinguishable slang
that Frau never could have
taught us
in room 322

Jenny hovers mindlessly
by the door-- contemplating
a bottle of Coca-Cola,
as the teenage stampede
shoves her off to the side--
fleeing out the door,
having bought nothing,
as the storekeeper sighs in disbelief.

They tore through
such a quaint little shop
with such an aimless recklessness,
one wouldn't think
a centuries-old castle
looms nonchalantly in the distance...

I was thirteen years old
and clueless--
Ben, who I believe is now
in juvie, and Ryan
stand on either side--
dumpy teenagers
in baggy clothes,
speaking in a crude,
brutal slang
that was invented in its usage.
We loitered every street
that would tolerate us,
in these exhausted Ohioan
suburbs, we tore through sidewalks
bearing unremarkable houses
in a sleepy neighborhood
with no grand castles nearby.

Our lazy strides, our ******
banter-- from Füssen, Germany,
to Who Cares, Ohio--
whether there's Neuschwanstein
or a Speedway to conquer,
there's never anything to do at home.

*So wie ist das Leben...

In high school
we learn of logarithms, iambic meter
how to balance an equation between zinc oxide
and excess hydrogen gas--
only to find there was no reaction to begin with.

We're told colleges get to know you
through three letter acronyms-- ACT, SAT, GPA
And the students they want know everything
that they'll forget once they turn thirty.

Little do we realize
that if our Geometry teacher were to write an analysis
on the coexistence of good and evil in To **** a Mockingbird,
he would likley receive a "D" under the scrutinizing eye of
the honor's English teacher

Nor do we see that the art instructor would freeze in her tracks
faced with an assignment filled with the insufferable fate of
chemical stoiciometry

Socrates once said that the youth today
will be the demise of civilzation.
We contradict our parents, are smug in the face of authority
and tyrannize our teachers.
Funny he said this roughly 2,000 years ago--
I think my dad said something like that last year.

But, until the day we grow up to pay taxes
and marry someone we despise,
we're just stupid teenagers.

In high school
we learn of logarithms, iambic meter
how to balance an equation between zinc oxide
and excess hydrogen gas–
only to find there was no reaction to begin with.

We’re told that colleges get to know you
through three letter acronyms—ACT, SAT, GPA…
and our name is somewhere in the application.
It’s repeated to us to the point of meaninglessness,
like a perpetually chanted word:
Grades, scores and testing, testing, testing.
The students they want know everything
that will be forgotten by their thirtieth birthday.

I anticipate the day
that our Geometry teacher is to write an essay
on the individual’s struggle
against a systematically inhumane society
in Orwell’s 1984
only to receive a “D” under the scrutinizing eye of
the honor’s English teacher

Or, perhaps, the day someone in charge
is faced with some insufferable fate
the textbooks call chemical stoichiometry,
thirty years after repressing memories
of having to memorize the periodic table

Socrates once said that the youth today
will be the demise of civilization.
We contradict our parents, are smug in the face of authority
and tyrannize our poor teachers—
a youth who will ultimately leave behind a world
too damaged for our children to inherit.
Funny he said this
roughly 2,000 years ago–
I think my dad said something like that last year.

But, until the day we grow up to pay taxes
and marry someone we despise,
we’re just stupid teenagers.

The whole concept
of adulthood
is one that seems to
trespass
from the ever-anticipated world
of the theoretical,
just to barge into your life
one night
like an uninvited drunken friend.

It will never really “hit you,”
but it’ll come **** close
the first time your aunt
offers you a glass of wine
as she and your mother
gossip frankly about
your father’s mistress—
you sip on cheap Chardonnay
and pretend to be used to the taste,
as they talk
of the man you were raised
to believe
was too virtuous to be
in debt for some glitzy
engagement ring that he
bought to restart his life
with a woman he left your mother for
shortly after the pandemonium
of a guiltless affair.
The man
whose brutishness
you were told to overlook, cradling
the sparse memories
of when he’d tuck you
too tightly into bed, or
when he’d tell you that he loved you
even though half the time
you really didn’t believe him.
The man who brought you into
the world as carelessly
as he raised you to face it,
torn apart
like every illusion that makes a child,
the ashes of which
that slip through your fingers
inevitably declare you
another bitter adult.

More wine will reveal
that your beloved father
is a controlling ******
and his relationship
with that *****
the whole family hates
only appears to be functioning
because she lets him have
all the control
he couldn’t exert on your mother,
even though you’ve had dinner with them
a couple of times
and if you had met her
under any other circumstance (even though
you’d feel like a traitor if you said it aloud)
you wouldn’t think
she was all that bad.

In red, declarative letters
I want to write to any children
I may ever bring
into this ******-up little game that
goes by the name of “life,”
that when they first gaze with awe
at the unattainable grace
with which every grown-up seems
to be navigating the world they created,
with all the pain of tax-paying and womanhood,
I want to scream
that we don’t know what the hell we’re doing either
and if at any point I try to convince you otherwise
you should tell your mother
that she’s full of ****.

When even the darkest of hearts blaze afire
What more upon this Earth can we desire?
From the depths of our souls we aspire,
For there isn’t a single level higher
Than the notes sung from an angel’s lyre
A gift from the pallid wings of a sainted dove
A gift from out our lips and from our hearts,
That we all call “love”

They sent Daddy home
from suicide watch—
he was bound to lose it someday.
Mom locked up the
kitchen knives.
She comes back to me,
her quivering voice
delivers some deluded promise,

“He said he won’t hurt himself,
I’m just being safe.”

The house is still silent with absence,
he stares at the wall—
hidden in the basement
like the last twenty thirty years
of some void of a life,
guarded by an eggshell
cracked by decades of denial.

You aged ten years in a weekend, Daddy,
And I always feared I’d bury you
before I witnessed my first grey hair,
silver like the lining
of some magical cloud
I can’t seem to distinguish
in this homogenous fog, looming
in the bleak and inescapable sky
hovering over me
with careless indifference

I knew there’d be a day like this,
only now has it come true.
I knew you couldn’t love me, Daddy,
You never loved you, too.

The bitter chills of winter
Seem little more than a breeze
Within you

Silence of the waning day
Serenity of the cooling night
Warm breath on the nape of my neck
A warm soul in my armspan
Where scattered pieces of life
Become whole

The shining smile that I love
Not so much about the upturned lips,
on a beautiful face.
Rather, the light in your eyes
The glow.
How love within reaches out to your soul
and in its delicate voice
it whispers.
How it heals us so sore from the world,
With every whisper, every hint of light
Peace finds its way in our corner of the world.

I was an idle child, hiding silently
behind old curtains, concealing my gaze
to the rain-dampened street
that beckoned me beyond the window.

There was an unquenchable thirst, a burning,
Irrepressible drive, which had followed me
Whispering down the nape of my neck,
Provoking me, summoning me
To the uncertain depths
Of the flower-bearing forest.

It has followed me well into the age
Where the fancies of childhood
Are replaced
By *****, drunken nights—
hunting, scavenging, like some id-ridden
savage, for the fleeting taste of adventure
that was suppressed  with painful gratuity
as we grounded our souls, and our longings
into the confines of the world.

You smile at me
and somehow the world is serene
Somehow
the world forgets the debts I’ve left unpaid
Reality finds patience as he waits by the door
(Though I can only faintly hear the rapid knocking)
But he can wait for now
He doesn't know the light of your glow
Blind by his piercing, judging eyes
Oh, if only he could see

There’s an angel smiling at me.

You’re just the kind of person
some lost adolescent would go home
and write a ****** poem about
at 2am in hasty cursive
scribbled on stained notebook paper
wrinkled from careless handling, using your being
to bring some riddle of the subconscious
into an acknowledged existence— and then
destroy the evidence, rendering it
undiscoverable to humanity—like everything else
she ever kept
too embarrassingly close to her heart, because
when she was a little girl the adults in her life
told her that there certain parts of yourself
you always kept private
that are a no-no
to show to anyone, and those
perpetually invisible parts
are covered by your swimsuit and your stoic reserve,
the eggshell guarding your psyche—that if anyone
forces themselves in with enough effort, you’ll break
all over them
and stain their sacred feet
with your messy insides that never
seem to go back in
once you’ve released them,  which will
leave you eternally wishing
to retreat into that perfect little immaculate white shell,
undisturbed by your own humanity.

I deprive myself of glances
I would love to take of you, but that would mean
that at some point you would
grow suspicious and
perhaps conjure the ESP
I seem to think everyone has
whenever I have a secret about them I’d rather
they never figure out—but I have to admit,
you’re beautiful.
I wish there were words
precise enough to explain exactly how
I just ******* love
how you stare at the world
with a poet’s wistful empathy, peeking
discreetly through the one-way mirror
of well-guarded sensitivity,
eternally wearing a gaze reluctantly masked
with an adaptive weariness just
transparent enough to expose
brief silhouetted glances
of vulnerability.

You’re just the kind of person
I wish I had the courage
to let into
my psychological fortress
constructed with every accumulated brick
of accumulated cynicism
that materializes
from living in a world that
muffles every voice
it makes want to scream, even if
no matter how old I become I’ll
always be some lonely kid standing
outside of my own person, eternally yearning
for somewhere safe enough
to have a broken shell.