I used to write poems
Who knew how to rhyme
Easy words hung out together
Matching pace, keeping time

But now I like my proses
That don’t have to try so hard
I can write each phrase
Quick as it catches ablaze
No rhythm in it’s ways
Just minding its own business
As it swirls across my page

But I guess it’s not the words themselves
That put in the effort
That craft phrases so pristine
You’d think they’d been conceived by Robert Redford
(Oof)

It’s my latent mind
That no longer lives in the land of
Rhyme
Where AABB and ABA
Just aren’t my preoccupation
They don’t rise me to another station
Of talent and prowess
Of being the very best

I just want to write out how I feel
And not worry how it sounds
That is until I go back
And see how emotions lack
In words that don’t capture me
Don’t rapture me
With their romanceless apathy

I forgot that poetry is poetry because it is an art
That a lion is more a lion for his mane than for his heart.
Would a balding lion still best the other beasts?
Perhaps
But if so,
Wouldn’t you know
That a bald lion is a she
The one who hunts and bears new beasts
The one who bleeds and shares her meat
The one who mangles cub thieves
And I’m sure the one who untangles
Knots in the mane of the he

I digress from this feminist lioness
But I like this point of view
That sometimes beauty is better
And sometimes better is use
But I also already knew that
And if you’re still reading, so did you

My point is that though I am
Smarter now
Older
More mature
With thoughts that vibrate higher
And far less victim overtures
My poetry has suffered
And I enjoy it less
And now to create
Swooning phrases capped in rhythm
I must confess
That I labor

In my old way of feeling I found it easier to create
But in my new way of thinking

Ah
There it is.
In my new way of being I think
I choose when to be swayed by an emotion
Rarely being overtaken
But also rarely feeling forsaken
Accepting calmly an occasion where my intentions are mistaken
No matter,
I remain unshaken

There we go
I’ve got it back
A little rhyme
Picking up the slack
And in the evening I’ll have a snack
Some carbs
Some sugar
And the extra poundage won’t give me anxiety attacks
Cellulite on my thigh
Doesn’t make me want to cry
I’m not so lonely
I am content
I am ambitious
I pay my rent
I don’t overeat
Or undereat
I just want to feel sated
I’m not frustrated
I don’t feel hated
And my gratefulness is never belated
I’m happy
I am not manic
An unanswered text won’t send me into a panic
I moisturize
I don’t have bags under my eyes
I don’t compromise
I won’t lie
And when I care I really try
I love my home
And love my skin
I love my bumpy shins
I don’t feel stressed about my age
Or the passing of time
So I suppose I won’t fret
That my words won’t always rhyme

I took a bath
The other day
After looking at your Instagram
And seeing a photo of you on your birthday
You are wildly different now
Then you were when I last saw you

You were so sweet with a sleepy in your eye
And smile in mind
So confused when you asked “What?” “Why?”

Now honey you’re almost ugly in your darkness  
But the curve of your brow, the shape of your teeth, the beak in the center of your face
I’m still fond I’m still sweet on all of it
I still want you in my bath
But I guess I probably don’t want you, you
I want old young you and old young me
Sitting in my tub
Making bubbles
Playfully disrespecting each other
You were a bit of magic in my potion bottle
That never stops giving
I have no angst or pain associated with our parting
Because our meeting was so perfect
I wonder if you remember it too
Or maybe you blocked me out

Either way, you’re in my mind
Always laughing in the dark looking so ******* sublime.

I forgot that I’m a lover
I mean I guess I always knew
But I forgot I’m the kind of lover
Who’ll kiss and kiss and kiss until we’re blue
The kind who’ll miss and miss and miss the sensation of a you
Who
I enjoy

Afraid
Of a good feeling
You see, it always goes wrong
Afraid of I don’t even know what
Because I’m too scared to look through the door.

Enamored
By this weightless feeling
That’s evaded me for so long
Such an immediate
Intimate
Thing

I forgot what the feeling was like
And the power it can have
What if you wreck my life
What if I do?
What if I forget all my plans
And abandon myself again
I’ve done it so many times
What if it happens again with you

Feeling pathetic and these emotions that well up inside
Triggered by this feeling that should just feel good
But it’s doesn’t feel just good it feels terrifying
I’m shell shocked
I don’t know what this means
Now suddenly my age matters to me
My desires are foreign to me
I’m scared to lose myself again
I’m scared to be torn apart

But so so so so so so so much more afraid than I ever thought I was
I had no idea I was still shaking
I had no idea I was still wailing
I had no idea I was still this girl in the dark
I thought I was doing so much better than I am

But how can I say no to me and yes to me at once?
How can I deprive myself of this maybe good thing
How can I offer myself this maybe bad thing

Where are these feelings from?
Me? Or you?

If I’m honest
And I pretend that I’m calm and cool
I’d say they’re from me
But
You like me too and now mine have doubled
Maybe
Or maybe they were already doubled
Who am I.
Where did this girl come from again.
This slick emotional heap that I’ve shamed for her passion because I thought it was sick
But now I’m feeling something I don’t want to resist

Yes we’ve been here before. But maybe we haven’t, I don’t know. How do you know the difference between what you’ve always known and it’s many many iterations and something you’ve never known that could appear the same?

Is this how I felt before? Last year? With the orange and black and the blue?
I have no clue. I was different then and I’m different now but also I’m exactly the same girl with exactly the same fears
I don’t know
It’s a lot but also isn’t it not so much?

Confronted with fear and in realizing I’m more afraid, more traumatized than I thought.
Its gotten so bad before.
How do we go slow? I do not know.

I can learn I hope. Or maybe it’ll all be okay and it’ll all work out for the best. I just don’t want to suffer in the middle, I will work hard and try and be smart and good but I don’t want to be hit anymore. It’s already been so bad, and the more I heal it seems to get better.

I can’t even hear for the fear.

I loved to watch you eat
You were like a gopher and a very silly shark
You would take a cute little bite
And then rub your fingers back and forth
and very politely lick only just the very barely inside of your lips
And sometimes if it was a very good bite
you would straighten your shoulders a little more
almost like a cartoon soldier coming home from war
It was a delight to watch you eat
actually
And then sometimes so satisfied
Your pronounced brow would hitch downward
Tugging downward past your eye
Looking at the mushroom like a pirate
or a very sneaky antagonist leopard
in a cartoon about leopard
rivalries.
A quick "Mmmm" would mutter from your mouth
and I enjoyed you nearly as much as you enjoyed that bite

You're still my vice baby
It scares me how much I love the thought that I could be yours too
The idea that I'm not
I push away
As it tries to confirm old beliefs that I am not enough
That what I want will not come to me

Because I live anew
Now
What I want lands in my path
"I am abundance" I repeat as I fall asleep

I hope with tearful eyes
And shaking breath
And that sweet earnest quiver in the bridge of my nose
That one day you won't be my vice
That you'll be my good morning
Or my Tuesday afternoon
That we'll be in tune
Like we were in June and May and October and December

I don't want anything from you that you don't want though
And how hard to know what to want
When I'm afraid.
I don't want to live in fear
So I must live apart

But is it all so dramatic anyway?

I don't want to always be so deliberate in my wants

It's not all love and romance

It's just a normal day
Meaning passing between us

Is what I pretend.
But really.
Fervently, I love you.

I love your jaw and your voice.
I love your laugh
How giddy you become like a child smiling at the sun
I love your mania
I love your crazy eyes alight in the moon
I love your BELIEF I love your ******* earnest sincerity.
Who the **** else is earnest like that?
It's gorgeous, I'm obsessed.
I could drink and bathe in your sincerity.

A bless or a curse to be the object of my obsession
I worry how my attraction to you would affect you
Would it be too much?

I think so.
Read the signs, see the facts
When someone tells you who they are believe them and all of that...
But, I'd rather not?
Instead I want to think that when we stood behind your house smoking that joint trying to stay away from the wind that you felt the tension too.

I love the way you wear boots.
I love the way sweaters hang on your shoulders.

****, each time I revisit your room in my mind I must confirm again and again with growing certainty that I am obsessed with you.

Each one giving for the other.

But then we were giving too much
From a place we didn't have to give from
From dry wells we fed each other our earth
When what the other needed was sunshine and water

But we hid together beneath the earth
Building little tunnels between our wells
Digging out the earth underneath
Forming a wide chasm between our wells
Earth cleared out by our most ancient thoughts

Our network of tunnels
Each giving consent to our nightmarish coping
Easily excavating thousands of avenues
A complex and beautiful city grid
An Atlantis a la toxic-lovers-just-learning-to-love-well built in the earth and clay at the bottom of these wells becoming one
Sweeping breaths pouring more and more illness through our tunnels

Our relationship built of the mutual chemical compounds in the poison cups we drank each day and then began to feed to each other.

We needed therapy and instead we held each other on the shower floor wailing and surviving by filling each other up with the others' insides, then dumping that new cocktail back into the other, over and over and over again. For a few moments balancing our sloshing insides between our mouths.

Each one giving for the other.