I'm starting to forget what your touch feels like and that's something I want to remember long after this eternity. I want to forget how you made me feel inadequate and useless if you weren't touching me.

I want to remember the feverish heat of your hungry body wrapping around me as if I could be consumed by the naked desire between us. But all I can remember is the coldness of your latest silent treatment leaving me frozen where I stand like the first ice cube eternally stuck to the bottom of the freezer tray never to be acknowledged as more than an inconvenient nuisance.

I want to remember the sound of your earnestly endearing, carefree voice when you sang your silly little songs using names for me that no one else will ever use. I can't forget the thunderous, deafening finality of the last time I watched you close my door and walk away.

I should be bawling my eyes out as I curl up in a little ball of despair under the softness of the red fuzzy blanket that used to be the softness under us. But I'm not.

I should be trembling with the relentless red rage that can only come from the sting of the ultimate betrayal that so easily rolls off your forked tongue. But I'm not.

I should be taking every fiber of every piece of yourself that you've left here on your clothes and shoes and whatever all that other crap is, and building a bonfire just to see how long it will burn. But I'm not.

I should be hating you and vowing that I'll never speak to you again and imagining ways of inflicting any kind of pain on you that might make you feel even a fraction of the pain that you've inflicted on me. But I'm not.

I should be deleting your electronic footprints from my phone, my laptop and my heart and retracing my steps back to the predictable but content life that was my life before you came and made unpredictable and discontented seem like the norm. But I'm not.

I should promise myself that I'll start all that tomorrow. But I'm not.

Doing nothing at all but trying to **** time
With my imaginary people, places, and things to see
No logic, no order, no reason, or rhyme
Just the realization that it's time that's killing me

They say time marches on but where's it marching to
Stop marching on me and just let me rest
Why not just pick me up and take me with you
I've given you my all, I gave you my best

I never begin these trips by myself
But I always end up on this road alone
They take the fork to the right while I take the left
Struggling again to find my way home

Always someone I wish would stay until the end
So many unmapped roads I still want to travel
Either too far ahead or too far behind
I seem to lose sight at the second or third bend
Is it me or just my plans that can't help but unravel

Is this the end of one trip or the start of another
After speeding down this same old winding road
It's hard to distinguish one from the other
Just show me the road that leads back to my children, my brother, my lover and my mother

How do you know when enough is enough
I can't take anymore, I'm just not that tough
I've tried to be all that you said I should be
But that didn't leave room for me just to be me

I'm losing my grip on all that I know
One little slip and I'll go down with the flow
Hanging on any tighter just makes it more tense
I don't know how much longer I can straddle this fence

There's only two ways now for this ride to go
Neither of which I'm particularly fond
So I patiently sit here but frantically row
Rowing in circles on this dark, boggy pond

Will someone please stop and throw me a line
Can't anyone see that I'm about to drown
Don't you understand that I'm running out of time
Will it finally be enough when I'm all the way down

You rushed in like a quarterback carrying the ball
Like a rookie I fell for the fake play
Hook, line, and sinker, I foolishly bought it all

It seemed like a game that started out fair
Fans all abuzz claiming "This is our year!"
Now the bleachers stand empty, not a soul left to cheer

Nothing left but to turn off the stadium lights
On a field that was once so hopeful and bright

Off to the locker rooms both teams retreat
One to lick their wounds as the other celebrates the championship repeat

In glory you'll go on to play for more teams
While this career-ending injury is killing my dreams

Like a naked tree in winter, I wait for the sunshine of spring
Existing but not flourishing
Living but not growing
Vulnerable but standing tall

Finally his sunlight appears and my withered branches reach for it
Trying to soak up all the sun at once
Finally his refreshing rain appears to quench my thirst
If you watch closely you can see my rejuvenation from the inside out

And then fall comes
I know it's coming, he has to go again
And winter sets in
Leaving me naked and vulnerable

I can only stand where I was placed
I can't go to him
Only he can bring the changing of the seasons to me
My day is like the never-ending changing of the seasons

Fall, I know he's leaving soon
Winter, that cold few moments when I realize he's gone
Spring, I hope he brings me sunshine and renewal
Summer, his sun appears and brightens my face

The last thing I ever expected
He asked me to be his girlfriend
I said yes

Do either of us know how to be a girlfriend and a boyfriend
Or does that even matter

I'm a secret of the night
He sneaks out of someplace after dark to sneak into me

He sneaks out of me at daylight and sneaks back to someplace else

How long will I or can I be a secret of the night
That's a secret he keeps from me

The hardest part of my day
Watching him get up, get dressed, and go
He says he'll be back
I want to believe him
I really want to believe him
I hate that I really want to believe him

So far he's always come back
The best part of my day

Will he ever not have to get up, get dressed, and go
I hope so
Is he selling me a beautiful pack of lies
I hope not

What will it be like when he doesn't have to go
Even more exciting than it is now
I hope so

For now though
The second hardest part of my day
Wondering if he'll be back

Words can't express the emptiness that is hopelessness. It's something that you wouldn't wish upon your worst enemy's worst enemy.

Wait, your worst enemy's worst enemy would probably be a really good friend to have. Then you could sit around together and plot ways to **** with your common enemy's head.

Like sneaking into their house every day and emptying all the bottles of shampoo. Not the conditioner. Not the body wash or shower gel. Just the shampoo. Every day. Every bottle. No matter how many bottles they buy to replace the ones you've wasted. All the shampoo gone. Just gone. Every day.

Try and imagine what lengths they would go to trying to find out what happened to all the **** shampoo. Four empty bottles sitting right where they'd been placed when they were full, now without a drop of hope of being able to wash, rinse, and repeat.

No hope of being able to lather up and wash away the built-up residue of the day's grimy, polluted, filth infested air breathed out by the uncaring populous that attached itself from the follicle to the unsplit end of every perfectly thick and just right wavy hair on your worst enemy's head.

Maybe they'll lose sleep over it and then have dark rings around the bulbous bags under their usually twinkling and happy hazel eyes for a day or two. All the time just wondering what in the hell happened to all the **** shampoo.

Anyway, if you can't find the words to express hopelessness, at least maybe you can find someone with a common enemy to sit around with and think of ways to try and fill the emptiness.

Unconditional love:

1. noun; when you willingly pay the consequences for the actions of the one you love at the expense of your very existence without even knowing if he understands or can appreciate just how much those consequences have cost you;

(I wonder if you can get a second mortgage on your soul?)

also, 2. when you're able to smile at him even as you watch him take the left-over pieces of memories from your garage-sale of a life and put them in another woman's home, while the time that was supposed to be your final treasured moments and/or memories together, melts away like yesterday's makeup oozes down my clammy face on an unusually humid Palm Springs summer morning. And, even though you knew this was coming, and you tried and tried to warn him, you just smile and wonder in which bloated bag of odd but familiar, priceless knick-knacks your heart ended up in and hope he recognizes it if he ever accidentally runs across it.

(Today I learned the definition of unconditional love.)

If I could connect the dots of goosebumps you get when I scratch your back, maybe it would make a map showing me where to go from here.

If you asked me to stay like you ask me to not stop scratching your back, maybe I couldn't resist you then either.

If I had a flashy screen and an explosive soundtrack like an xbox game, maybe you'd want to play with me more.

If I were as rich and sweet as a bowl of your favorite ice cream, maybe you'd have to have every last bit of me and crave me long after I'm gone.

If cancer hadn't destroyed essential pieces of my womanhood, maybe I could give you what you tell me you want to fill me with.

If you could explain to me the reasons you only sporadically intertwine your life with mine, maybe I could stop imagining the worst possible things about myself that must be keeping you from intermingling our lives.

I had forgotten all the bonus feelings that came with true hope
Giddy like a teenage girl going on her first date
Happy like a kid catching the ice cream truck
Excited like a toddler at Disneyland for the first time

I had tried to forget all the downfalls that came with true hope
Fear like a child trying to sleep in the dark
Anticipation like a pageant contestant waiting to hear the
judge's decision
Anxiety like a politician on election night

I've had hope where the results far exceeded my
wildest imagination so that the words to describe it
didn't exist
Hope that was smashed like a bored little boy jumping
on an empty can
Hope that shriveled up and blew away like a
tumbleweed in the desert

And hope came and went again

How long have I waited to hear it from him

How long have I felt it

How long has he felt it

How long has he had to resist letting me hear it

How long before it either takes us further or
implodes on top of us

How long will the status quo be enough

How long will his whisper ring in my ears

How long before I hear it from him again

How long before I never hear it from him again

I can't tell if you have any idea how
much of my heart and soul you're
packing with your things.

If you don't, I wish you'd let me tell you.
But you won't. You'll say, "Save your
breath, I know what you're going to say."

Your right that I do need to save my
breath. Because it feels like you're
packing that too.

I'm trying not to cry, and to put on my
happy mask that you like, But I can't
find my happy mask right now. I think
you may have accidentally packed it
with your things. Or was it an accident?

Either way, it's gone. If you come across
it, please bring it back and help me
cover this gaping hole.

Sometimes I feel like your own personal life-size GI Joe doll, or rather, action figure. Only with *****.
Sometimes you want to dress me up in what you want to see me in and take me out to play.

Other times, when you're not in the mood to play with me, I'm shoved down to the bottom of your toy-box.
From there, I can only watch which of the other toys have been lucky enough to be chosen to entertain you today.

I was already used when I came to you. Second or third hand from the thrift shop of souls. But I was new to you, and you were new to me. And we reveled in each other like it was Christmas morning or your eleventh birthday.

But the newness has worn off and you're bored with me. I hope you notice the smile on my fixed, yet malleable face if I do get to go on an outing, even if I never make it out of your backpack. If not, maybe I could be new again at the thrift store on bargain day.

The sun is coming up so big and bright and bold that it feels like I could just reach out and grab it and put it in my pocket for later. I'm pretty sure I'm going to need it later.

I think he took his sun away for good. I tried to keep his sun shining. I tried so hard to keep it lit. But no matter how hard I stoked the fire, he kept me in the dark.

Somehow, I got so busy sustaining his solar energy that I didn't notice my own sun going out. His appeared so bright that I forgot I needed the warmth of my own. I don't know how long it will take my sun to heat up again.

Now it's as if I'm stumbling around a dark house during a power outage, searching for the emergency flashlight and hoping the batteries aren't as dead as we are. I think he used it last, and he never puts things back the way he found them. Good thing I grabbed the sun this morning and put it in my pocket for later.

Just touch me and that first electric contact sparks a chaotic chain reaction of desire for the next touch in every place I can be touched.
In other places that will never be touched, knowing that the desire will never be sated is almost too much for this eager body to tolerate.

Just touch me and my trembling body opens to you like a flower stretching toward the sun. The center of my femininity oozes hotness like lava from a volcano.

Just touch me and all my inhibitions drop to the ground like dry, shriveled leaves fall from the mighty oak in autumn.
I become free to completely accept your touch as an ongoing gift to my ever hungry body.

Just touch me because I'm not always certain when the next touch may come.
Your touch can be as elusive as a four-leaf clover in a field of green. Sometimes your touch can last so long that it becomes as vital to me as oxygen.

Just touch me because you want to.
Just touch me because I want you to.
Just touch me because you can.
Just touch me.