contents of a human heart may include:
shifting shadows
wasted space
loose change
mumbled promises
secret hopes
tears - and
sometimes blood

m.f.

look at your fingers.
extend & wiggle them.
look closer.
fingerprints.
not another person on earth
has the same ones as you.
you are alive.

m.f.

elephants stomp with stone-laden feet
back and forth, back and forth,
creating cracks in my already-battered skull,
weakening the very foundations of my sanity.
their trumpeting echoes through cold corridors
flooding my thought capacity to the brim.

a tightrope walker stretches me, thin -
i feel the shifting pressure of her nimble feet
treading the territories of my weathered frame,
back and forth, back and forth,
my skin reddens beneath the incessant crossing
as the sinew within me starts to atrophy.

in my chest cavity there is a ring of fire,
manipulating my lungs and feeble heart to mere ash.
two golden eyes seen beyond the flames,
ready to leap through them - without the
inconvenience of fear weighing down his agile paws,
both capable and likely to tear my veins to shreds.

a grisly strongman has my bones in his grip.
he smiles malevolently, gloating his strength over me,
squeezing the life from my cartilage - awaiting the snap.
i am cognizant of the sound, but i won't flinch.
next, the imminent collapse of my vertebrae -
i feel them crumble to dust. he laughs.

but it is in the pit of my stomach the ringleader sits -
commanding me into subsidence with every crack of his whip.
i want to meet his eyes but he only averts my gaze.
his twisted circus nearly through, the audience begins to dissipate.
i stare through the blurred smoke, desperate for his visage -
when i see on one of his faded lapels, the embroidery spells out your name.

-m.f.

let me first say, i have absolutely no idea what i'm doing
and i don't really know what this is or where to start.

i am comprised of scratched porcelain and bad dreams -
made up entirely of half-hearted attempts at sanity,
countless unspoken "i need you's",
and ever-faltering faith in myself and those around me.

i am not a poet, or at least not a good one, i don't think.
i feel a lot of things, sometimes all at once -
other times i don't feel anything at all, which scares me beyond
a level of which i am capable of explaining to you.

i nearly jumped in front of a train in april of this year. i don't know why.
my feet ventured toward the platform before it had even registered
in my head that they were doing so. i heard my best friend speak my name,
and snapped out of the trance. not a lot of people know about that.

i've been in love a lot of times with a lot of different people.
i have a fear off falling but a tendency to jump from high places.
i don't read books as much as i used to, but i'm working on that.
i'm in love right now and it's really difficult but it's nice. i'm happy.

i grew up with five brothers, so i like to think that made me sort of tough.
(but i cry every time i see a deer or a possum on the side of the road.)
i don't smoke cigarettes anymore, partly because my father hates them,
partly because they remind me too much of someone who liked them more than he liked me.

i write a lot about people who i don't talk to or see anymore. they don't live in my heart,
but the curse of memory is more often than not unbreakable. i call it leftover poetry.
then again i don't consider any of my pitiful mutterings to be poetry. just a bunch of
raggedly strung together words that sometimes rhyme a little bit.

i used to want to die and i wrote a song about it that a lot of people really liked.
i don't want to die anymore. i will never show that song to my mother.
i am much more content with watching people talk than actually talking myself.
this piece of writing feels too personal and i don't think i like it, but i'm pretty sure
Eleanor Roosevelt said something about doing one thing every day that scares you.

m.f.

body at rest - but
thoughts that rage
twisting & churning
varying spectrums
burning questions
"why did you wait
so long to tell me?"

m.f.