Nobody but me has told me that I have no right to grieve the living. I think, in a way, death is easier to accept. You don't run into your dead loved ones on the street, and look away as if you never knew each other. Death carries its own pain, its own terrible hair tearing madness of grief, but I think perhaps it is born in us to know it. It is a natural grief, an unavoidable thing, that leaves no blame upon the one who left. That is one thing I value highly, that when people I love leave me for silence, it is not personal. Death is part of life, it is our final act. Everyone will see it, everyone will endure its mark, it is a natural pain. It has an excuse, a millennium of excuses, for there has never been a person who has not died. I can forgive that. Succumbing to something that no one before you or after you has or ever will resist successfully. That is understandable, it is forgivable, it doesn't even bear forgiving. When somebody dies, your love of them remains pure. However weighted by their absence it might be, it is not tainted or marred. It remains, perhaps sweeter and more present than before. You never have to try and forget it. I feel as if I have no right to grieve the living, when the dead are so much further gone. And yet somehow the living are harder to lose, for when you reach for them, they do not sit still in silence, they push away and turn their heads. How could it be that you would survive it when you asked in grief for one more moment with the one you loved, and from the grave, he said he'd rather not? I think perhaps it is a cruel blessing that death is so final of a loss. For there are other losses, with the same finality, made not of nature but of choices, of pride and fear and foolishness, losses that never make sense. Dying makes sense. And how cruel of me to say it, but it is what I believe and what I feel, that death is somehow more acceptable because it happens to everyone. Each death leaves a huge hole in your heart, in your life, and the grief is like nothing else there is, but the reason you can survive it is that you have the comfort of knowing that the person you lost does not make the choice each day to be gone from you. If you knew that, if you knew that somehow they could return and be what you needed from them, how could you ever heal? But these are past feelings. Passive feelings. I used to think on this far more often. I used to wonder why I felt as if someone had died. I used to feel very stupid for feeling such a deep grief over something so shallow. But as it settled in my being, I realized that for all the differences, death and loss are not so different in their presentation. They settle in the heart, they leave their scars and holes and little triggers of sadness that will never heal. I suppose I should thank god that I never started crying in the grocery store, like my mother did when her sister died. Or in school or on the street. I wanted to, though. That's the thing about death. It's so pure of a loss that nothing can hold back your tears. No pride quells them, no anger or resentment or self righteousness rears in you at their sudden appearance. Pure loss is a beautiful heart rending thing. Those tears in the store or on the sidewalk or home in bed each night, they have no guilt, no "should", no blame. They are simply an expression of love. To express love that way was, to me, forbidden. And so I never burst out in grief after it was done. I cannot say whether that made it harder. People say it probably did. But that is the whole thing- you cannot cry for the living. There is no pity, no proper loss, no excuse to be sad. You cannot grieve the living who have chosen to be dead to you. I respect the purity of true grief and loss. I could not respect my grief over this. It never got a proper expression. Never after it took over and I fought it off. So unnatural, so abhorrent was it to me, that I simply crushed it and went on. I don't know what that choice has done to me, or what it will do in the future. I know only that it was the only honorable thing to do. For you did not deserve my grief, and I did not deserve to grieve beside those who had truly lost someone. It would be wrong, it would be unfair, it would be a defacing of the purity of love that only death can reveal. You cannot mourn the living.

Somebody has unstitched my heart.
Pulled the thread and let it fall apart.
And I'm empty now, it's all hollowed out
And I'm trying to breathe with the lungs I'm without.
It wasn't me, and it wasn't you,
Life did what living tends to do,
It stretched the seams and split the sides,
And I felt nothing here inside,
The only thing that's telling me
That things aren't how they ought to be
Is the seizing stop of breath
Inside my outside heaving chest,
And a familiar ache along
The seam that seemed to last so long,
That now across my ribs agape,
Allows my reason to escape,
Along with not a little blood,
To seep beneath me in the rug.
I could tell you I'm surprised,
But that would surely be a lie,
I feel some grimly got relief,
To succumb finally to belief.
I'm not sure that you understand
I'll be waiting here until the end.

Lead me by the hand and sit me down like I'm a child.
Dry my tears, and take me in your arms.
I've not had love for a tragically long while,
And I'm simply too tired to continue going on.
I'm too young to feel so weary,
I'm too old to be so scared,
And nobody ever hears me
When I beg to be repaired.
I'm too passionate to stop,
And I'm too damaged to go on,
Too self destructive to be taught
That my safe security is gone.

I think I need a revolution.
Everybody hates running.
I want to live in a little apartment in New York, overlooking a cobblestone street. And when it rains I want to sit by the window with a cup of sweet, hot tea, and watch the glow of the streetlights paint those stones and glance off the bricks of all the walls, and shimmer in the drops. I want to see neon streaks along the cars that slip by, sleek. I want a cat on my lap. I want somebody's warm arms around me, and a soft husky feminine voice asking me why don't I come back to bed, honey? I want to linger for a second, soak up the beauty of my world, because I finally can, because I can finally afford to linger alone somewhere instead of constantly fleeing thoughts and memories that bite like flung razors at my back. I want to pause and admire my entire existence, unhindered by melancholy, because finally my life is not unendurable. I want that chance, for that night. For that moment in the quiet hours of the morning, sitting apart from the world, warm and happy and finally safe, looking at its exquisite presence.
But to get that chance, I must keep running. If I stop, if I let it get me, I will never see that day. And that is why I fill my life with distractions and flee my deepest thoughts when they come upon me. It's why the journals stopped for now, and why I hardly draw anymore, and why I am extremely careful which songs make it to my ears. I'm in a race. And if I win, I will win my safety, my security, my life. But if I lose... I lose even more than that. I lose every moment I spent hoping for any of those things. I have to keep
running.

Since the sun first rose and spilled its golden light like nectar across the darkened fields.
Since the night first whispered soft along the ground and painted it deep blues and purples.
Since the rain first fell from the stars, and, gentle, infused the world with some of their light.
Since the moon first hung, pale and luminous, above the night muted world, filling the cracks and crevices with an echo of dawn.
I have known you since wind first breathed life into the trees and swayed them in their eery dance.
Since winter first chilled the world and hid its life away beneath the unyielding snow, and since spring first battled it back with the valiance of warm rains and sunny days.
Since thunder and lightning first hurled the the sky at the frosted ground, and cleaved the heavens in two, stripping away the world’s soft lines of defense.
Since the first balmy days of summer sighed into the mind and burst upon the senses like the sun captured here on earth.
I have known you
Since the clocks first caged time from its wanderings,
Since before the world was small, when wonder still waited behind every corner.
Since the veil between reality and dreams was just a dream itself.
Since the oceans first caressed the shores and ripped away leaving battlefields of ravaged shells.
Since the rivers first glowed crimson in the last rays of sunset, and since the seraphim first sprinkled dew upon the spiderwebs at daybreak.
Since before such ****** concepts as Good or Evil were picketed upon each creature,
Since nature ran wild and stopped at nothing,
Since the darkness first crept into a man’s heart,
I have known you.

I loved you all very much, you know.
It’s not that I didn’t.
I loved everything, but I think that was my problem.
I’m not sorry that I am here, for it is a release from love.
“To love is to destroy, and to be loved is to be the one destroyed.”
I read that somewhere.
After that- and even before- I felt the burden of the damage I did to everyone I met,
And to myself.
One day, I felt it too much, and all my love soured to hatred.
Then I took the knife and turned my love inward,
And here I am in the dark,
Free and empty.
It is not so bad as you might suppose.

One morning I awoke, and the world was different.
It was too bright, too loud, too clear.
I wanted my soft lines back, my cocoon of muffled drowsiness,
But it was gone and I was exposed like a newborn kitten,
Mewling and weak and tender,
And it never faded after that.
Always I felt fragile, as if I were made of glass.
Inside I felt no strength against a fast, cold, hard world.
I reached for people, and they recoiled as I recoiled from them,
For each of us was repulsed by the other.
And so one day, I woke up, and I found my answer.
I took a bath in a swirl of red, and now I am here
In the muffled warm darkness,
And finally my head no longer whirs.
Do not weep for me, for I am finally able to feel safe again.

Perhaps we are afraid to be alone because we fear the space within our heads.
Rattling around
In the echoing darkness
Of an empty room that only we can fill,
Far too small to do so,
And there's bound to be a few seconds when we touch nothing at all,
And wonder if it will always be that way.

I used to be a dried up riverbed.
Desert sand ran in my veins.
I was the wasteland, the dust bowl of my sadness.
And somewhere inside for all those years, the waters rose, the storm brewed.
I never really noticed.
Until one day I cracked down the middle like a clay ***,
And everyone got to see the rainstorm of my tears.
They fell with all the force of a roll of thunder,
And all the searing heat of a lightning strike,
And all the hopeless endless downpour of a monsoon.
They fell and woke me up, and in my anguish little cracks spidered out until I was a web of fissures,
And of a sudden I fell away.
It feels odd to have no shell anymore,
It feels strange to cry in front of strangers when they pry into my heart.
I was never that girl.
I was a desert, dry as bone bleached by the sun, and as hard, and as abused.
And now I am a river, fed by the rain of my troubles drumming on my back, and my feelings show on my face not because I cannot stop them but because I no longer have the will to.
For months I was tired, and when I stopped drowning I realized that there was no going back.
I cannot drag myself to dry land, and so I must learn to swim the waters of myself, however deep, however dark, however painful.
I must learn to hold my breath, and let the tears fall when they will.
I am a river.
Stopping the tears never stops the pain.
This I have learned.

You gave me roses when we met,
Little tiny tea roses, so very sweet.
I looked for the false one in your bouquet,
Too late realized you did only mean a week.

Their corpses lay yellow in my bedroom drawer,
And you lie far away from me,
I guess I must've loved you more,
To lay in my own lies like petals plucked
Innocently.

How do I feel?
You all know how I feel!
I've been telling you all this long year
That I'd rather I died
Than spend any more time
Drowning in stale old trite tears.

How do I feel?
I've screamed how I feel.
I tore at my hair, don't you remember?
The days on that stage
When I fell into rage
Eyes wild, screams silent, wounds tender.

How do I feel?
I've told you how I feel.
I've not stopped my pleas since the fall
When the leaves shriveled and fell
I told you I was in hell
I told everyone, everything, all.

How do I feel?
I've sobbed how I feel.
Over tiles and full plates and porcelain.
My words sound so nice
You forget that they're right
Read the truth from my meek little pen.

Am I okay?
You should know what I'll say.
I've been answering you for a lifetime.
If you'd only listen
You wouldn't be missing
The boldfaced italicized signs.

How do I feel?
Angry sad hurt alone
I feel empty and hopeless and ragged.
I feel as I've felt
For a long time without
Love to make the world's edges less jagged.

Just because my worlds lilt
Doesn't mean I don't tilt
Tiptoed over a death dive.
The emptiness calls
And demands that I fall.
How do I feel?
I feel barely alive.

I think I might have better been a fish
Skittering up and down among the waving weeds,
Free of thought and love and dream and wish,
Cuddled by a current like a breeze.

And I would linger on or then be eaten
Because those are the options to be had.
But never by another bled or beaten-
My wanting blood now cool and never sad.

And never would I drown in pride or sin
Because I'd take my breath beneath the water
But if I were to drown and nature win,
My departure from the world would hardly matter.

How lovely life would be in blue green quiet,
To know just what I should be and to be it.
Never again to feel love or deny it,
And forget what I have seen soon as I see it.