When I first met you your light changed me,
         this girl bursting with energy
                                                   communing with nature
                                                                                    and bleeding poetry.
I felt alive when talking to you,
                 comparing your serene coolness to my cheap imitation
                                                                                 must have looked foolish,
but it was innocent and lovely.

Right about then you threw up in my room.

Everything I learned about you just sparked more desires.
      I caught myself writing poetry to your praise
                                                  and leaping at you with blinders on to anything that I didn’t care for.
Your smile evolved from what I first felt was charming
                                                                                   into something deadly and seductive.
You gave me chills and left me
      gasping
            for
              air.

We ****** but you hated when I called it that,
      you used cutesy words and danced around all of my advances.

We ran out of small talk questions as time rolled on,
       settling into philosophy
               and debates about how people are alike and different.
We took turns falling into the pessimist role and donning the cloak of the eternal optimist,
         I was always better at the former.
I caught a glimpse of the shadow cast hiding behind your shining light.
            Being that it was a part of you it naturally interested me,
                    and I pressed you for more and more.

You drank yourself unconscious at a party and I held you in my arms.
        I nursed you back to health and we “fricked” for the entire night.
I didn’t even care that you smelled like puke.

We filled in the blanks trading blows of what we considered our darkest secrets.
          Yours always won and they made me see you in a new light,
                   almost as this delicate beauty majestically growing in a dark void.
I understood you better, and I almost wished I didn’t.

“Sure I can bring some over,
                 I’m just glad to see you.
     How have you been?  
          No I don’t have anymore.
                 Yeah I’ll leave.”

I started to hear the same stories;
                     I still laughed at your energy and enthusiasm in telling them.
    I saw you less and less and when I did you seemed different,
              like you were just donning some mask, playing a part just for me
. That’s when I first noticed the split in you.
       The tired lines stretching from your cheeks
                                                              holding up that delicate smile,
               I was determined to erase them.

You still banged me from time to time.
     So like a pilgrim to a holy land I kept showing up
            bringing alcoholic offerings as a sign of good faith.
We never talked about poetry anymore,
       but I didn’t mind.
We hid in your basement and ******* about the world,
             until the beer ran out, or you passed out and I left.

Your eyes hurt me then.
    What I once saw as a mirror like shine filled in,
              and now seemed glassy and shallow.
I started drawing when we hung out to have an excuse not to stare into them anymore.
        Life raged on and it seemed like the waves were slowly eating away the girl I knew.

I realized that I was your fix.
       When I called you on it you laughed and seemed surprised it took me this long to get it,
I didn’t stop coming,
    it actually felt good to get rid of the pretense,
           it was like a show, watching you drink away your soul.
Some friend I am. At least I wasn’t a drunk I told myself.

As your life spiraled downwards from your addiction it brought you to a lot of painful places.
        Places with bars and handcuffs,
                  places with straps,
                         places with tubes connecting your tiny frame to big machines.
I wasn’t there to see you in those places, I couldn’t.

I started yelling at you,
       trying to wake you up from the slumber you seemed content to stumble around in. 
 I lectured you and watched as you let it flow right past.
          I called you on your lies and refused to be your delivery service.
I hoped it wasn’t too late.

I want to see that girl who bleeds poetry again,*

And I’ll wear my best suit to your grave.

Sweet, be not proud of those two eyes
Which starlike sparkle in their skies;
Nor be you proud that you can see
All hearts your captives, yours yet free;
Be you not proud of that rich hair
Which wantons with the love-sick air;
Whenas that ruby which you wear,
Sunk from the tip of your soft ear,
Will last to be a precious stone
When all your world of beauty’s gone.

I just, want you here, just like this.
Hell, what can i say,It's always been this way.
we connect randomly.(is this seat taken?)
break off.(stupid boy|girl segregation)
diverge. (across bus aisles)
recconnect. (hugs before you leave, subtle smiles)
risk.(hopped, hid, rode again in my seat those last few miles) .
create boundaries.(best friend, I'm with her, you're with him)
overstep(i daydream of you...)
overstep.(i dreamed of you last night...)
overstep (i dreamed of you last night again...)
recreate.(i ignore you when you speak, what was that last thing you said?)
walk on blind faith, a little too quickly.(we took two days to talk this over, two weeks to get into bed)
remember we are friends amidst all this ( i did)
and suddenly all the feelings, (or thoughts spinning in my head)
the ones that are thretening to surge freely through me, (undo me)
no restraint, (undid)
threating to take over my actions, my heart, my affections (am i mislead?)
(theyve already strangled my reason)(I'm brainless, because of you, undead)
experience a subtle but calming shift( smootheeee like thisssss)
when i remember(what we said)
I suddenly understand(this isn't wonderland)
why it is I don't want to leave(friends fight, we are friends)
you mean so much more to me(than i could even begin to express)
than emotions high arguing and a dozennn days ive cried( they are nothing compared to it)
you are my friend, (im beginning to think best)
and well, i just... i want you here, (just like this)

November in Quebec.
Almost winter, dull wet snow
And clothing never warm enough
To keep the dampness out.
Nothing like Dallas it seems
Where, even though the television says it’s cool,
She wears a light-weight suit of pink and navy blue
And matching pillbox hat.

November in Quebec.
On a day that seems to go from grey to grey
And grey all in between,
We sit in heated classrooms
With the first damp smell of mothballed wool,
While black and white New England nuns,
Banished for their sins to northern, foreign cold,
Talk about their hero (and now ours)
As if he were alive:
Alive enough to step up from the grave,
Alive enough to kiss the snow-white blonde,
Who squeezed into a dress that shone like freezing rain
The night she sang her birthday tune.
I watch for tears from the widow’s blank-stare eyes:
They don’t show through the sheer black veil
That drapes her pillbox hat.

It’s ’64 and winter in Quebec.
The ground’s so hard
That grandma has to wait for spring to lie down in the ground.
I think of her as if she were alive:
I feel her hold my feet again,
I see her smiling at the door.
On this sad and sunny day,
In my grey wool coat and matching pillbox hat,
I watch a dark brown box get rolled away.
Looking down at the new white snow and my new red boots
I blink and blink and squeeze my frozen tears behind my blank-stare eyes  
And think I might be Jackie.

Who said that love was fire?
I know that love is ash.
It is the thing which remains
When the fire is spent,
The holy essence of experience.

With graceful strategy the circling hawk
Whips my circling sorrow to dive and strike;
Indiscrete for action the poison oak
Thrusts up her flushed face for attack
Lizards and herbs and flowers admonish me,
Strict in their innocence: I am cowardly,
Nor will the mourning-dove condone my fault
Who ******* all hazard for a humble scrap
And when she coos courts punishment. My guilt
Is obvious, and I cannot escape.

Every year at Christmas
The tree goes by the wall
I drag the **** thing from downstairs
And I tug it down the hall
The lights go up with tinsel
The ornaments and star
Then I go downstairs and knock one back
Behind my little two tap bar

I've done it now for forty years
Each year, the tree and lights
The tinsel and the ornaments
To brighten up the nights
The cards I get go on the wall
No baking do I do
I go downstairs and have a drink
Sometimes I might have two

The kids, not here, they have their lives
I get a call on Christmas Day
It's far to far to come out here
And there's just no room to stay
The boys have hockey, the girls as well
So they won't be coming soon
They play their first game at three
So I get their phone call right at noon

I put my little Cornish hen
In the oven for my meal
I've got some frozen veggies
And a Christmas ******* for the "feel"
I sit alone at Christmas
I watch the telly, have a beer
It's not the same with out you
It's not Christmas, you're not here

Still every year the tree comes out
I put it where you'd say
We'd move it at least fifteen times
Until it found a place to stay
I drag the decorations out
I've not yet bought something new
I'm here alone at Christmas
With my memories spent with you.

I love the way you look in the moonlight that filters in through the window
(I love the simple fact that you are here with me in the moonlight)

Your hair smells amazing
(I inhale you every chance I get in every state you are in and hold it in my lungs because I want it to intoxicate me)

Your hair looks fantastic
(it floats downward from the top of your brilliant mind and cascades like your thoughts, pours like your words in our half-drunk midnight conversations)

Your smile is so pretty
(when you smile at me it lights me up and makes me feel, if even for an instant in this time of my life that is so shambled and broken, whole)

Can I have a hug?
(hold me, embrace me, envelope me, if only to let me know you are real)

Let’s go to bed
(where I can confuse physical love with emotional, take refuge in confirming our relationship with *** because it’s easier than risking my whole trust, easier than leaving myself bare before you with the certainty that one day, eventually, you will tear my heart out and crush it)

No, that’s ridiculous. Why would you say that?
(I’m terrified that you know me so well)

I don’t think I can make it tonight
(I’m terrified that you know me so well)

Can’t we talk?
(I get it, you backed away because I did but I’m going to blame you because I can’t blame myself, don’t you see? Can’t you see how utterly self-absorbed I am but also woefully lacking self-confidence? I refuse to share any of this with you, I can’t let you know it but if you saw it I’d acknowledge it, at least I think I will, and you know me so well so why can’t you see it)

I don’t think we should see each other anymore
(please, please, please make me realize how utterly foolish I am. Please slap me and scream at me)

Say something
(your total lack of reaction destroys me more than anything)

You look really pretty
(so beautiful, majestic, magnificent and I love you. I love the tears I have made you cry so silently and I hate myself so much for this moment because of that. I love you and only now as you walk away do I realize it)

Fine. Go.
(the ease with which you leave is painful and will linger for years)

…
(Please stop walking, please. I was wrong. Please.)