You fell in love with an artist
a poet,
you fell in love with this emotive , overwhelmed
lover
idling and obsessing over acceptance,

you fell in love with a fighter , a philosopher, a day dreamer
a worrier
a warrior
always pressed hard against her fears
and picking at them,

you fell in love with a creator,
a sculptor who touched you
like she wanted to make you into forever,

you fell in love with the clutter queen,
collecting things that made her feel like a smile,
and losing them just as quickly
she only has time and space
to love what matters
you fell in love with a universe.

you fell in love with a matrix of scars tracing back over her top lip to lower back to finger tips,
all the way across a childhood, adolescence ,
abandonment and broken glass,broken marriage, broken hands
traced along a tragic, beautiful, powerful existence.

you fell in love with courage, with raw honesty and grace. You fell in love with wide
open eyes, and hungry ears.
a great and terrible curiosity.

you fell in love with the mediator, the meditating the engaging tuned in
empathy reader.
sweet man
we fell in love with so many things
when we fell in love
with me.
I see you
seeing me
and it helps me see myself.


I love you
I love me.

I have lived my life a perfect rendition
of toddlers  circling scrawl
always looping back
always colored an emotion
that was
to absolute to be appropriate

just a little to honest
and real
circling

I remember plain as day the sun of your smile
and I replay the color of your changing behind my eyes every night
I have traced over and over the feel
of your running away
of your hiding away
of your lines and color
the exact lay
of the paradigm shift
leaving lots of blank space
for the parts of you I don't know now.

Your sunshine smile died
or got lost in the shift, or in the space
and I miss for things you aren't now.
I miss a person who no longer exists.

I honer her
the little girl you laid to rest
with your decisions
buried under the weight of a whole life.
when you were just colors you bled
over the entire page

perhaps that is why it feels
like you started over.

I know the pain of disassembly I know the pain of reincarnation The exhaustion  every building from the bottom to the top searching every bit of your mind in the bottom of your greatest fear to the top of your highest hopes I know the pain So do not hide in the vast forest of your fears I will find you
Do not bury yourself under the weight of your thoughts I will find you I have been there I see you and glimpses of reflective surface dancing upon rapid rivers glistening pools of calm Collected do in the eager hands of the forest floor.
You cannot run further than I have been at least not here even with embarrassment feeling your bones when fitting lengthening your stride you cannot hide here
And you're not alone really wish that or not no motions have a funny way of echoing all the way around you of playing like reflections on the faces

I used to look outside into the daylight
Look long Into the darkness,
Eyes lapping up silence and noise in
Greedy proportions
Grouping, feeling searching
For something that tasted safe,
That could satiate some plain of my existence
Break me clean of this emotional dissonance
Stand firm under crashing wave of feelings
That lay wait

Turbulating  and churning against the inside of my brain
Ensnared by the fray

After being raked through thoroughly
With razor sharp cynicism
Pulled to pieces by the weight of in differences
No I have pulled at to many threads
Traveled
unraveled and traversed  
Too far into this abyss
To remain un-scattered, unscathed, unchanged

And thats ok

But I taste like
A brokenness so sweet it aches
And
The only place
That tastes safe lies deep between my breaths
And in coffee shaded eyes.
No I cannot say I am the same
Or that i'm
entirely whole
At least now i know
The exact depth of my convictions
The degree of my worth and will and wanting
I can haunt you
With the shadows in my depth i
Can steal your breath
With the wanting my honest azure eyes casts
And at last
With so many parts of me laid to rest
I’m free to test
The eternity you hide in your eyes
Flash glimpse behind soft lips
Masquerade behind truths dressed
As lies
You astound me
And I will spend every day
Chasing new ways to
Taste your kiss.
I will build bliss
Out of my  thankfulness
With strong shaking fingers
Un-clinched
Stitched delicately with your laugh
I will map out our happiness
On your heart with my pin
Emerse you in love letters
In apology notes
In an unending list of the things
I will miss
And love
And break and kiss
I found me
You
Found us
And Never before have I had such trust
This is enough

No.
You will not say you know me.
too much time has passed.
too much transpired.

You were gone when I fell head full
into the abyss,
crash landed
years later where I crawled out from beneath
thoughts heavy enough
to **** myself with.
to heavy to lift
sharp enough
to cut away and **** the parts of me that
where

beyond salvation
.
parts of me to heavy to stand with.

I love you,
I loved you .
Whispered like a lullaby,
draped over wounded thoughts;
screaming wrongness in me.
Echoing goodbyes in me.

The ache of knowing sacrifices must be made,
Ruined by the corrosion
of your unyielding misconceptions
and unreachable expectations.
Numbly I sat cutting away at the bits
of myself we had been beating and breaking down
for years.

red and raw
blue and empty
with trembling fingers
clawing
at all that sat wrong in my reflection,
parts
I thought I needed
but ruined would never stand me up right again
never hold up my chin.

Horrified;
at being so full
of so much nothing.
that I was to tight
to even catch my breath.
Seams bulging
from fingertip to
the ribs in my chest

Every moment agonizing.
Every second impossible.
Over and over
I died.

And still I would  wake ,

cruel  irony

by the thousandth time
I woke weary and cold
I looked upon the carnage
all of me disassembled at my feet,
a fear trembling deep in me ,
a courage to rebuild growing in my bones.
only picking up every bit of persistence I turned to go.

so no you do not know me
you were not there when I escaped from my own dark
to fill myself with slivers silver shifting , bits of an indifferent moon;
you were not there to journey my emptiness to traverse the abyss.
You were not there when I began to fill it.
In your absence I have grown
and still,

I do not know how you will fit here.

cut me open,
or just wait patiently while I sluff of all the important bits
of myself.
self depreciative
eventually I always fall
all the way apart
and surrounded
by those who took my heart
things often go missing.
My family is comprised of so many things
But for the sake of these themes
I can  call them all thieves.

I'm nothing but the fading shadow
of who I was before
nothing but the fleading sounds
beating echoes
soft crasindoes
of wave on crashing shore

I used to fight the monsters inside men
I held my fist to
addictions caged in forgotten shells
that called themselves men
that called themselves urges
that called themselves
uncles,
sons,
sorry,
called themselves friends
called themselves
more names than
anyone could occupy in honesty all at once
all i saw was
an angry vacancy,
full of nothing
hiding in everything.

except for the children i hid behind me,
there light
showing me
always where I ought go.
always where I ought next step ,
nothing big enough to run from
big enough to fall to
with them behind me.

columns standing my heart up like a fold up tent,
the only tangible connection to
goodness,
to godliness,
to hope in my chest
to love
they were all the loveliness
I have ever possessed.

without them, I fear
simply the ever growing darkness,
the expanse in my chest,
this lost alone feeling,
of not knowing
where I ought step.

I only fear I will forget,
that the things I held so tight to  
can actually exist.

I am not but a ship awaiting the wreck
my lighthouses
all
extinguished

Take from me
the memory of her fluttering lashes
and the sound of her startled laughter.

take from me the image
of her widening eyes and
pinched lips  both turning a ****
against the welling tears

take from me my memories
of her so brave against
all sorts of pain and
to real of fears.

take from me
take from me
this hole in my chest
you stole her from.
So I may forgive,
so I may finally forget.
So I may finally rest,
she is gone now,
please take what's left...

I will not apologize for a poem
or a mirror or
humanity
I did not cut you open
I just handed you the scalpel
a sharp tool
to open up your mind-
to be used at your discretion

you took it apart word by word
and held it up first
against itself
tracing the rising questions
in your mind about
good
and bad
and
black
and white

so why does it trouble you so
to know
you are also
responsible for your slow
dissection

recollection slow regard
of your own dichotomy
have I mentioned
you are beautiful inside
and out?

even the monster living inside you
is just so comprehensively
human.

you want to know the way to get wrapped between these fingers
want me
to lean into you
arching my back
thinking only
to be closer to your breath
lean against your lips
kiss the way you sway in your step
think between your stunning laugh
trying to breath around the way you look at me
at things
at everything
rest up along the way your tongue traces
lace words places
making every thing between us an obstacle
I want your heat
I need your need,
I want the way your eyes gleam
when you're laughing at me
I love the way you resonate
the way you illuminate,
Your gravitational force, so enticing
your presence so enthralling
the vastness of your perspective so
expansive and sprawling
rough and luling
cyclical
you are all encompassing.

crushed fragments that shimmer under the fleeting light of day.
each jagged edge framing bits of the same neglected face,
quivering lines refracting  emanating
my brokenness my quaking lips,
the sound that breaks
deep in my chest.
broken mirrors and broken glass

tattered shreds of present
paved by pains of past.
empty beds deep at night
fleeing dreams taking flight

angry angry scared and lost,
feeling used neglected cross,
taking pictures to the flame
wondering how they think my name,

knowing I am not the same
knowing that I never will
watching as you smash the glass
watching as she breaks the mirror
thinking of my brokenness
i'll break it all to make it still.

praying praying every day
waking up still the same
try and try as I might
to hear a voice to find a light

empty echoes in my chest to
care at all is never best.
keep it locked up deep inside
the parts of you you try to hide
the parts that care will tare away

no never listen to words they say
promise promise pinkie swear
i'll never leave i'll always care
crossing fingers in his pocket
he leaves behind one heart shaped locket.

tears tears go away
i'm all cried out
i know the way
no one here is here to stay.
nobody here will think your name
not even once for many days

simply said i'm not enough
I am to weak and lacking luck
to naive at five
at seven at seventeen
to believe in hope until hope dies
until then you'll believe the lies..

I wish I could capture that sound you made in the back of your throat
whenever you would roll your eyes.
I cry sometimes
when I realize I can't quite comprehend
the rhythm that your laughter held.
I died
the first night I remember you are gone while in my dream
And I suddenly woke
weeping while
thinking I was so thankful to see your face
however fleeting.
thankful and greedy over your words I keep playing in my head,
things you said as easy and true as the air you breathed and held
when I could still reach you.
I still bleed poetry,
I still swim in A good fantasy novel,
I still find you in bits of my reflection,
And loving you was the first step I took
toward loving me.
I find you in the delicate creases of my dog eared
pages your existence persist
further than the reaches of your physical form,
I find you in my patience,
my resilience.
I find you lurking in my essence
when I'm lonely and go searching for you
sometimes
I lay in bed and listen until I can hear you again.
And alone I fall
while knowing all along
remembering you
is worth this.

Remember all the years you were dieing for the moments
to swoop in
and save the day like one big
beautiful cliche
in a big suit of armor
atop a gallant steed,
usually camouflaged as your little brown pick up.

nothing big enough to get in your way,
no distance carved out in black highway
you wouldn't conquer to make me smile.
Because when I smiled you were happy
Because when I cried you were broken and
you loved me to much
to leave me lonely sad and so
wide open.

Sometimes I admit I miss the glow and haze
even the taste
of our first kiss,
that new high that pure bliss
when we finally made sense of our fondness
of our bond
and we made promises.

And even still ,
you make me brave enough
to believe in them.
And that may be sweeter even
than that first lovely kiss.

charcoal smudges and
indistinct hazes of darkness
phrases laced in harshness harnessed
and armed with my conviction
addiction to truth even
when sharp enough to harm you
disarm you
dis-arm
dismember
sever limb
from limb
tongue from clever whim
from quipped retort
designed to thwart
off the largest offender
up wind down wind
I don't remember really the direction
from whence one came nor
name nor much anything
other than

charcoal smudges and
indistinct hazes of darkness
phrases laced in harshness harnessed
and armed with my conviction
addiction to truth even
when sharp enough to harm you
disarm you
dis-arm
dismember
sever limb
from limb
the smother hot tension seething
wriggling writhing ringing in my head
sirens throwing up red flags
at catch phrases
stated like razor blades
repeated like mantras
she said she said
he said they them,
my head
they said I was lonely
they said I was weak i think i thought
I believed
they loved me
someone told me
I wasn't worth a cent or sense
or that I had no sense
or that I was nonsense
all of it I think I thought all of it
I tense, became tense I tensed
over overwhelming disapproval
even at a distance
for my depreciating assets
the expense of my existence
my penance for loving myself
when it so inconvenienced
those I was living around
was letting myself
think I was worthless
forgetting
how to count
senseless
centless
arbitrary
I have digressed

I guess this is all jumbled concept
an attempt to recreate the conception
of my desecration
of the crumbling of my foundation
of the ashes left
when they, when she,when all of them
broke inside my head
to watch the walls burn
from the inside out
ashes
and charcoal smudges with
indistinct hazes of darkness
phrases laced in harshness harnessed
and armed with my conviction
addiction to truth even
when sharp enough to harm you
disarm you
dis-arm
dismember
sever limb from limb
sin from sin
self
from worth
you hurt me
they hurt me
I hurt myself
because I believed you
were telling me the truth.
I became dark

charcoal smudges and
indistinct hazes of darkness
phrases laced in harshness harnessed
and armed with my conviction
addiction to truth even
when sharp enough to harm you
disarm you
dis-arm
dismember
sever limb
from limb
kin from
kin
i'm gone now.
think of me as charcoal.

You said I was so sad because I didn't love myself,
that if I weren't so
pathetically
unthinkably,
unconsolably,
sad
I would find myself with a friend or two.
I think you believed it
I think you thought it over and over in your head..
blaming
angry
accusatory
repetitively
carving out space for it behind your eyes
so you would never wonder
If my despair was not self inflicted…...
that perhaps I was crying because I loved myself
as I loved you,
and her
and all of them,’
and I thought I knew you
and her
and all of them
as well as I knew myself
And then she changed,
you changed like all of them
and when the curtain fell I was

pathetically
unthinkably,
unconsolably,
hurt , alone,
and still in love with myself
and wondering why I was not good enough for anyone anymore.
good enough to be in their presence
to be in their hearts;
to be carved behind their eyes.
I cry because after all that you
pathetically,
unthinkably,
unforgivably,
blamed me.
Angrily
assaulted and
accused me of existing
as less than
And reminded me
daily
I was alone.

Maybe I’m not sad because I don’t know myself.
I am sad because you don’t
I am not sad because I don’t know who I am.
I am sad because for you it was not enough.
I am not sad because I am lost,
I am sad because I no longer have a place to call home.
the only time I am disappointed in myself
Is when I allow myself to admit
That I miss you.

I told myself every idea was *******,
just white noise sloshing in my head,
until I could bury that urge to put pen to paper
knowing
deep down behind the wall of sinew and flesh
pumping oxygen and platelets
deep beneath my skin
I just  hated feeling like this.
I gave up expressing myself,
convinced
of my deaf audience
convinced
that perhaps everything
I did was
worthless,
When I broke my reality
and rose from the ashes fresh glazed
from the fiery kiln of my personal hell
I did not realize I was to experience the most
monumental of my creative acts,
the recreation of myself
in complete solitude.
And perhaps
I'm still a little angry'
and very sad.

how could you cut ties?
with your sister?
eyes pointed in my direction
inspection disected and
your indignation hanging
alouf in air space between
hasty sideways glances
from those who pass us

Because the idea of who we were outlast us and
i want to have a chance to grasp at things before they pass us
last i checked
words so weighty and sharp had
cut the glass jar around my heart
and spilled the **** thing

because life is not black and white
and the fact that our blood runs red
doesn't mean as much
as you seem to think it did.
I chose what was right for my life,
i didn't think near strangers
got a say.
I have customers to help ,
this is my  work  place
so you have a good day.

sometimes when i'm angry at the pillow beneath my head, and the ceiling for shifting in
the slow shadows of my room at night,
at the headlights that flash into my bed room window,
at the neighbor who's screams echo
in the cacophony of the outside noise
and the inside static
in the pensive thrumming ****** manic
turning troubled erratic thoughts
more times than not
its overlapping tracks
of your voice saying key phrases,
"disappointed"
"pathetic"
"crazy"
"victimizing"
"lazy"
"­loner"
"with out friends"
"leave"
"angry"
animated by that awful look and
eye roll you always gave me.
desperation lead me to the asinine assumption
that if i was brave enough to bring
your attention on me
you would see that i needed something
i needed anything.
acceptance
an ear,
suport,
an explanation,
a conversation,
a friend,
a few words of encouragement,
to be freed from your damnation,
a bit of patience
mother,
i needed my mother
and you never came for me.
no one ever came for me.
you gave me cruelty all the way to the moment of my liberation
where I was finally granted distance
and silence
but sometimes when I hate my pillow,
it's because
when it's dark,
and it is loud ,
I hear you in every sound
in every echo
I hear you.

dear mother, protector, teacher, communicator, bridge to my self empowerment, to my confidence, my role model and friend. when did you start to hate me? and mother when, when did you start to love me again?

The skin wrapped so elegantly across these bones of mine
acts as a barrier
separating me from everything else,
as long as I keep my lips pressed firmly to each other
I can manage to prevent
spilling my guts
that's best for every one I think.
No matter how I yearn for the relief of pressure
when my heart tries to escape my chest
at best
and at least relive the flood of my thoughts.

I ought know
wearing this suit of skin isn't enough
glacial blue eyes are an open well
speaking of sorrow to anyone with
a decent pair of eyes to tell.
even my perfectly placed smiles
pale under that shadow.
the utter vastness of the loss I feel
reminds me how large I am
regardless of my frequency of meals.
the expanse in my chest is so immense
it seems I am tearing at every seam.
most every thing I have held dear,
slipping through the fraying tear.

voices from limited perspectives telling me how I ought to feel.
quivering with anticipation to mention
my over reaction to small things,
at small hills appearing in my waking dreams
as vast mountain ranges,
imagining tragedy in the  frame of my yesterdays
and through the lenses of life's strangeness;
preparing to head out with the Donner party
while you take stroll up a grassy knoll basket in hand,
while i'm measuring out my morality as meticulously as grains of sand,
and you
never once wondering the weight of all the other burdens I am carrying
and have carried try to tell me, i'm insane
for preparing for rain in dry summer heat.
with no one to share my pain.
I assure you i'm not insane
I just go through my life living as me.

but you have not lived the life I have lead
and dare not to spread the weight.
at worst,
I like to think of myself
As husk of skin wrapped around a strength unhindered by my physical size
existing out of the vastness within my emptying heart.
I will be alone to rejoice at my discovery.
there are a small number of things that can not be taken away
and it is those things I have discovered,
no weight can crush me.
I have carried the world on my frailest shoulder
I have been trapped and many have unloved me
but my chest still rises
in lows and highs
and no one has ever taken the endless opportunities
that dwell  deep within the days I have never seen,
but they come, and are always coming
they are the possibilities of things I have never even considered.
And while most days I feel I have not but withered and fallen farther from things
another piece of me fly's and rings.
godless or not I have found my faith.
welling up inside me trying slowly to fill this space.
to fill me with humanity.
I Have faith that things change, are always changing.
These feelings and this space will inevitably cease to exist as surly
as the way I miss the presence of my loved ones on this turning ball in space
my love will outlive that pain
and like so many other things
being lonely is a temporary state.
that is the strength within me.
life tested for durability
I will endure. I endure everything.

I realized today pulling together damp ashes in fistfuls
While attempting to make something destroyed beautiful again
That your the same wicked little kid
Who destroyed every one of my sand castles .
I have wept 1,825  days for you.
My patience and efforts never crystallizing into anything more than dried scabs, nothing like the diamond I was always promised  .
Sometimes I miss the sparkle shimmering in the ocean of your eyes.
I have missed them 43800 hours In approximation ... If numbers could even begin to encompass the depths of the hurt you have afflicted me with.. If numbers could even kiss the surface of this ever expanding sense of abandonment and worthlessness you have inspired within the shallow place within my chest . 2628000 Moments I have repressed a little voice inside my head that spoke in your hushed tones in the only voice I have ever known better then my own, dear sister.  Now I just need your voice to stop echoing like shattered glass in every heartbeat; I just need to retreat and muster the will to retrieve the blade you left lodged between my vertebra so I can finally stand up straight and walk , swiftly in whichever way provides me distance from you. I only pray the blade sustains it's edge to sever this emotional dissonance. I have done the math 10,000 times there  are no reasons left to keep trying. There are no variables that provide a desirable outcome there is no way to even this score.

thanksgiving,
yellow lemon squares, turkey,
hustle hustle laughing,
bickering,
small blond children
tall dark haired , mild mannered
gathering courage to ask
asking questions
hike , climb, sprint tag,
food,
eating quickly,
murmurs around potato salad,
leaves,
leaves falling,
mothers calling
building castles in leaves and trees behind things
in the back yard
smiling
finally we are all together.

cancer took her.
crying crying and the rain wont stop beating against this old roof.
close walls sullen faces
mild mannered children working in a quiet desperation
to recreate yellow leaves falling
and lemon squares.
standing close
together,
to close
to close
trying to **** the distance between
us
castles crumble
its not our back yard anymore.
one of our mothers makes pecan squares
we cling to new traditions
because lemons do not taste the same,
disenchantment falls into a desperate
sadness  that always  fallows
death
and being homesick
for places that no longer exist for us , tomorrow


Indifference took her,
maybe if i had stayed a little longer,
she would be here same as ever,
clever bright witted
the staple holding together family fibers
distance ,
quite
losing site
literally loosing her site and
missing me
missing her
and them and mild mannered children
trying desperately to recreate yellow fallen leaves,
and banter,
to hear grandchildren squabbling
it was me, i left her castles crumbling
she was only missing places she thought no longer existed for her
shes gone now.
my castles crumbling
like the dry fall leaves
and i'm dreading things
and the lack of things like
thanksgiving
and lemon squares.

You saw me in yourself.
Only the part you can't command cant quite understand,
the squirmy bit you never quiet .... pinned.
so
just tell me i'm worthless
so you can deny the empty space in your chest,
where missing me used to reside.
You think i'm to ashamed to say a thing,
but i think you really know
im just afraid to be your echo
be your echo
be your echo.
You grow louder,
you step closer while i blink against your breath.
Tears fall
letting all the words you quip whip against me,
slip under my skin and send
my head swimming ,
giving away every feeling..
I always give away what i'm feeling
letting you know every nerve you hit
while tint bits
of your spittle spray across my face.
I force my feelings burning at you toward myself,
let my gaze drift to dust moats distressed
by your immense bellows,
occupying the distance between our being
while suddenly  seeming
as fragile as me .
each syllable in your enunciation
violently shaking,
the tiny particles making
the atoms in my being
vibrate.In time with your percussion
aimed at conquering my space
dominating the way i think
my name.
never hesitation toward making your exterior imply im inferior.

you fight in sharp words.
believe me when I say I have always heard you

-----------silence-----------------
my silence always fallows the words you hurl around like blunt objects.
Does my silence startle you?
Is my vulnerability upsetting ?
or is it the vast distance i place between us to protect my well being?
You always told me by action intimidation is how you conquer space to grow,
while everyone else would have me know
its my obligation to shrink out of existence.
so i let my persistence gather just beneath my surface
so i will remember i'm not worth more
and sure as hell not worth-less
I will expend every breath i take
on taking as much space as person of my mass requires,
remembering to allot room for my beautiful mind,
all the bit of me you encouraged I leave behind,
consider the gravitational force of like energy.
listen to me,
..................................................
why is it you are afraid of my lack of statement?
especially when i refuse to aim it..
like a weapon.
...
just listen..
to the silence...
because it can provide so much more than i can string into statements,
it will give you answers when you let it.
self reflection frees me,
maybe that's why i'm not scared so easily
over silly phrases like "i'm sorry."
and all i keep on thinking is
you have to answer to yourself
someday when theirs no one else to listen....
i can't demand a thing from you when
you still cling to static thinking if you
keep your heart racing
words following
you wont get trapped thinking over the words you were just throwing
knowing you set out to hurt me,
to hurt my feelings
to afraid of yourself to manage
your own silence,
so you just keep screaming.
while i don't say a word,
just keep thinking
i wish you would do the same.
Because i tried
to tell you everything .
and now all i have to give you .....
is silence....
and you still don't hear..
anything.

shame is the great silencer,
you took the words right out of my mouth,
for years
you left me avoiding my own thoughts
chasing circles after myself
you told me
in a million ways

That no one would ever love me,

that being around me was a chore
I should not have bothered you with.

now from a safe distance
looking back looks like ink on paper
a pen is my looking glass
the only thing to turn old scars into
something with more direction
the raised texture on my broken heart and porcelain skin
a map I can't lose
showing where I'm going, where I've been.
reminding me what you put me through,

That i'm not worthless
because you want me less
you don't dictate
how I love myself
you cannot scream a smile off my face
even when I don't know how to respond
to sharp phrases

If I'm leaving
you cannot tell me i'm a disappointment
from such a distance
although your persistence is astounding
and your anger awesome
My endurance is an equal to my ability
to walk away
and  sometimes you
don't have to say a single word
to make a statement.
I never had to cut you
I just let your words cut our ties
and distance
lend me perspective


And just because I do not yell doesn't mean
That I am quiet.
I' am not ashamed anymore
And you can not keep me silent

why dose it always feel like swimming upstream with you,
always screaming
always pain
always fighting

Every moment a monumental struggle.
I never new such a current could exist
in places so shallow.
I used to imagine you as an entire ocean,
a force to be reckoned with.
now when I think of you
I remember feeling so hallow
I imagine stale mud water
warmed in august summer heat.

mothers are sappossed to love daughters
Thats what everyone seems to think.

not stay up late thinking of new creative ways
to make her fall to her knees
and weep.

I have to keep reminding myself
to stay concerned with more important things
I have to never allow myself to concentrate on the sting
words you selected to cut to deep

I have to force your rejection from my thoughts
before they fester, I can't think lesser of myself,
I can't dwell on what you think of me.
this infection
can't be cleansed by the likes of you
for now the salt in my tears will have to do.

I don't know how to bother with this anymore,
I wont bother you,
I only wish i knew how to not be my mothers daughter.
I only wish I could undo every night of missing you.
I only wish I was strong enough
to love myself so even you
couldn't leave me this hallow
make me feel so shallow.
I will never act
I will not fallow
people will never think
I'm my mothers daughter.

I miss you like my bare feet miss
the crunch of fall leaves,
river banks and loose driveway gravel.
I feel like under the weight of your memories
I will come unraveled.
I poses no want for travel
without you to come home to,
home is an empty destination
that place is just your dimming shadow.
Help me,
I see the absence of you everywhere
A shallow echo of the space behind my chest.
There is no rest for the mourning,
and still morning comes to slow.
I just replay old memories like playing in the snow.
Only you know how many mittens never made it home.
Even still you were glad to give them,
and the shoes off your feet,
if it meant you could keep,
a smile on my face.
It is harder every day to think...
You are gone.
Every day feels like more space
between when I was ok
and now.
I fear how hallow tomorrow may be.
there is no light at the end of this tunnel,
I will have to learn to live in the dark,
And remain grateful for
every mark you made
across my heart.

Tell her I miss the mother that stole me from school
So we could get surprise Ice cream cones
Just me and her.
And tell her I miss her

Tell her I miss the mother that said my name just as much as my sisters
And asked about my day at school
And if I had anything to tell her,
And always claim to be the proudest mother.
Tell her I miss her

Tell her I remember exactly when she stopped being super man
Tell her I got older and I understand mistakes
Tell her I can forgive more than most can
But I’ll never understand
Why she gave up on me.
Why she loves me less,
Why she doesn’t care
About these holes in my chest.
But tell her that I miss her.

Tell her I remember when space was not an option
When she would tell me I could do whatever I wanted and she
Would be there.
That no one loved me as much no one cared like she cared.
And tell her that I miss her.

The last four years .
They carved open my chest
There momentum creating a great expanse
Where I use to find
Myself.
I lost her.
they
left me to
Delve deeper into every
Miniscule bit of my identity,
Alone ,
My nature
Rest somewhere
Between my two fists
And genetics
Heretics , hypocrites, and empty space.
The last four years
Changed my concept of the word
Mother,
Of the word daughter,
Of Twin and Sister,
Of love and
Grand mother
Changed bridges from a way to affection
To the source of affliction
I woke to find
Connection had turned to
Weakness in my defenses
  In the last four years.
I discovered
Loneliness to degrees I had never imagined
Anxiety  heartache
confusion  at there  fullest capacity
I have never so genuinely questioned my sanity
Or had so many people telling me I was worthless
But I discovered the depths of my tenacity and
That sometimes anger is a necessity  
To process loss.
That  sometimes
You need a sharper edge to cut
At deeper ties…

In the last four years I learned
That under certain circumstances you
Need to cry.
That all things become clearer with time
and even when your
Faith to pray dies
You can have faith in the wait
Knowing everything
Will change.

In the last four years I learned
What it’s worth to be happy with your self
I discovered
That the only thing they can’t take
Is how you respond
And being trapped is an illusion
Created out of the sacrifices
you weren’t quite ready to make.
That taking the time you need only means
you love yourself enough to care
More than they did.
And  that even when you can’t pretend
they didn’t say the things they said,
Even when you can’t comprehend
The origin of such sharp words
You can work towards
Proving them wrong,
By getting up and moving on.
Welcoming genuine affections
As a cure for the infection you
Get in open wounds
You can affirm what you already
Knew
all along
And
After four years
You can look in the mirror
And know you are strong
Resilient, a thousand times patent
A hundred times brilliant.
And a million times brave..
And you can tack that up
On the list of things
They Can
Never
take
away

Tan and soft as cotton ;tracing
Along my chin; lingering against my lip.
Your gentle caress along my edges
Over each curve every dip .
Singing to every nerve in my delicate pale skin,
Crescendos into sweetest sin.
Smooth eager lips strip away
Distractions, firm against hesitations,
Your mouth is the greatest temptation
I will ever face.
Your face the largest gratification.
Your body the basis for the greatest satisfaction
I will ever taste.
Your energy surges in right rhythm
In right place.
Your raw determination to take me up
To draw me out
And make me…
Come undone at your will,
Implode and spill
all my influences
Across your sun kissed skin,
Tumbling in ,
To open arms,
You pull me in.
I love the way we fit.
I love the way you want to try again.

I love you,
Like I love the burnt orange on the farthest extremities
Of leaves that fell from the walnut tree
Growing from my memories;
Damp in autumns comforting atmosphere.
The bliss that I experience,
Relearning laughter exploding
from this epicenter
In my chest.
I render every bit of my ability to adore you
From fragments of the things that shined and shone before
I could have said I know you.
You feel like warm sand under my feet,
Like my fathers hand and
Like the best ******* poetry
Slipping out from under my teeth.
Feeling
Like a gust of wind in the pouring rain
Sounding in the soft tones only loved ones have murmured my name
Take it for what its worth, that I have loved before
But not one have I loved more
I admit I love you with every bit that I have
I love you as every soft memory I have ever had.
You are a declaration of self-worth
Spoken to a depreciating world full of angry men and sad girls.
You are the sway in my stride that speaks to self-confidence,
you match every smile I have
With a reason for another,
Every tear I shed fallowed in acknowledging
That” at least we have each other”
So know I love you like the feel of sunlight on my pale skin,
Like moon light shimmering atop dark water,
Like my baby sister’s sprinkling of butterfly kisses
Persistence in the relentless reminders of her admiration,
In every instance of its existing in my memory ,
Lurking within my experience I love you.

I feel guilty in hot spikes
Like I might be doing something I ought not want to
Or that by focusing on me you may feel I forgot you
That by allowing you to play in the back ground of my active brain
For day
After day
After day
I am not fixating on the way you say my name
Or remembering all the times you came
To save the day, I am not reaching out to touch you
In a physical way
And I don’t let myself feel sad with no distractions
I just fade and detach  when guilt feels like
Fractures.
Then I got to thinking
About myself and what I want and
I thought maybe we are perfect,
Perfectly in step with who we ought to be,
i,m moving,
And with you gone in all this change I felt
I was leaving
But i,m dreaming
Of standing on my own two legs
and of all the sweet things you always say
about my heart and my head and
that I accomplish great things,
you would be proud of me.
I’m just making my own place
My own bit of sunshine, my own oasis
So I can pull you in
And face it
All the bright light all my mistakes
Our first date and late nights,
Holding your hand and chasing loose dreams
Like pretty butterfly wings.
Like you run when we race
For the last of the swings,
I love you, and suddenly it seems like
Moving toward you and moving toward me
Are actually quite possibly the very same things.

Deep blue eyes ringed with a frost
Mirroring the ache in your chest
Similar to the pain
You experience with both fists
Crammed into snow drifts.
He Blinks,
eyes
Shift .
They lift to meet mine, fleeting
Shift, shifting,
My heart beating
Leaving me feeling like
Maybe I have
your eyes for a reason,

hesitating considering Begging,
trapped in circular thinking
Always coming back ,Just mean it.
Like a whispered prayer “just mean it”
Like a hungry desperation “ just mean it”
Like a shameful confession “ just mean it”
Like an explosive accusation “ JUST MEAN IT”
Screams echoing in my head
Don’t leave me

Trapping feelings like thunderstorms
Beneath my skin speckled
In the yellow tint, purple blue bits
Of faded bruises
Reflecting the greatest testament
To your affection you ever gave,
The greatest gift I ever received.
To be loved you will be tough
You will never be saved
You will never be safe
I will shift, I will be shifting
I will be changing my mind as I speak
And then I will be leaving.
He is filling me with all these anxious feelings.

Leaving me fidgeting and
Blinking
My eyes shift
Shifting
Thinking I ought to blink
Faster , straining
To feign indifference
Knowing tears make his pace quick.
I get sick

Looking at reflective surfaces
Deep blue eyes ringed with a frost
Mirrors depict the ache in my chest
Similar to the pain
You experience with both fists
Crammed into snow drifts.
Blink, Shift .
They lift to meet mine, fleeting
Shift, shifting,
My heart beating
Leaving me feeling like
Maybe I have
your eyes for a reason.

I remember being proud of every granule of dirt
Raw beaten earth,
I built my temple out of.
Every water molecule in my crimson blood
Carefully selected to carry an essence
That I protected,
with the support of glass bones
Wrapped in healing wounds,
Putting everything I have into
Forgetting how to flinch
Regardless of the brutality life
Tries to dress me in,
Or smother me with .
Work through psychological damages
Practice away my
st stu stutter,
putting away broken syllables un uttered.
I will rise, you can not keep me tonight
I hunger
to fight,
Walk right up to the dark like
I never new the way it turns you into nothing
If you think im crazy,
Maybe your right
but im reminding you of something,
something that you tell yourself can't exist
something you let go of , something that you miss.
A sort of  irrationality that's still making perfect sense,
plays in your morality defies your common sense.
This is the only chance I have at persisting to laugh
And
I
Will
persist.
The only  way for me to stay bright
The only way to keep light in my
dimming eyes
Is to shine and let them see .
Something about existing, and persisting
In vulnerability is more than frightening
It is freeing.
I AM, as surly as
I am being,
I’m lifted, I’ve missed this.
I hope you catch the meaning
The thought of missing it
Leaves me feeling guilty
Like my will was straying,
praying to nothing
For things I had but wasn’t seeing.
I forgot to believe
That I was impossible
and that i'm breathing.

What was it worth?
You are just a million pieces that never settle.
A good bye and a get well
A hush hush whispering a don’t tell
Squelched by the fact that
You were far from well
Far from health
living in
The bits of hell you swallowed yourself
Straight from the warm can
Clung to like a man lost at sea
Clings to a fist full of dry sand.
Breaking like a full gale
Against a torn sail
Crumbling drunkenly
to your weak  knees
Muttering obscenities
And listing your brokenness
Only stopping to
Wipe the wanderlust
From your hazed vision.
What hope did I have?
What love did we live in?
Tell me was it fate that stole you
Did they take away the bird in your chest
Or was it you?  
That held hope hostage
Shackled the bird to her nest let me
Be the first to tell you
You let me down
Let me be the first to notice
That you were worth
More when you were still around.

I let you see me, you let me in
and we agreed on nothing
But we understood everything,
And I didn't say it yet but you were my very best friend.
We stood on different ends of everything
It was maddening but across the distance
We would always see eye to eye
We fell wide open and into each other,
You never let me down
And although I was the water , you never let me drown.
Fire, you became my light and warmth and
The spark that inspired inner strength
You made me think, you made me laugh, and weep
And I keep thanking a God who doesn't listen
Who might not exist for your existence
As time passed and we changed
You turned into warm ashes
And me a light rain
I Finally feel grounded.

I used to feel like the grand canyon
All shades of brown  dust
That held itself wide open
With unimaginable strength,
Possessing incomprehensible beauty

I am now nothing but that single tear
Cascading down your perfect cheek
You don’t see into me
You merely see through me
And I am small
And I will be flexible
And I will likely fall from great heights
Like rain drops
And when I strike the ground
I will remember how many
Years , how many
tears it took to make
Me
Brave enough to be wide open
How I am vast span of pain and protest
How I fought for understanding and
Acceptance , that I could I posses
This incomprehensible beauty.

Light fades and every sun ray disintegrates
Into gray scale, pays tribute
To faithless hope or a hopeless faith
And I’m losing myself
Like clouds drop rain.
Not a tear shed for the parts they throw away,
Lying all my shadows across the things they say,
Until I’m hallow,
And I feel nothing
But this soft familiar thrumming,
It’s you calling
It’s always knowing when I have no home,
When I have gone insane,
That I can live in the way you say my name.
You watch me, lift me off my toes
Learn the things nobody knows
Chose the things nobody chose
Gather all my pain in your strong arms
Whisper your happy my soul touched yours and that
I’m altogether more than this compilation of scars.
No matter how far I fall
Into dark
No matter how much life
Costs
I swear I see you.
And when I feel small under skies full of stars,
I feel found , tucked under your arm.
I feel safe under your gaze
And I can spend days in your space,
Saying everything,
Saying nothing,
At a comfortable distance,
In the thrill when we’re touching.
And your my best friend I’ve always loved
To keep loving.
Everything changes,
But this familiar thrumming

I don’t know if you knew what the words meant
Or how true they were to you
I only know the way I’d shiver when you said my name
When you whispered like you knew
Where I might have been
The ways that I could grow
Begin...

How do you describe it? The feeling you get deep down inside yourself when your looking down at her? When you hold her frail hand in yours and grasp it as if you could lend some stability to her fragile mortality. When you see her and see everything that escapes those around you.
You see yourself in her, in her dimming eyes because when she is gone she takes a part of you with her. You feel responsible for the wrinkles around that shade of somber blue because you know the exact way she squints a little when she’s laughing; when she smiles. You know the way she gathers her anxious feelings in the crease between her brows. You see all your childhood, all your life and love and existence mapped out on her aged skin like a map to the parts of yourself you could never quite find, never quite understand. You see the scar on the tip of her index finger where she prodded herself on the tip of a seam ripper while mending your torn heart. You are perceptive to the way she has shrunk under the weight of all of her disappointments and hopelessness’ in equal parts with your own and you wonder how, in the perfect silence interrupted only by her shallow breaths, you will ever see anything else. You begin to wonder how you will ever find yourself. And you shudder when her stare focuses in and out like her consciousness, like her memories giving you glimpses of the things being torn from you. Like a phantom limb a place in your chest aches where things once were only to discover empty space a lack of movement when you try to use it. I see anger at her life, at her death, I see loneliness and hopelessness, I see laughter and tears, confusion and purposelessness, I see abandonment and acceptance, I see vulgarity and patience,
I blink
And see only the greatest of absence I have ever known,
And I remain where I am with my eyes clinched closed
Afraid  only to see what I can’t.

Sit still life moves swiftly
And while its shifting remember
You stumble when your sprinting to fast
Into dark past or free floating with eyes
Looking back.
Brush the dirt off
After you held your ground
And remember
You swim to well you won’t actually drown.
Screaming save me is only
An utterance of despair,
Particularly if you know
Your wasting air the on people
you know are not there.
I can’t even save myself
I’m barren I’m broken
I’ve let go,
I’m breaking ground
I’m buried
I’ve died inside
You have to breath to drown.
I feel crazy
Crazy crazy
Indeed the words lost meaning as surly as
I have lost my feeling.

Eulogy
Its difficult in moment like these to come up with something  honest and insightful to make everyone feel better. It’s difficult to find the encouragement necessary to get a bunch of ******’s like you to smile when I have a perfect understanding of what you have lost.  Grandmas passing came with a unique set of challenges I can admit I was not prepared to face. Her death left me feeling as equally perplexed as her life.
When grandma started to really get sick and I had to start wrapping my head around her passing I was afraid of a lot more than I am now. I was afraid I was losing the opportunity to know her sober, I was afraid to lose a member of your strange, perfect, functionally challenged  family with its unique jerry springer dynamics. I was afraid I would lose the feeling that someone understood me, the way family only really can. I was afraid I was losing the person and the pace that tethered me to my origins and everything I think I know about myself. I felt like I was losing a person who provided for me my first understanding of the world and introduced me to the intricacies of the human experience I was losing my reasons to be angry the reasons I loved her. I would be losing the way she accepted every imperfect bit of me completely. I would be losing someone who was there for good or bad to watch me collect my scars and change my mind. I knew I was losing one of the most important women in my life and I was absolutely terrified and in a way I did lose those things.
But in a weird way it was as I was losing her that I feel like I finally found her.  I found her in places I had never thought to look before. I found her in myself when I laugh at things that aren’t funny. I find bits of her younger photos in pictures of me in the way my eyes set on my face In the anxieties we shared. I see her in Jasmines complete acceptance of those around her, I find her in Jessica’s ability to take up an entire room, I hear her in cody’s never ending sarcasm. I see her In the way teia will spend days in a creative endeavor,   I watch her in kalebs quiet observances and in the way he distracts  me from my own grief, I see her sometimes when dad is sad but he still smiles and the stony flash in my mother’s eyes when she’s being  super stubborn. I find her in all of our strange occurrences all these idiosyncrasies . I find her in the way we all have strange relationships with one another just as strange as the ones she had with each of us. I know now better than ever before what she gave me what she gave us and its at least as monumental as the things we have lost lost. I know now here with all of you where I belong, where she belongs and  who she was.  And although I can’t say  for certain if she is with God I can’t shake the feeling that perhaps she is with us and if not than at least I find comfort knowing  we all have something of her in us. I hope you find that as terrifying  and disturbing but mostly comforting as I do. Because for better or worse she’s marked us  and also it’s really difficult in a moment like these to come up with something both honest and insightful that makes a bunch of weirdos like us feel  any better.

I remember when you were the very first I encountered
with tainted innocence,
with blood on your cheek,
it made you seem frightened made you seem
meek,
Sent idealisms against hard cement
split into tiny bits
your light had encountered  dark night
or perhaps a few
and I found an understanding
I had never had in you,
I wanted to show you
I understood the sadness
in your somber eyes,
but your softness always made me smile
and I bathed in your broken edges
In your perfect light;
and yearned for your rough finger tips
I slipped into thoughts you revoked
and I thought I could belong
in your sweetness
I learned you yearned for something
I might not posses and confessed to having broken pieces
I jest at scenarios you thought not best
and I  treasured  you, through
time
through distance
I wanted you
my wanting you persisted
and I’m missing you
I have drown in sorrow and broken hearts,
I’ve given way to false start and lost
Bits of myself along this winding path.
I’m broken and had been choking on the
Words you refused to hear
I’ve floated for a good many years,
And I thought I understood the way the world turned,
Until you took my hand
And all of it went still.
I lost my composure , I found my thrill
And my heart still shutters
The rhythm stutters but still
It utters a single word
It says stay
If it had a sentence I know it’d
Say I  sing  for  you.
And I want nothing more than those
Sad somber eyes, your rough fingertips
And all I can’t say could exist if I were just brave enough
To  press  my  lips  to  your  lips.