for those nights when i shattered at my wrists  
looking up at apathetic skies
blinding sunshine moonshine
stars matching the layout of
the cones in my pupils


i remember the tears pooling at the corners of my eyes
as i looked down and up
clutching my wrist
digging my nails into deeper impressions and
grooves left by knives past
biting the inside of my cheek hard enough
and the days when i used my hair
to hide my eyes


and dodged around people
unable to bear
with putting on a face
strong face happy face getting-through-life faces
those days


i felt barely human
for those days


i remember impressions left on my feet and my hands
as i stared holes into them
through the blur of tears on my eyes
i felt the clench of my heart and my stomach
and i remember digging my nails into my guts
trying to hold myself together
and the struggle of remaining upright


trying to not crumple into a ball
into as tight a space i could manage
under tables beds metal frames
left dusty with spider webs and mis-
disuse over ages of forgetting
for reasons better known to those others


for those days
when i could barely look into someone's eyes
and acknowledge myself as a person
or a human or a thing or a creature
and i felt like a whisp on the
shadows and springs of death and blankness


those days
when all i felt was the grave the tombstone
of my body
as i carted it around
the world and the whole world
leaned in but i leaned out
i leaned out and
and my spine was not strong enough to carry this tombstone
but my shoulders were
so my shoulders hunched and my spine broke
and i carted it around anyway


those days when
everyone
came back in dreams and nightmares
of worlds falling apart
and people lying dead in ditches
people killing themselves in hidden roofs
where i had once resided
and i recalled a
a particular
peculiar impression
of orange smoky skies
with menacing black jets over my head and i thought
i thought
and i believed-
"This world has come to die"


and that wasn't even the scary part
the scary part was when i
i stood and opened my arms wide
laughed and said:
"i've been waiting"
i remember those nights
i remember those moments
and my stomach crumbles
my eyes cannot handle their weight anymore
my spine shatters
my shoulders overflow
my wrist shatters
and i


i look up at the blinding
sunshine moonshine
and i open my eyes wider
and laugh laugh laugh

when I was a little girl
my mother always said
"a boy is only mean when he likes you"

after all these years
maybe that is why
I cut and burn and bruise

I am loving myself
the only way I know how
in the way my mother taught

darling,

lift that fingertip away from your scars
and trace these ragged map-lines instead
here, here are better roads to take
than loneliness

so maybe your knuckle feels much too bare
but know that our fingers are not made to sit waiting
for a ring –
they are built to hold

so hold – find another set of fingers
grasping for a stronger pair of hands
there is nothing more beautiful than two small limbs
making a home in each other

or better yet, when your bones feel
too big for his too-full arms and too brittle
for the weight of your sadness
hold yourself together, never let go

when the night is too full of night
to see the stars, take a mirror and try to
search for the starstuff in you

you. the point between history and tomorrow
the most graceful of reckonings
the steady hum of *more, more beneath cracking skin
you. the sum of all things soft and true  

and remember: those bones were never built to
shoulder the world
they were only ever meant
to carry you

There was a pause a skip in the beats
and I said that that
was it

I felt that that was it and I felt like I would
so I could
and I did

And I thought that that was it but what I thought
I could
and I did

Thought it would follow me around

Two hundred years ago and yesterday
a sailor wrote a letter in longhand,
entrusting it to the road
back to his beloved,
where dawn was breaking
at the closest port of call.

A century ago, a shy and lovely
mail order bride wrote
to the man who would be her husband,
in a land entirely different from her own.

In her delicate, sincere questions, from a
heart wrapped in ornate brocade layers of
kimono silk, she hoped to begin to know him.

Relationships formed gracefully, over time,
an ocean of water and thought intervening.

Water and air may be there
keeping souls apart,
until they are meant to be united.
 
Now, two beloved young friends have found
in each other a twin flame, first seen shining
in the virtual world of today. With only letters,
or flares or morse code, these two would have
seen, and known, that light within one another.

Souls destined from very early on.

My loving eyes have seen them, decades from now,
leaning into one another, silver hair entwined
as they rest their heads together on one more journey.

I defy anyone who might challenge me,
seeing these two blossoming in love
from a virtual, chance encounter, 
to say that life is any less real
in the ways that matter most,
when it is born in abstract space,
in this manifestation of a reality
that is in itself a metaphor for
Reality.

Reality, is living,
deeply living,
the inexplicable,
unfathomable,
exquisitely simple
complexity,
of being fully human.

I don't remember passing out
The barkeep nudged me twice
I'd been out at least an hour
My drink, it had no ice

He told me I was finished
He said "Boy, you are done"
"You're playing roulette with a pistol"
"With six bullets, not just one"

"There's a taxi on it's way boy"
I took in every word
But in truth, my head was spinning
What he said, I never heard

Way back in the corner
Sat two vultures watching me
The barkeep saw them watching
And he said "Son, the taxi's free"

"There's a cot just off the kitchen"
"If you'd rather stay inside"
"You won't throw up in the taxi"
"It saves me money for the ride"

I nodded I'd accept it
He told me, "good, I hoped you would"
"The way your night is going"
"It just won't end up good"

"You're burning both ends of the candle"
"You're lighting the middle part as well"
"You may think you're off to heaven"
"Drink like this, you'll end in hell"

He said "out back there is another"
"Fought the bottle, fought it hard"
"He was lost, but came back stronger"
"He's doing well, but he is scarred"

"Tomorrow, you'll eat breakfast"
"Go out back, and talk a bit"
"Now, off to bed directly"
"I need to think a bit, and sit"

I thanked him, though I mumbled
The words were clear inside my head
But, the words that I said to him
Made no sense, so....off to bed

The next morning, over coffee
He told me, "I've watched you every night"
"I've woken you before, you know"
"What you're doing isn't right"

I told him of my troubles
He shook his head, and said "so what"
"We all have troubles sometime"
"We make the best with what we've got"

"You can come here if you want to"
"But, if you drink, I'll cut you off"
"This is your only chance son"
He said the last line, through a cough

He said that after breakfast
After I'd done the washing up
I was to head out to the alley
With fresh coffee, in a cup

He said "out back there"
"You'll find a man with a guitar"
"Give him the fresh coffee"
"He won't come here inside the bar"

I went out in the alley
And there exactly as he said
Sat a man, singing to no one
With a old ball cap on his head

I listened as he sang out
A voice as harsh as glass and sand
Playing guitar in the sunshine
Keeping beat, a one man band

He finished, and he saw me
Smiled as he took the cup
He said, "You don't know me"
"But, I knew you'd look me up"

The Bluesman drank the coffee
Told me to sit and stay a spell
For each minute that I listened
Was one less I was in hell.