My head
Understands
The complexity
Of your caress
And the
Power beneath
Your skin
To evoke
A deeper level
Of self destruction.

My head,
However,
Does not
Understand
The complexity
Of my carelessness
And the
Power within
My heart
To shield itself
From self destruction.

-bes-

Right, left, back – what?
Flames flicker to the rhythm of
Your feet
And waver
At the ripple of my laughter.

Your palm pressed to mine:
Fire soldered to water.
I twirl and
Your eyes
Extinguish mine.

-bes-

Not the emotion, but the numbness
that can ****, a sum
of vacancy of feeling and void
in the chest, devoid
of care while bleeding out
under anesthesia spread to every nerve throughout.  

A dry eye
can be the worst goodbye,
because a wound
never did heal with apathy, doomed
to infect every apology and cry
that attempts to resolve each and every lie.

But the rhythm of my fingers
stringing thought by thought,
like a surgical thread closing my heart,
is my only sense that lingers.

-bes-

Trust is a tricky creature.
It slithers its way
into our hearts, our souls.
It coils itself into the darkest chamber
inside us and calls it home.
It stretches and makes itself
comfortable until it
winds itself around our lungs,
constricting all breath,
all reason,
all sense.
And then it pierces
our most vital *****,
silencing its drumming and
injecting a poison that
swims through our veins,
paralyzing us
from the heart down.

-bes-

I’m not Careless
(But I’m not Careful).
I’m not Reckless
(But I’m not Mindful).

Why can’t Helpless and Careless conceive,
and why can only Reckless and Blameful breed?
Why is it that I swaddle Responsibility, the daughter of Action?
Why is it that I nurse Responsibility, the sister of Reaction?
For how many nights must I be disturbed by Responsibility’s cries?
She is your child, not mine
(But at the market, they all mistake me for the mother).
And somewhere you sleep soundly -
While here I weep silently,
failing to calm the screams of a weary infant hovering over my heart.

Would you say I’m less than because
I refuse to be Shameful?
Would you say you’re Regretful
or just Remorseless?
Will you father Responsibility,
or will I tuck her in every night?

I can’t answer for you
(But I’m not Voiceless):
None of this makes me less than a woman,
I can say what I’m not
(But I know what I am):
Powerful.

-bes-

Poetry is nothing
but a play on words
that when properly tuned,
will play its melody on your heartstrings.

-bes-

“Were you *****?”

R-A-P-E-D.
The five little letters
in the question
I fixated on.

I gawked at the therapist,
thinking,
This session will
H-A-U-N-T me forever.

Why couldn’t those
five little letters be
L-O-V-E-D
instead?

Confused,
all I could manage to respond was,

“M-A-Y-B-E.”


-bes-

Love like an Amtrak train –
The heat made me queasy.
It clung to me and hung on to me
When I stepped off,
A vague blurry feeling
Tethered to me, or I to it.
No refuge in the streets of this new city
Or even in the comfort of my own home.
No escape from this magnet that lives in me,
On-again, off-again, but I carry it with me, tucked inside.
Eventually the dull fire was too much to imagine,
And I wondered what was next,
Frightened and longing for an impulsive new love.

-bes-

Flapping my wings through
the wispy white fog -
snipping across like a cat’s yarn,
untangling this chaos.

A nebulous sky gleams crimson beneath the setting sun,
my ivory wings stained
as I dive down beneath the canopy
in pursuit of my escape.

-bes-

The grass may be greener on the other side
but I’m still on the white picket fence
that we built ourselves with ply,
a wall to the world useless for our defense.

Deciding between you
and them,
between our crumbling foundation
and a long road ahead,
between resentment and
regret,
this is where I sit,
on the fence.

-bes-

Sitting up at night I adore your cowlick
persisting in a life like a caged
animal is what I call you when I hear about that
girl you’re the love of my life you
say the worst things to me at the best
times like these I remember why I
love how you never bother to call when you’re
late at night I feel your heart
beat me down when I can no longer stand.

Stuck between a rock and a hard
place my hand next to your
elbow my way through the chaos
tangling up my fingers through your
hair stands up on my arms when you
lie on top of me thawing my blood
pulsing through my veins in a blind
rage so passionate I can’t uncoil myself from your comforting
embrace of demons that begin to suffocate my soul.

-bes-