They say that smell
Is your strongest sense
When tied to memory.

That just a whiff of a smell
Or even thought of a
Smell can bring you back
To a place and a time that
You had previously
Thought were left behind.


For me the smell of
Bleach is comfort, as my
Nanny used it as a
Standard, household
Cleaner. I love that smell
As well as of my favorite
Dinner, mildew (reminds me of summers spent
At camp, living out of a trunk) and
My favorite flowers

Each of these smells I
Love to revisit time and
Time again. One smell
Though has embedded
Itself in my memory and if
I have my way, I’ll never
Smell it again.

Mom had Colon cancer most
Of my time in
High school.
No clue on the stage
But it was best not
To
Ask

Surgeries, chemo, radiation, the
Whole
Nine

Things seemed to be fine,
Well, even great
Until it took a turn

My mom has never been
Skinny; she is petite, but
Normal

Suddenly she looked like
A holocaust victim
She would get quiet
Draw into herself
For periods of time

Another surgery. Fine
She returned home
And then something crept in

That something was death
And I’ll never know how I knew
You just know.

The smell of something
Dying
Isn’t pleasant
It puts you on edge
And turns your stomach

Mom was confident
That she was getting better

The smell, that can’t
Be described (dying tissue, pain
Suffering) was glaring
To me

I never asked Mom or Dad
If they could smell it
Because the smell of Death
Isn’t a sense that should
Be shared

I would just maintain that
I didn’t think
Something was right
A day or so later

Surgery. Fine. Home.
Smell.

Surgery. Fine. Home.
Smell.

Surgery. Fine. Home.
After that last
Surgery. The smell
Left. But even now
When I think back
To that time
That complicated time of
Soccer games
Chemotherapy
Apply to college
Surgeries
The one thing in the
Foreground
Is
That
Smell


Just a whiff of death
Of human decay
Of dying
Of suffering
And I’ve had my fill
For a lifetime

There is an unsuspecting spot
on campus

A lone bench at
the intersection of several
paths, that holds
unforgiving memories.

As I sit here
now
I am self-conscious
of the bench

I move.

I realize that this bench
only has the meaning
of sadness and tears
for
me.

I move back.

This bench, in the dead of night,
was the place
where I realized
I couldn't save you

You had more
pain
anger
and
fear
in you than I thought possible

I cried.

Your words, covered in
shame
regret
and
grudges
angered me
saddened me
moved me to tears

I held your hands
as they shook
and we cried
and I knew
I felt
as if
I lost you

The years before the drugs
before the smiles
the bright times
the easy nights
were dark

But I only knew darkness so
to me it was brighter than the sun

There were nights of red bull and vodkas
of googling obsessions
and losing my personality for a weekend
There were days and days of misery

my sobs
my screams
my nightmares
my tears
your tears


I would scream until the air in my lungs were gone
I would get down
I would run for hours
and I would feel my skin crawl

The years before the drugs I was cruel
a 13 year old girl with a razor sharp tounge
hell bent on expressing pain
any way possible

This experience isnt unique
but just because it isnt unique
doesn't mean I dont need to apologize
for the years before the drugs

I'm sorry.

Looking out
Around
There is a generation
Not the one with angelheaded hipsters
That were laid infamously famous
But truly a generation that is its own

Cold, calculating, as they, we, must
Be now that there is everything
There is everything here but right now
As we are surrounded by the everything that
Makes up our filled lives, we concentrate on
The nothing.
So we, they, them, I all must be cold, calculating
Networking, meeting, greeting, cheering,
Pleading for work in the everything that is
Nothing.

And as I look out, through the window
Into our generation, my generation
There is a warmness
A kindness once
unfamiliar to coldness and calculating
Where despite distance, time, values, reasons
Nothing
everything
Bonds are made

Is it this cold networking, greeting, meeting that
Allows for the kindness that kindles the fire
That keeps our cheeks warm and glowing
A soft pink in the dead of night
As we stand by kegs, cups, tables, cops, cars, bars,
By girls vomiting on their own volition or not
By boys raising hell as their families admonish but
Their cultures praise

We, Them, I, They, Us, can not know
What we, them, I, They Us are doing
Just as others didn’t know what they
Were doing, and meaning and becoming maryters for
On a clear fall day, when there wasn’t a cloud in the sky
Yet turbulence filled the air, the nation and the world.

They, We, I, Us, Them, do not even
Consider their meaning as they ponder
Fake lives on interposed mediums
Or if they are Jackies,
Or Marilyns or
Audreys

Or if laying down somewhere
just as warm as it is cold
As they touch souls with others
Means anything more than nothing
If they can hold on as they try to let go
When an entire world begs them not to

But the teenage desire to rebel is strong
And the pull of the vast of emotions is stronger
And as we seem to be losing
In clusters
The We.
I.
Us.
They. Them
The fire never dims, and the warm pink glow never flickers
Off our cheeks
And the mix of cold calculations and
Pleasant beatitudes
Combine, like a nights plans
In a gin bucket

And the thought of importance, rarely is thought
Of aside from the few
The brave
Maybe a Marine, but mostly
Those who wish to cure things, change other things
Create things, build things, code things
Things Things Things Things.
T-H-I-N-G-S
For a future of nothing and everything
Everything and nothing

An old man once said, "Being in love is like the color TV, once you have it you never want to go back to Black and White"
This sounds too beautiful to be wrong
But too foreign to me to be right
So here I sit,
Remote in hand
Studying each channel I see
Looking for a hint of color

Does it happen all at once?
Or seep in through the corners?
Or a scene at a time?

Sometimes I think I see some color
Coming into the frame
But as soon as I think it
It’s gone before my eyes
Just a trick of the light
Back to that old black and white

Is that a new costar?
To colorize my life?
As soon as I see him
He’s gone
And I’m back to black and white

It’s too beautiful to be wrong
To unknown to be right
But when
Oh when
Will I have color in my life?

I hope you know what you’re doing
when you leave your girlfriends, fiancées and ****-buddies
who are dying to be more
on those weekend nights

I hope you know what you’re doing
when you flash me that grin
and buy me a drink

That you know what you do to me
when you laugh at my jokes and tuck
that strand of hair behind my ear

I hope you know what you’re doing
when you bite my lip and hold me close

I hope you know what you’re doing
when you say you’ll talk to me
later but you go home to her

unbeknownst to me

I hope you know what you’re doing
because I never seem to.

Dear Loyal Customers,

I regret to inform you that My Heart will be closing effective immediately.

I have enjoyed having y’all as customers and we will miss you dearly.

Unfortunately, due to the recession, I must close our doors.

I cannot afford to stay open during this terrible economic climate.

So there will be no more bad choices, good choices or poor decisions.

I understand this maybe a shock to some of our most loyal customers; however, we know your wives, fiancées and girlfriends will be happy to have you home.

There is the possibility of starting up again, when I get enough credit to afford the costs.

Maybe in a different town, in a city far away, My Heart will open again, but until then, it has been a pleasure serving y’all for the past three years.


Sincerely


Cornelia
Owner of My Heart

I've never known anything
as dark as that November
When blinding brightness
vanished
replaced by a creeping darkness
which infected
wherever I laid my
thoughts.

Except for maybe
that December
When as others were fighting for their
GPA
I was fighting to
Keep my head above
water

Christmas break came
and I went
home relieved to
have made it

As my friends went to
places of worship
parties
malls
I went to
doctor's offices
pharmacies
my bed.

The office with its leather
couch, friendly dog
and a sweater-loving doctor
who listened
and listened
and listened
but never spoke
as I talked
and cried
and yelled of
my fears
obsessions
doubts.

He never said much
But finally wrote for me
some numbers
and one complex name.

I was saved.

I've never known anything as
dark as that
November
and
December

I said our joke yesterday
And almost laughed
myself back

Your father's company
was at the exchange
And every broker had
your face

Your name
Appears in my phone
I try not to remember
your alcohol laced breath or
your beliefs on Taylor Swift

I read about the team
And think of you

You. All of you. Are now
apart of me while you are
apart of them

Where does that leave me?
Alone, incomplete,
thinking about you
who never thinks about me.

I had a dream last night
that I couldn't remember
until three little words
brought it all back

In an instant
like a whiff of a smell
or the chorus to your favorite song
three little words brought
me something back
I had no idea that I'd lost

What do I do now?
I've been left a present
on the doorstep of my consciousness
nothing to do now
but acknowledge it
There is nothing to be done
nothing to say
other than a sigh
and that
I wish life was that way

It’s true what they say
You fit me better
Than my favorite sweater

That’s why I’m not happy to say
What I have to say
But I have to
Say

So crack open a beer, sit with
Me my dear
And just
Listen
To what I must say

I’m sick
But this isn’t
Nicholas Sparks
****

I’m sick in my brain
And down through my
Spine
I’m living in a hell of my own design

The monsters I face
Are just in my head
Though sometimes
I feel I’m
Better off dead

So when you see
That I’ve disappeared
In the night
Please
Don’t worry
Or
Put up a fight

Just know ill be back
As soon as I can
When I know
All of me
Can return to you
Again

Things during this time
Time of flux
Of growth
Of shrunk
Of 140 character thoughts
And emotions
Which once seemed endless and long
But became stunted to fit in a coded box
Do not rest easy on my mind

These things plague my mind
Forcing thoughts there that I do not wish to be
There as all I want is to float off to the 9th cloud
As I lay there breathing
As I lay dying
I just wish to meet, discuss, and submit to
The man from the desert, with sand in his pockets
But these flashes
There 140 character thoughts
Flash before my eyes
Making it almost impossible for
My dear, dear friend to visit
And for any true work to be accomplished

I’ve learned my lessons
To live boldly
To love fiercely
To never miss a dose

To never leave my chap stick
In the car on a
Sunny day in Texas

To do my hair while its wet
To not trust them when they say
“you’re beautiful”

To be the only one who holds my heart
To laugh at anything funny
To get enough sleep
And not procrastinate

Then tell me
If I have my lessons learned
Why am I still here

With sadness in my lungs
A missed dosage in my brain

Awake in the early morning that
Still could be called night

If my lessons are learned
Why am I here doing this
Listening to the silence
As my chap-stick sits
Abandoned in the car
Awaiting its imminent
Demise when the Texas sun
Will surly rise

If my lessons are learned
Why haven’t I learned?

Right now I need poetry. Right now, the gentle rock of music isn’t doing its usual job. Right now my heart feels as if it were an ocean adrift in an ocean, lost inwardly and outwardly. Its amazing how this is possible, this feeling, when we all know where the heart is: in the chest cavity. And unless you are a rare medical find, on the left side of the chest cavity, but surprisingly more to the middle than we normally think. I know my heart isn’t adrift; it is doing this crazy painful job of constantly beating. Constantly. Even when I rest, it doesn’t and while I don’t want it to stop, I feel bad, for the constant stress and strain it is under. And even as I write this, my heart still is beating, pumping, cycling, but this time with a bit of pain…a wave in the ocean within an ocean. I’m not a fan of poetry, they lyrical word confuses me. I prefer, long, arduous prose, to the lyrical word. But right now, something primal, animalistic in me, needs poetry in the worst way. It prospectively feels like Gatorade for my heart. Which may I mention is still beating. In one of those amazing moments of life where I realize how amazing something is, our heart is the most astonishing thing. It goes for years, with out stop, without rest. Without a break. It is an amazing thought. The only thing I will do for that long is live…Its just a weird thought. But honestly, this ocean within an ocean is killing me. I need poetry in the worst way.

Whenever I pass
something
That shows a reflection

I can’t help but look
and see if I can see
the reason people
say things like:
             Beautiful
                       Gorgeous
                                Lovely
                                          Pretty

                                                      Every time I pass my
                                                      reflection
                                                      I’m on the lookout

                                                                                                      I haven’t seen it yet.

You may be a scar on my heart
But you are also a burn on my
Spine