I am a collection
of half-watched movies

End yet to-be-determined
Stuck in the middle bits

An unfinished  biography
of a life put on-pause

The characters have no future
Just like I have no future

My library remains full
An over-whelming archive

When will the master
finish the piece?

The follow through
is the most important part

The neurotic longs to discover
the treasure at the end of it all

Though sometimes the final destination
is only death or tragedy

Only pain and no closure
And nothing meaning anything

And maybe the movies are
half-finished because

I already know
I'll be disappointed in the ending.

Lips gummy and dull
as they part
If sound comes out
you are the only one hears it
Back arched forward
as if it is not enough to be tall
You must loom over
Close to others
but still above
Thick sweet smell-
that cologne no one likes
just because you wear it,
and have worn it out
Room of only one-
two including you-
and yet
Beady eyes gaze pointedly
around the space
An imaginary audience
must hold on to every word
Scene not new
So you say,
you've said a thousand times
The room learns to place it
as background noise
Do you know no one listens?

clever girl-
you jumped through hoops
and look where you are
on the edge of escape
yet still trapped between
responsibilities like the ant
in my window
you are pinned
though you have flown for miles,
stuck between the mountains of
heartache and disappointment
and have the scars to prove it,
you do not know
what the finish line looks like
you can no longer mindlessly climb
with nowhere to go
there are things blocking your path
they disguise themselves as
victories
and here you are
hanging over the boiling ***
and the chains are melting
you have already escaped once
can you do it again,
clever girl

This memory keeps coming back-
us under the dining table,
our knobby knees banging together
as we whisper secrets in each other's ears
and giggle about how sneaky
we think we are being
I don't know how many of us there were-
maybe five-
our prepubescent girl bodies
hunched beneath the wood,
digging our toes into the carpet
We were neighbors,
adventuring friends
the kind of pushed-together pals
that didn't know the nitty-gritty;
the most deepest of secrets about each other
But now we shared one
I can't remember if we all kissed
or just paired up
but I'm pretty sure we never talked about it again
Shelby had said it was just practice
Erin claimed she had already done it with another friend
Let's just try it
I don't mark this moment as the one where I knew
because I didn't
but I'll always remember the way the
giggling sounded in my ear
and how the teasing that came later
stung a little too much
It had nothing to do with s*x
we were innocent children
playing kiss the girl
and my heart was happy to be with them
It wasn't even a crush
It wasn't a describable feeling
but something felt right
I always come back to that memory.