You run your fingers
Over my smooth skin
And turn every bare part
That you touch
Into little shivers
And into little fragments
Of forever.


-- Eleanor

My best friend doesn't have a physical body
I feel her more than my own skin sometimes.
She tends to come and go as she pleases--
It's always unpredicatble and univited
but I always feel obligated to cater to her needs
like a good hostess should to their guest

It gets old so quickly
I don't even want to get up and cook breakfast for her anymore
so we starting eating out
until its too hard to even leave the house
so she tells me that we can stay in bed and have sleepovers like the good old times
I don't remember those times

She likes to play with my hair
she's not very good at it though
it always ends up in tangles and knots that take
hours and days to brush out once she leaves
because undoing her handiwork would make her sad

I try to tell her sometimes that her being here is too much
it starts to affect my job
my life
my health

I try to get her to leave
I've been here so long she says
just a little longer she says
what would you do without me she says
I'll just move in she says

She's my best friend but--
she wont pay rent
she has never been a friend to hygiene
she doesn't know how to do laundry
or cook
or clean
she'd rather lay around all day than hold down a job

I want her to go
I want her to go
Why won't she go

who's real and who's fake
people make my head ache

I remember that day
as if it was a painting-
two giggling little girls
wearing party dresses,
cautiously feeding horses
carrots and dandelions
from open hands.
The sky is vast and blue;
woods and fields
dress in every green there is.

The songs of meadowlarks,
raucous calls of crows
and the humming of honeybees,
crawling all over the clover
blend into intricate harmony
while a herd of a hundred horses
swish tails and shake manes
at buzzing flies.
The little girls laugh every time
a horse’s lips tickle their hands
in search of another dandelion.

Unsettled
Unsure
Underneath my composure
I cringe
I fold
I lose all sense of control

Time forces me past this dividend
But I still yearn between two ends

To find
To know
To somehow let it go
Or run
Or hide
Or burn it all inside

Summer is wasted
on the young and
the restless
women go bare-armed
on a mission to prove
their youthful 'glow'
in floral painted dresses
that scream
"I'm pretty!"
And I sit in idleness
wondering when
Mother Nature
will make Her final move

Times moves
Like waves.

It comes and goes,
Elongates and
shrinks.

It doesn't exist.


-- Eleanor