thank god i can’t write good poetry
the best poetry comes from pain and hurt if you ask me
so although i can’t write like i used to
at least it means i’m doing alright

do you ever wonder
about the difference between
looking at something
and the hallucination created
when looking past it?
if you look at your hand
it's all you can see
but if you look past your hand
there are now two of them
sometimes it's hard for me
to remember which is real
it gets me thinking
about how my father
used to wake me up
in the morning by rubbing
his stubble across my face
i spent my 11th birthday
under the assumption
that he might come back
if i drank his aftershave
like maybe if i could turn blue
if i could be his favorite color
on our bathroom floor
he would forget why he left
the paramedics were all sobing
as they pumped memories
out of my stomach
i coughed up the day the post-it note with your new address on it
burned a hole in our refrigerator
coughed up the day
the divorce papers came
and my mother
took a baseball bat to the mailbox
i've been choking on the splinters
for 17 years
it's been 17 years
since the last dinner plate
exploded on our dining room wall
17 years since my mother
started accidentally setting your place at the dinner table
17 years since italian night
at the restaurant on the corner
where the juke box
spat tired music
and like so many other things
it stopped working when you left
i guess it's no coincidence
since the juke box went quiet
that the cds in my car
only skip on "i miss you"
i've been hemorrhaging memories
for so long
and now that i'm looking back
i can no longer tell
the mirage from the truth
sometimes i swear
you showed up to my graduation
and last time
i was at your apartment
i can't remember
if the imprints of my hands
are in clay hanging on your wall
or if they were left in the mud
the day god had the audacity
to let it rain
or maybe it's like the time
i saw someone crying on a bridge
now that i think about it
i can't remember if it was me

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.

pounding temples
angry god(s)
boom like thunder
in my skull
sleep evades me
it's you that saves me
but dear,
your absence is hell

-m.f.

when i was a little girl -
i believed my daddy was the smartest man in the world.
he knew everything. everything.
if i had a question, daddy had an answer, and a good one.
always.

his degree was in biology,
but he preached from a pulpit every sunday.
his friends, colleagues, congregation, all knew him as Pastor Brett.
to me he was just daddy -
and he was the smartest man in the world.

on days when i couldn't understand my own head,
(which were, and still are, very often)
and got frustrated with myself to the point of tears,
he would kiss my cheeks and promise me i wasn't stupid.
and coming from him, the smartest man i knew, that meant the world.

as years passed and i grew, my naivety remained with me,
and so i thought i was too smart to fall into life's traps.
i fell. i fell fast. i fell hard. i fell often. and i shattered.
each time, the smartest man in the world picked up my pieces
and reassured me i was still welcome in his home.

he never loved me any less, much to my bewilderment.
however, as my faults increased in frequency and severity,
he picked up my pieces now with weathered hands and weary eyes.
his smile was weaker, and a deep pain stirred in the chocolate irises behind his wire-rimmed glasses.

my deception morphed into vines that constricted and twisted and choked out the truth.
he poured out his love onto an underserving me, and said that God would still forgive.
but i, daughter of the smartest man in the world, am a fool.
and by my own two hands, i continued to sink.

he leaves me to pick up my own pieces now, not loving me any less,
but too weak, too exasperated, too heartbroken to do it himself as he always had.
he is done. he loves me and i know it. he shows it. but he is done.
my tears bore him. my half-true stories and pitiful excuses move in one ear and out the other.
he is stone-faced, no longer shocked by my confessions so i leave them unspoken.

his kisses, sear my flesh. his love burns because i know i don't deserve a single shred of it.
i wish he hated me. i wish we could fight. that would make things easier, right?
but he won't. he just won't. he loves me so much and i can't stand it.
but he is done. i broke my father, and his heart, for nothing.

he asked me why i do the things i do,
why i don't just stop it. why i keep on hurting him and my mother.
i didn't have an answer. all i had to offer the smartest man in the world,
was a dry mouth and empty hands.

m.f.