Maybe I am my own happening.
Maybe I am the beginning of the story,
before you walk in with your bad jokes
and your three years of silence
scattered across the turnpike.
I am trying to think about the moment
that I started crying, and I think it
was when I realized that all of my poems
were about you.
But maybe they weren’t.
Maybe I was just drawing you in between
the line breaks because I was lonely
and didn’t know how else to fill in the moments.
Maybe I am my own poem.
Maybe I am the reason my hands shake,
why I can’t say no to you even when
you aren’t asking me for anything.
Maybe I am the bad days.
Maybe I am my own sun.
Maybe I am in charge of my own undoing, of my own healing.
Who taught me to thank the ones
who didn’t want to stay?
Who taught me that you were something
to hurt about?
Maybe it was me.
I think it was.
Maybe I want to rest my tongue in
my own mouth and maybe I don’t
actually need anything from you.
I could be the moment it all started.
I could be responsible for the violins
in my throat, for the piano in
my teeth.
Maybe you were never the music in me.
Maybe I have always been singing.

One fine day
    About midnight
Two dead soldiers
    Got in a fight.
Back to back
    They faced each other.
Drew their swords
    And shot each other.
A deaf policeman
    Heard the noise.
Came out and
    Killed the two dead boys.
If you don't believe
    This lie it's true.
Ask the blindman
    He saw it too.

I'm so different then i was back then,
  I know you changed so much too.

But while you seem scared of me,
  I long to learn more about you.

I wish there was no you and me,
I wish it was us, to put it simply.

It was my fault without a doubt,
Even while you were quiet, I would scream and shout.

While we are quiet different you and I,
I never wanted to make you cry.

I feel so small for the things I said,
  These things are constantly running through my head.

While you were strong, I was weak,
  I moved on, loved another, and you couldn't sleep.

You have every reason to still be mad,
  There is nothing, that makes me more sad.

For I love you, and you did love me,
  For reasons I could never see.

Our lives have changed so much,
  I really tried to keep it touch.

The one I loved, and trusted so,
Couldn't ever let it go.

While it's my fault ultimately,
  Blinded, I couldn't see the forest through the trees.

Now I can see, and you don't care,
I will not quit trying to repair.

A friendship a love so important to me,
Your face, i still see in my dreams.

Because she wants to touch him,
she moves away.
Because she wants to talk to him,
she keeps silent.
Because she wants to kiss him,
she turns away
& kisses a man she does not want to kiss.

He watches
thinking she does not want him.
He listens
hearing her silence.
He turns away
thinking her distant
& kisses a girl he does not want to kiss.

They marry each other--
a four-way mistake.
He goes to bed with his wife
thinking of her.
She goes to bed with her husband
thinking of him.
--& all this in a real old-fashioned four-poster bed.

Do they live unhappily ever after?
Of course.
Do they undo their mistakes ever?
Never.
Who is the victim here?
Love is the victim.
Who is the villain?
Love that never dies.

There’s a man with a hole
that goes straight through his soul
and it’s open for all to see.

Just ask and he’ll tell
every joy, every hell,
and how it all came to be.

He will tell you unbidden;
no secret is hidden;
and he’ll speak with a gleam in his eyes

But he hides in the shells
of the stories he tells;
each story a cunning disguise.

It’s easy to heal
when all that you feel
is bared like a page in a book,

but the depth of a hole
in a broken man’s soul
depends on how deeply you look.

Each story’s a mask
with the ultimate task
of hiding the tears at the seams.

Tears in the heart
are bad for a start
but there’s nothing like tears in your dreams.