Darling I'm not the same as I was back then,
I thought comets and stars were things in the sky
Until I looked around one day to find
That they're in as many people
As they are in my mind

No one is really ever the same, you see
Everything changes you and me
Every thought and action we do will lead
Into another alternate reality.

What if we turned left instead of right that one day?
Would we have met with early demise?
Or would we have gotten that job we had hoped to find?

See these are the things that are constantly on my mind
For I can't help but contemplate how the stars align
To bring us closer together or further apart
Or weather or not you see someone's true heart.

I guess it's a difficult concept for some to grasp
I mean even I am having a momentary lapse of reason

I guess that's just part of being human
Thinking about what's bigger about us
Or what could bring our downfall

So many of us just sit and contemplate what it means to be in this body
And the longer we think about it the more uncomfortable we become with ourselves

Because with how our world works if you're not a size zero through nine you're not worth the time of the males searching for mates.

Or if the muscles in your stomach don't look like a six-pack then you're not a very good looking male in the first place.

But if you sit and think about how to make this world crumble
You'll see how everyone thinks they're nothing.
But if you tell a girl or guy they're made of stardust and clear skies
They'll laugh and call you a dreamer.

Maybe I am,
Or maybe that's what poets are
Dreamers who think the world is pretty terrible
So they string lines together to create a scenario to help others see the bigger picture

That everyone is made from stardust.
That everyone is beautiful.

I remember overhearing at the tennis game
  "I always take painkillers, I can't seem to get
                 the doctor to prescribe anything else
            and I never sleep, and so with my morning
              coffee, I slip some liquor in it
                      and take some Anadin, as simple as that."
      I sat and listened. Just in earshot.
            "It just calms me down and sets me off for the day."
              I see her take out a flask.
               Opening the lid she breathes in.
             "And days like this," she giggles.
         "I bring extra."
     Both the women now giggle
             I smile
              maybe this will work for me.

                    That night I went home and straight
                       to the medicine cabinet
                they sold paracetamol in tubs of hundreds
                   I was only 14
                   I'd only take a handful at a time
         not enough to harm me
                    little enough to go unnoticed
                         I felt the rush even before I took them
                         I still have the journal from that time
                   an off-balance teenager who never fit in
                         a longing for freedom so deep
                      maybe this could give me the wings
                             to fly.

© Sia Jane

*** teaser
people pleaser

mind reader
secret keeper

man leaper
grim reaper

floor creeper
little sleeper

lately happiness seems to come and go
like a lover who bores easily
as i don't offer them enough to stay
while the depression always returns
like an abuser, it's fists made of ravage fire
masquerading loyalty and love i know is insincere

My mind keeps pictures of you up on its walls
                            again
                         ­         and again
I find my thoughts drifting down that river of memory
orbiting around you, like forces of gravity drawn
to the idea of us (if there even is an us)

If I could then I’d lock you outside my brain, leave you out there to rot
in the abyss, where your words couldn't penetrate me
and your lips that work like anesthesia forbidden to numb me again

I won't do you the injustice of romanticizing your imperfections
You're no nebular, you're a black hole, a gaping flaw in creation
Your eyes that held millenniums of history, now hold me no future

You made me forget what it feels to have stability
To not walk out of a room and forget why I left
You make me want to shred the skin you touched
Like a reptile, to become reborn, purified from my past.

There never were any butterflies in your stomach, only parasites
but you fed them to me readily like a disease

So no, I won’t dedicate you another love poem
                 no I want (deserve) better
This isn't what love should be
I’ll write you a poem where the words convulse on the page
and you’ll forget to read it (you always do)

and i am eleven again
feeling like tomorrow
is a couple yesterday's ago
smothered in cayenne pepper
hot enough to take off taste buds
and tonight i am eating a meal
only worth burning
it tastes like my parents anniversary
it tastes like a zinfandel
left on the counter too long
it's a bad story, see
there's no silverware
'cause my mom sold it
to keep the lights on
and somewhere in heaven
somebody in a suit
doing commentary
on this fiasco
is telling someone else
in a suit that
"you have to eat love with your hands"
so we sit, four plates on the table
for the two of us
my brother's long gone
dad's even further away
& he's not the one who's buried
i carry both their names like anchors
that i cannot unmoor from
while she looks at the empty table
and says something about the news
she says something else
but she's not talking
we aren't proud of this, see
my dad likes to wax his car
he's proud of it
and my mom says
she sees a lot of him in my hands
says, i touch the things i find
like they didn't belong
to people sleeping in the ground
she says i touch photo albums
the same way-
you know,
i never used to believe
that history could repeat itself
not until i could
fast forward seventeen years
and still wake up to smoke alarms
how i would go into our kitchen
to find it empty
and the dinner smoldering
& my mother in her bedroom
looking through family photos
like it's a just another summer day
and the sirens are just the birds
i don't ask, i never say a word
in this moment
i am an archeologist
afraid to dig up the past
cause history repeats itself-
you see
my brother is dead
and my father is gone
they have been for some years now
and my mother
sometimes forgets
and sets their place at the table
like they're still here
and in the confusion
ends up ankle deep
in pictures of how it used to be
she let's dinner burn
and douses it in red pepper
hoping i won't know the difference