three figures standing at the riverbank, blank and still as that cloudy day. breeze less and boring.
I've counted twelve summers since.
you were long and high as the trees meeting mountain tops. a world awake and new, your eyes shining in the sun and your hair like a halo.
I couldn't recognize you without that mask. freckles dating back as far as blood and bone.
you formed in the womb then, the pieces you would always keep.
my greatest achievement was waiting.
you never came but I never stopped. my dreams locked you out. where is our safe word?
buried there deep below the rocks, water rushing too fast over top to ever recover. my balance, my head, your conscience.

I no longer remember
the number of freckles on your shoulders
the shape and place of every mole.
I no longer remember
your lips in longing
or *** twice in one day.
I no longer remember
my soul
bound by nothing
lying awake alone
eyes closed tightly on an
ice cold January morning.

the best and worst days--
the cold air that steals october away
the leaves on the ground
getting swallowed up by the earth.
spring's first song. that old bluebird
that never left for winter.
the mountains we have crossed
and built.
my mind, filled with dark things,
things that spill out and cover my words.
years before you.
when love was a war that you don't come back from--
i still carry the stones that were placed on my eyes.
washed up on the riverbed,
i pushed the water from my lungs,
and pulled myself up onto brittle bones.

a warrior,
right as rain, the sun rising on the first day of summer.
my eyes formed of light, what no one can steal.
the world has worn against me,
some days i forget the sharp edges, and
so i love.
i cry, and i speak, and i show you
every part. until it hurts.
i search for bricks and stones and
anything
to keep me safe. locked away,
where light cannot even reach me--
where the black night grows so big,
so heavy,
that your eyes, the sun, are nowhere to be seen.

i see her face
there are lines now-
i am missing years.
i know her hands, her hair
her knees and teeth
but she is not me.

days fall from the calendar and i am
stuck here
waiting, watching for her
wondering if she will resurface

i wrap my hands around my own wrists
but they are not mine
i bend with the same knees
but they are not mine
i eat with the same mouth
but it is not mine.

can you find her?
i think the red painted over her-
the searing hot pain in her gut
swallowed her whole.

our lives, a series of events. it is as if two small apples had fallen from the same tree.
and there they lie, their guts spilled out onto the lawn. birds making holes to take what is left
before winter comes and goes again.

and what is,
what has been and what could be
mean nothing.


i held your hand like it was my last day on earth. but you'd never have known. walking through the forest,
the trails winding and branches breaking around us, i felt content for a fraction of a second.
the sun's beams like a halo above you. every freckle on your shoulder knowing it's place, it's purpose.
and here was i, standing lowly in your presence.
all of the times i had tripped over my own two feet
or my words, every time i had been late for the train,
the time i ruined your sweaters in the wash, or
the many hours i'd spent writing books i never finished
when i could have spent the time with you,

the light painted over me, and your eyes saw something clean.



hurrying along on the street, rain falling into the spaces between your legs
and rainboots.
once we made it inside, i realized
i had held the umbrella only a half an inch too far from you and your ear was cold and wet.
but you never said a word.



everyone says i cannot freeze you there like that in my mind. that the bad must outweigh the good.
that you must be a demon who was sent disguised as clouds and lovely things. but if you were then it stuck.
and whoever sent you did a **** good job.
everyone says that i need to go back to the day i first saw you and stop there
and just
remember
the times before i knew you.
but your words are too strong to forget and every time i walk by the flower stand on the street
i see your favorite colors and i see the crown that you made and
placed in your hair the day that we were both so sure we wanted this.
this, together.


my brain splits you up into all of these pieces and i can't gather
the ones that have been spread by the summer's breeze, or the ocean's waves
or the ones carried away on the wings of night's fireflies.
if i could only capture them all
like a still life photograph stuck in a jar
maybe i could come unstuck from you
and piece you together in an entirely new fashion,
painting you like the devil that you are
(or must be).


even just this morning i made a point to be on time for the train
because i knew that you would be so proud.
and like some unspoken prayer or a letter written but never sent
i wished so long and hopelessly that you could know.
but the day is over now and you won't
you won't leave the note on my door that i've longed to read
you won't call. you won't ask a friend how i've been.
so i've bought these brushes and pens and paints and ink
to try so hard to draw what i could never see

as i stand here looking at the last picture i have left of you
i hear these words so clear in my head
"take a picture before i paint over her. she is beautiful, she was everything."

and i wish that i could but i can't. because you're not here and my hands are too broken
to fix the old camera i used to photograph you standing in the rosebush by the lake,
thorns in your knees and red petals in your hair.

But we do look back
Don’t we?
I miss the ache I felt then
Nothing like the ache I feel now.
Can you replace my bones with scars?

i would burn the whole sky to keep you.
capture the moon and cage it
using the light as a torch to find your eyes
glowing like stars in the black days that surround you.

the earth sways in winds
to which i have lost my mind and
all of my possessions
tides pull me from my sleep and
i can think of nothing else.
a dream of you carries me somewhere else.
to a place where the sun rises and never falls,
where my eyes never need rest,
the dark never captures me again.

your lips are like the gods.
storm born. raging. your eyes created from the longest of winters.
filled with heat that
no
mortal
man
could ever keep. it bellows down inside of you. beckoning, swollen
up with flies from last nights ****.

this world gives you nothing.

my body is a temple. --
but not for god or for you.
the hair it grows,
the winters it has spent shaking
the lies it tells me. --
all of this is mine.
your hands may touch my hands,
but they are not yours.
my body is a war. --
filled with roads for which i have no map,
and rivers that drown me again and again.

mother earth,
we have stolen so much from you- too much.
we have taken your trees, your mountain tops,
your moss covered rocks, your rivers and streams.
i know the tears you shed- i shed them too (for my home),
i know how desperate you are to repair- to rebuild,
and i wish that i could lay my hands upon you.
i wish that i could heal you all by myself.

the drugs they gave didn't cure our brains.
it's after midnight and i'm still thinking of you.
sick and sad, lost on the other side of town.
streetlights caress your hair
shadows steal your eyes away.

the sweetest lips, i remember.
i'll stay on the safe side tonight.

and just like the evergreen in winter,
i will droop and slump down into myself
waiting for winter to go.
i will remain among the living,
barely in bloom
so many of my leaves scattered at my feet
but enough remaining
to keep me breathing,
my eyes ever watching, waiting
for the first sign of spring.

oh, Apollo,

here i'll stay, standing straight and tall
arms out-stretched, reaching,
watching the day break over the mountains,
the moon arise from the sea at night,
and when the rain comes, it falls cold upon my face
and collects in my hands until it spills out upon my feet.

you lay your hands upon me.
your eyes burn right through my bones.
but every new day
you harness what you cannot keep,
gold. forever gold.
hold the reins as if they were my arms,
until, rain soaked, your hands slip away
and you fall,
writhing and wishing
for prayers unheard.

still i'll stay just the way you left me
until the earth washes from beneath me,
and i fall and rot away.

your braided sandal curls
black as your eyes on a
cold december morning.

peacemaker. promise keeper.
a weight lifted.
you cannot save everyone.

how does it feel
when someone loves every
little
piece
of you?
even the broken parts.

the black night steals you away
and keeps you like leaves clinging to life
on an october morning.
your eyes, heavy and blue.
i trace the lines on your face from
last night's celebration.

you said
maybe i drink too much or not enough.
afterall,
there is no second course
in the art of forgetting.

the feeling you get
when the high becomes low.
like someone is stealing the air from your lungs
and your chest caves in.
no love, no hope.

where is my resurrection?

i stood by the shore
looking out into the sky
birds flying, clouds rushing past
and then i saw you
struggling, falling
your arms flailing, your wings burning
i ran out into the water and reached for you
your lifeless body floated toward me
the waves washing over you
your lungs filled with salt and sand,
wax fused with skin and bone.

i carried you back to land and closed your eyes.
Apollo's great sun now setting, glowing gold upon your face.
i cried, and whispered, "you made it.
those walls are no longer your home."

it's almost 2am.
these pictures are helping me remember
the bitter cold,
the snow in west virginia.
the scarves you made,
the silver necklaces you wore.

the heart i left.
and the wings i broke.

how young we were then.
what little we knew then
about living, about loving.
most of all about letting go.

sleepy hollow's ophelia
sliding down easy into that dark water
living in light is easy but
loving in hell is hard.
you hold the devil's eyes,
bind his hands behind his back.
righteous queen of night
your whispers shake apart
the entire universe inside of me.

of course you will hurt me.

when i am sitting alone in the quiet
and thinking of the times i have bared my soul
i know there was never a question.

you have your own bones, and lungs and heartbeat.
you have your own ideas about love. about life.
while i am "getting by"
so are you.

the stars whirled and rose up to meet her. created galaxies for her. constellations holding hostage the clouds.
all her life mapped out among oceans and the whales carry horns on their noses to write her name in the sand.

but she is dangerously human.

born into a world that feels. with trees that breathe. wild oak and birch filled with bees and knotted leaves. a forest imagined. left to become.

love death as if he were the most beautiful creature
stone shaped eyes stained blue and lips like sand.
his starlit body washing up on the shore.

love him as if he will never return.

a nice companion,
the queen of forgetting.

the earth bruised your fragile heart.
i know you mean well but
waking this part of me
will destroy us both.

the day
i raised her
in sunlight and shadow
colors mixing on her lips

you reach out your hands
scooping up the sand from this
burial mound
falling slowly from the cracks
between your fingers,
my former life piled high around your ankles.

god is dead and i'm still breathing.
you lied and i stole.
the world was not what i imagined. you painted pictures and i fell for everything.
young, wide-eyed, afraid,
you preached about green eyes and love that wasn't
yours to give, but you
gave it anyway.

the same songs still ring in my ears.

once whole, you split me into
something i cannot recognize.

the world is one huge heart. spilling over full of blood. the worst parts are black and wretched. a transplant must be imminent.

if only I could pretend its spring. the sun shines and I feel nothing.  barely. breathing but it's the pills. they keep me but not up or down. they just keep me. sometimes I smile with you. your eyes as bright as dead stars.
a lot of who I was pools up until I can't stop. wishing and aching. feeling and burning. the world stops for no one. not the trees or the big blue ocean. forget the waves, I'm here.

how are you sitting so lonely
on the other end of town

the trees sway in the spring breeze
constellations blotted out by the tower lights

we met and walked apart
two left feet and nowhere to go
combing beaches, sand in our hair and hands

i am the dirt beneath your nails you can't get out
the lie, the pool of red in the corner of your eyes
from spending too many nights awake

all of the parts of her that i can never be
my karma. sealed fate. i did this to myself. planted seeds i couldn't dig up. you say you love me but

things will never be the same now. five years rewound. fingers chasing after the old me. grasping in the dark for who i was before you. and you. and you.

"now i cannot lie in that bed."

i wish that my bones were made of glass
so that you could see my heart
filled with only good intentions.

winter is slowly killing me.

summer, bring my heart back in one piece.

what you hide and what you can't. the girl in the dark, the girl who calls out but hears nothing.

wringing her hands, consumed in the future-
what may come to pass or won't at all.

there is a piece lost, and i am looking in at a stranger. who has these eyes, who stole my lips and tongue?

i ran from you until my legs burst open.
i made it. but i can't run from this
this feeling of twenty nine hundred hands pinning me down
one for every shame, one for every guilt, one for every word i spoke in anger.
the blame carried across every plane of right and wrong.

oh what the world could've been without me.

i remember a smile that wasn't mine
the time and consequence borrowed,
what i can never return.

i hear your voice in every
winter thunderstorm
reminding me that
you are the endless summer-
a tree with leaves that never
hide away,
the orange sunrise flower that never wilts.

on this,
the coldest day on the east coast
i have stolen sunlight
to keep tucked away
to replace the aching in my bones.

the fire, the burn that won't heal
the rain pouring down so hard it stings
the weight of a mistake that felt right in the moment
the first time we touched
the last time you saw me cry
the one thing you want but can't keep
the summer that never ends.

the reason to write again
the reminder that every single thing
that you had never intended
will fall in your lap and cling to you
until you tremble for days and start losing sleep.

how blind you are in the beginning,
how much you wish, and want, and ache for their hands.

in the forest
my heart hangs heavy away from you
the light pushing it toward all four corners
of the earth
your hands reach out
but it hangs, motionless

who am i to say that this will end?

i have searched through ashes
of lovers long burned
i have reopened boxes
that time forgot.

the day you stood by the road
with stones in your hands
december, maybe
tucked between two mountains
branches bare and snow falling
your eyes as blue as the sea.

i felt so much then. so much that it all feels empty now.
the cavern inside me covered up by darkness,
the
long
black
night.
loving you was my only trophy. the real blazing, burning hot as the sun kind of love. wasting away in bed all day just to touch you.

i can't reach you now.

blessed are those who inherit the earth.--

your black eyes put the fear of gods in me.
i've lost fingertips trying to rip you out.
you stand so tall like the moon, your light-- borrowed
from the sun.
i'm saving my breath for that day. the stars say to run.
you pull shadows behind you, longer than the love
i've had for you.
my bones ache and crack.
you took everything.
my body can never be mine again.

blessed are those who lie with their lungs and love through their teeth.

what separates my bones from the sea
shells break with every crashing wave
tiny lives destroyed and swept out
never to be seen again.

you said, "that's the way of it."

at night my mind spirals
thoughts as loud as wolves protecting their young.

the sun is out but i'm afraid again.
afraid of who i've been.
my past plays in my ear like a broken record
stuck on one note, then moving on
and back around again.

i carried you in my heart.
tucked away in the darkest corner.
i kept you there
even after i broke you,
i collected your pieces
and pushed them into my skin
so that i would never forget.

how can my fingertips retrace my dreams?
i want to be someone different now
someone brave, glowing gold but dark as midnight
a girl hidden away, an impenetrable soul

no one can touch me now. no one can hurt me now.

when you wake at noon
i watch your slow movements - your veins traced by sunlight.
the veil of night lifted from your tired eyes.
the open window reminds us of summer's end,
and the inevitable.

i loved you by the river,
your hair pressed into the rain-soaked sand and dead leaves.
caught up in the morning's faintest glow. the firefly lit evening.
of all my spinning thoughts, swirling and dying;
there was you.
my hand on your knee, i kissed you at the traffic stop.
you are blue and red all at once. both winter and summer.
a gift given in secret, tucked away into hollowed bones.

dance together in a black and white world
where stars scorch the sky when we make love
your bony fingers weaved through my hair
your name held on my tongue.

i loved you all those years ago
like the winter loved the spring

i held your hands, heavier then,
braver then.
your eyes told stories i couldn't breathe in
for fear that the cold would never go.

you were
the calm before the storm unseen
the window never noticed
the lights shut off in time to hide
and what i knew i didn't need.

I am not ashamed.
I have survived the long, slow torment,
the only hell that is real,
the one that hijacks your mind,
steals away every thing that you love
and magnifies all of your fears innumerably.
I will not lie or hide myself away to appease you.
But instead, while you are judging me, too afraid to acknowledge your own darkness
I will have the courage to try again tomorrow.

when you are gone from me
i miss you as i miss the sun
setting too soon on a winter day
when you leave
and i am alone
i miss you as i miss the spring
and wonder if you will return

i collect
pieces of you to be remind me
that even when my bones
are racked with cold
you will return
and we will laugh
and touch lips
until i forget
that the sun ever sets.

the vessel.
your wings scorched upon the ground.
fallen, your ship pulled under,
into blackened seas, salt rich waters.
you lie on the shore. bound to a place that you can
never return.
grace hanging from your neck.
eyes glowing like starlight flowers.
you see the days pass. every one, numbered-
bathed in blood and light.
blink and an entire century is gone.

i have loved you as long as the night.
until the moon fell and grazed your lips.
break my body and take me with you.
let me lie beside you,
bones shaped by the waves,
sand formed into my knees.

forever watching the skies, sweet cassiel.

i can never be
what i could be
when i can't look at me
without wanting to tear my skin off.

ten years
you stole and you lied.
it's too late.
winter came and i never called.
what do you remember.
you were never real.

you carry the world, don't you? can't i lift you up just this once?

I was having an out of body experience last week and I asked Barbara to fetch me a glass of water and she fainted. She said that my lips were colorless and that she saw this bright light shining above me. I don't know too much about all that, but I might guess that I was dead for a minute or so. How can you ever be sure though?

I met Barbara back when I lived on 5th street and we were both into a lot of experimental drugs. It was a dark time. I feel like she's alright, you know? I've grown rather fond of her, anyway. She says she's been sober for a couple of years now. I guess she could've made the whole "out of body" thing up, but I remember feeling really off later that night. I didn't sleep for two days.

On Saturday we dropped acid for the first time in a long time and watched Nosferatu in the loft. I've felt partially responsible for her abandoning her sobriety. Lately it feels like I've been losing time. There are hours that I can't account for. That could all be in my head though.

you are the blood of everyone i have ever loved. my eyes cut you open until it all spills out and covers me. my teeth on my hands and i can taste everything. the first day we met and the first time you kissed me.  you talk until my face doesn't exist. you talk until i mean nothing. i forget. i forgive. i become so small that you cannot hear my voice. i speak but the words are softened, covered by broken things. my bones break through my throat and every part of me fall out across the floor--
pieces that have no place
that have no home
i crawl across the floor and reach for you
but you are gone.

some silent part of me
thinks by winter i'll be dead
lying still with all the leaves that summer left.
what i can't stand is the colder weather
soaking deep into my bones
stealing all the light i've saved.

i'll place the blame on me for wasting all of it.
every sunlit ocean morning. every crashing wave.
because i was too afraid to dance.
because i was too afraid to breathe
..too afraid of you loving (losing) you.

i missed the falling stars. the bare skin. the walking home.
the pavement hot as hell in late june.
i believed in the infinite heat. the sun never setting.
the world never forgetting. and giving up on me.