A woman with her arms out wide, as if suspended in the sky
For that one final moment before the crash
The physics and theology I can’t understand
She doesn't come to end me,
But to rescue me.
I am so overdone,
And just want to be silenced
I’m asking for her finger on my lips
I’m asking for a nurturer, a place to sleep
I try to tell her I've loved her all along
I put away the lies I've learned, the lives I've led
She takes me home to forgive me forever
To a place where I can find that quiet hymn
Where time is just a myth,
And I can finally be put to rest.

I was a woman on the war path
Chanting, beating my chest, painting my face
I was new at life and bleeding that youthful aura
But now I’ve gone dry, thirsty for what I let go.
I watch him stand over your body,
And painfully remove all I had adorned you with.
I had used you as a sanctuary for all my dreams.
You had seen the best and worst of me
But now you see me worst of all, retired.

I no longer venture into the night and roll into the morning
I don’t climb the walls, or shout to the seasons
I don’t cry with all-consuming  passion
I don’t love with reckless infatuation
I don’t hate myself when I’m high on angst
I even don’t love myself when I’m high on vanity
I was the epitome of extremes and starved for thrills
The runaway, the rolling stone, the troublemaker
The flirt, the fighter, the drinker and smoker.

I’m grateful you’re too fogged to notice me
Because I know you wouldn’t believe
The shrewd and quiet ghost I’ve grown up to be.

Funny how we woke up in the morning
and pretended that tomorrow never happened—
strutted naked in mirrors celebrating our youth,
laughing, knowing suns and moons couldn’t do the same.

We borrowed our arms from the fridge
and peddled bicycles with bad breath—
trading war stories ‘cause we knew
if we came back alive
life would still be the death of us.

Everyone you meet
is broken glass, a
destroyed
pile of a
person.

Pieces of us lie all over the ground.
You have to be careful
where you step.
We have all been
dropped and cracked
and kicked.

We are all ******- some worse
than you. You at least tried to
pick up the mess
along the way. Most people
leave pieces
stranded. A fraction of
a soul as
road ****.

Everyone is stepped on and crushed
and dug into the ground,
soaked like red wine into the
off-white carpet.
There will never not
be a stain.

You handed me one of your
puzzle pieces,
a fragment of shell,
a souvenir.
I tried to glue you back
together, to carry you, to fix
you, my darling, because
we traded.

I tried to give you
my pain as well, heart shaped and
sharp like chipped bone. But
it didn't fit, and it was heavy,
and it was mine. So you
gave it back.

I found your apologies along with a lighter in my pocket
the night I burned you away
Both were deep down in there.
Below the forgiveness
It was squeezed between the pieces of your broken promises
Collaged into the parts of my shattered heart
I found them folded into love letters
And engraved into the anxiety marks your lies left in me
I dug them out of the hole your deceiving left in the back of my mind
Buried right next to suspicion
I found your explanations hid beneath the mental memories of teeth
They never quite fit together
I saw them in the picture show behind my eyes
I’ve recklessly recreated to many times
I felt your callused pleads for forgiveness on my fingertips
after I pricked my pointer on your spikey “I didn’t do its”
I slipped on your confessions
nearly drowned in what could’ve been
Luckily, I realized before it was too late, that water is infinitely too deep
As is the pools of sympathy I had for you but never had for me
I used that lighter to smoke a cigarette that was packed down as well as your stories
You always exhaled like a script for the movie I’ve seen to many times called
“Please feel bad for me”
I found your I’m sorrys on the bottom my shoe
after I kicked the crap out of my “welcome to walk on me” mat
I threw away and replaced with a banner reading “please don’t come back soon”
I can’t claim I don’t know but I can say this feeling is new
Never thought you had what it takes to make me give up on you

I could hear my parents talking about me.
I don't like that.
I don't like the way you looked so
disappointed
when I cried, either
or that I cry
or that my stomach bunched into ruffles
when you took my shirt off.

"I don't know why I get so sad sometimes," I whispered.

See your smiling face each morning
Watch your tired eyes close at night
Take your hand at the park in the evening
Always hold you tight

Your "man" does none of these things
Has every girl in his sights
Can't even say "I love you"?
He could never treat you right

"He's just scared" you say
"Never been serious before"
So i stand here watching him hurt you
While you says he's the one you adore

But here I've been, all along
thinking about how he doesn't belong
'Cause we've been best friends since before we knew
Of high school trends or the auroras hue

I'll take your hand if you'll have mine
Tell me, who's afraid to love? Not I.

I've got poems tattooed on me but they go deeper than my skin, ink seeps deep into my soul, as quickly as the pentip needle dips in, dips out, like an illicit lover who has disappeared in the morning, she comes, and she goes.

your craving for life is insatiable
i watch you
devour the sun
you
attempt to drink
entire storms
the entire horizon
with
the way that you tilt back your head and stretch out your arms