Lately I've thought
that I was becoming
quite skilled at building walls
and burning bridges.
It starts to feel natural
after you do it so many times,
with every new lover.
new beginnings
always looked so appealing.

And then something shifted
as you smiled at me;
and I panicked as I felt
the walls crumbling
and something like love
seeped in and held me fast.

I let the words that sit
festering in my brain
pour out into the space
between our lips
and you drank them in
like water,
gifting me with
sweet repose
like an inconspicuous
land mine.

I have had bits of my heart taken,
pinched tight between greedy fingers
and shining white incisors
just to be squandered between cold sheets
and walls without windows.

I have given small pieces of myself
in a subtle show of willing naïveté
only to watch them wilt and die
without patient hands to tend to them.

I have lost so many essential parts
that there's not much left to give-
everything is mathematical
and there is no pain in letting go.
I am an expert in the field of
cool, calculated detachment.

But then there was you.
you came padding in softly,
asking for nothing,
taking nothing.
I gave you only
what I had the strength to,
and for the first time,
I could see the pieces
blooming and thriving
as they crawled over the trellises
of your wandering heart.

The empty spaces fill
with shadows of your voice
and a glimmer of your eyes
when you're smiling

and for the first time,
I am whole.

I do not belong here*
my mind whispers
in repetitive strokes
as my hands falter
and the words tumble
over my broken lips.

The atmosphere is
sticky and stifling,
squeezing all of the pure air
out of my paper bag lungs
in hot pursuit of this
singular weakness
that flickers and expands
inside my ladder chest.

The love of it all
is killing me,
slowly and with meticulous
precision.

The mourning doves
cooing their last regrets,
the poplar trees rattling
their soft lamentations,
the wind caressing
my neck upon a
sun strewn precipice-

all of it has never meant more
than a lonesome swelter
of emotions that press
and spill through the
cracks in my facade.

The flowers that reach
and bend for me
in misty golden dawns,
the endless sea
like molten metal
in the moonlight,
all of it, all of it,
wasted as it flows
through my fingertips

and I dream of floating
face down for
eternity,
where a smile
might mean something
more.

I stand, face to the sun,
waiting for the ******
promised to me
by great, ancestral stars
and false prophets.

Your time will come,
and you will be free.

But their predictions
forsake me.

What I thought was freedom
was only a larger cage.

I can see right through you;
the cogs turning
within your chest
as though your flesh
were naught but
glass and mirrors.

I can see those things
that you wanted to keep
shut up inside of you-
the black melancholia
that pulls at your skin
and the voices
you keep trying to hush.

I can see through you,
all of you,
into landscapes
less numinous
when superimposed
over barren ground
and eyes that glint
like topaz.

I think of you
like hands think of folding;
like birds think of singing.
I think of you
without meaning,
in the middle of my sentence;
while I'm standing in line.
I think of you
and my heart sounds off
dangerous rhythms
reminiscent of your words.

I think of you
and I wilt in remembrance
of something like love
that we beat to death
with words like sledgehammers
and glances like knives.

I think of you,
and I try not to miss you
too much.

You smile with the rising sun
and your eyes crinkle at the corners
just so.
My eyes are red and bleary
and my hands are shaking;
I haven't eaten in two days
and I think that this disease
must be written all over my face.

But you just smile,
and your tongue is forming words
like beautiful and perfect
and I think I might be sick.

It's like deja vu
over and over and over again,
and I haven't got the heart
to tell you that in a month or so
you'll hate me.

unseen melodies buzz like cicadas
borne out into the velvet night,
filling up my ears and eyes
with beautiful blind fervor
until you bury me
and the honeysuckle sings,

denying everything I thought
resembled truth.

I'm growing weary
of wayward glances
and haphazard fingers.
I crave hands that grip
and fold around my edges,
if only so that I can tear them away.

I'm growing weary
of false prophets and
kisses that are sweet
as wild raspberries.
Give me words that scald
and love that makes me question
everything I've ever wanted.

I'm growing old
and still feeling like a child.
Fickle and temperamental,
I brush away men like flies
to waste away in a mirage
of my own creation.