Without you I often feel
Like a child who has lost her parents in a department store
And turns round and round
Waiting to be rediscovered and led back home.
It is a childlike feeling
In that it is so pure and intense
That it overwhelms everything else.
It's consuming,
This...lost, echoing sort of feeling,
This space inside me that calls
For you to be next to me and heal me.
It's the simple, gripping yearning
Of the child inside my heart
For connection
For tenderness
For contact-
To reach out and find purchase with my fingers
In the warmth of someone else's skin,
Someone I love,
Someone I trust.
Someone I miss,
Even when they are close.

Without you I often feel
Like a balloon that has been cut from its string
And left to wander through the stratosphere,
A lone black dot wavering above the treetops.
I have no control over where I am taken,
No way to reach out to where I've come from and say
"Wait, I want to go back."
I am adrift, in the most terrifying sense,
Emotionally floating through the emptiness of air,
Above all else but utterly alone.

I fear being away from you,
Is the truth,
Is the constant struggle.
I fear the mornings when your arms are not around my waist
And your breath isn't on my collarbone.
I fear the days when my hand isn't clasped in yours,
Tattooed in golden brown henna and entwined,
Fragile but steadying,
Like the rope that holds a ship fast and safe from the greedy fingers of the sea.
I fear the evenings when you aren't curled up beside me,
Your smooth voice telling me stories and ideas.
I fear the nights when I cannot look at your sleeping face
And feel the heartbreak cry out in my chest
Of loving every curve of it
In the halflight shadows
And seeing your skin glow gold
Against the velvet darkness.
I fear every second that you are not near me,
And that is why I feel so oddly lonely
In any tiny breath of a moment
That I am unoccupied.

Without you,
I'm not even entirely sure I exist.
Not properly,
Not like one should exist.
I think perhaps I pale a little,
Like a negative photograph,
Perhaps my edges become a little hazy
And the world bleeds into me and takes my light,
And my skin becomes a little transparent
So that if I stand before a streetlight in the rain
You can see the wet road through my back.
I think a little bit of my color drains,
And I become drab as a silverscreen movie,
Only projected upon the world and not
Really there.

No way of approaching how I feel without you
Can explain it fully,
And little flashes of what I mean dart across my vision like meteors.
I can try to equate it with something relatable,
Something tangible,
But the truth is that missing you transcends the words I've got to explain it.

I feel like a child, crying because she has realized what the word "alone" means.
I feel like a ship, cut adrift and floating through a mirror sky of sea
With no land in sight.
I feel like a worn out film reel
Ghost of an image hollographed against the world.
I feel like I've lost something
I couldn't live without.
My lungs, perhaps.
Maybe an artery,
Or the bones in my legs.
It feels wrong, to be without you.
And yet,
I am.
Without you,
I am...
Something.
But I'm not even sure I care to know
What.

I walk out their back door
and onto F street.
I stand there for a second
halfway up the hill
staring at the deep reds and soft pinks of the fading sunset
and then turn and continue on my way
into the shadows of the multi story brick buildings
that form my high school
my old school.
I walk through the staff parking lot and under the library
where I spent my lunches for three of those four years
alone.
I climb the stairs and walk past the couch,
the giant cement couch that gets re-painted every night
with a message of some sort,
this time it's white with green letters welcoming the 2014 seniors.
the lights are all on and another guy walks past on the other side of the lawn
I stand there for a second and he passes me
I want to stand here forever
staring at all the buildings
staring at my life for four years,
but I continue on
past the annex, the gym, the Stuart
past the Catholic church where I took pictures in the last snowstorm
past the Mar Vista portables and the art portable
and down Blaine street
where we'd run freshman year in PE,
tapping the gate at Chetzemoka and running back.
Sophomore year I'd walk the same route
during photography and video productions, with friends.
Some days I would turn and walk down to Aldriches,
some days I would continue on
some days I would rehearse my own poetry under my breath.
Today I turn a block before Chetz and continue down the hill
past the condos and the turn off for Point Hudson
past the skate park
past Memorial Field (packed with so many memories)
past the park, the old police station,
the ice cream shop dad used to work at,
the tea shop where I've spent so many hours,
the fountain, the stairs, the writers workshop, the old underground coffeeshop,
my therapist's office, the best pizza in town,
the motel where my mom's first roommate now lives (and works),
into the port and past grandma's old workplace,
past the restaurant my grandpa used to spend hours at
and the boat he used to live on
past the port showers they used to use
and onto the trail along the beach I would walk with mom and grandma
when my now 12 year old brother was in a stroller,
past the mill, sitting at the bottom of three long winding hilly roads,
containing memories of that awful polluted stench that clings to the first third of this town
and would cling to my dad when he'd return from work,
and up the road we lived on when we first moved here.
Past the homeless trails I have scavenged for beer cans on for hours for spare change
and the apartments we used to live in,
past the flowershop where I bought the corsage
that the cheerleader I went to prom with kept getting complimented on.
Past my best friends house
and past the flooring place that we mowed the grass for last summer.
Across the roundabout that has grown into the highway
past the crematorium and waste not want not.
Past the apartments that she lives in, my name still somewhere in her heart.
Past my fathers Jeep and under the archway, covered in dead roses.
Across the mossy yard and through my front door.
I'm going to miss this town.

You could just lie
You'd get done faster
shut up, shut up
You could just cry
They'd buy it quicker
be quiet, be quiet
You shouldn't try
You'd have free time
quit it, quit it
You might just fly
You have to jump
I can't, I can't
You just can't die
You should smash it
Leave me, Leave me
You are mine
You can't escape me
*I will, I must

Every woman looks like you
And I love them for it
Brown eyes
Brown hair
There was something uncommon
Despite the mundane traits

It's like my favorite birdsong
Or the best smells from childhood
Mixed with the best tastes
You were the spring and autumn
Of my childhood, adolescence, madness

You were the summer and winter
Of my heart, my soul, my desire
Brown Eyes
Brown Hair
My Mundane, Miraculous Madonna
My joy and Sorrow

I miss you even when
I'm right beside you
Because I can feel the parting to come
It breaks my heart that I can't hold you
and kiss away the tears
But he'll do just fine
And I'll toast your health, and his
While I drink alone
Again.

I'm wearing a skirt on purpose
I lift my legs to rest on a pole
So that it rides up
And you touch me
You do that so well
The switch was turned on
And for me there is no off
Only completion
You rub me
Your turned on too
I can tell
My hand slips back and grazes
The graze becomes a rub
And before we know it we are bare
Our souls shown in the vulnerablity of this nudeness
Our bodies collide
I'm louder than I have been
The pounding is what I needed after all the riding I've done
I just can't help but moan
You say you love me
I love you too
I try to scratch because you like it
And I can't help myself
Eventually
We're done
And I feel closer to my soul mate than ever.

They stole you
Stole that picture
I had kept
That kept me whole
That kept me from tears
They stole that smile
And that scar
They took
The little piece of sanity
That I still possessed
They stole from me
My whole world.