The opposite of happiness is never sadness,
or pain,
or blue,

It is always indifference.

I can’t do this anymore
something has to change

I love you
I miss you
and I never meant to hurt you

I won’t say I’m sorry
because isolating myself
is the best thing
I’ve ever done for me
I’m finally getting to know myself again
and now I know why
I was never happy

The thing is
I was too caught up with
you and your messes
to realize
I was beginning to unravel
from the inside out

I was too busy making sure
everyone else
got their own happy ending
that I forgot
who I am
and what I needed

Now I realize
I needed
more

I need someone
to remind me to breathe
to step away
keep my sanity
stitch myself together
and bleed my own sorrows

Everything
you are, resided in me
everything
they needed flowing in my
veins
every dream
slept in my heart
and yet
everything
that I am was
nowhere to be found
and I can’t be that again

So this is goodbye
to the girl I used to be
and sleepless nights
worrying about
tomorrow’s sorrows
wishing
I could take the pain away
'til one day
I did
and never stopped
I whittled myself away
until I was nothing
without the pain plaguing you
and those around me

I became addicted
to ******* the pain out of you
and into me
inflating myself back to life
just so you wouldn’t disappear
I never showed it but
I was slowly
going insane
always needing more pain

You always said
I never wanted stability
and you were right
because if everything was alright
I had no clue who I was
and I couldn’t
fill myself back to life

Why Men Cry in the Bathroom

For so many reasons.
I will tell you the why.
I think you know,
Or perhaps, you think you know.

Men are always O.K.,
Even when not.

We expect the worse,
Accept the worse,
Nonetheless,
We are forever unprepared.

Wearily, we cry,
In the bathroom, in private,
Lest sighs slip by,
We be unmasked,
Early warring, strife signs warning.

Copious, tho we weep
Before the mirror confessor,
It is relief untethered,
Unbinding of the feet,
An uncounting
Of beaded rosaries,
Of freshly fallen hail stones,
Of night times terrors
By dawn's early edition's light,
and welcomed.

But look for the mute tear,
The eye-cornered drop,
*** tat, that never drops,
But never ceases formation and
Reforming, over and over again,
In a state of perpetuity of reconstitution,

The tippy tear of an iceberg revealing,
And I see you peeping, wondering,
What is beneath

Look for:
the torn worm-eaten edges of spirit,
thrift shop bought, extra worn,
grieving lines neath the eyes,
where the salt has evaporated,
discolored the skin.
worry lines,
under and above,
browed mapped, furrowed boundaries.
the laugh line saga,
where better days are stored,
recalled, as well as recanted,
publicly, privately.

Why just men?

I don't know,
Perhaps,
it is all I know.


Jan 6, 2013

she was the moon
radiating the night sky
and dancing among the stars

you were the darkness
the shadow that waxed and waned
through the phases of her life

she grew to believe
that your presence
is what made her whole

but like the full moon
she shone brightest
without you


x.

We cannot write silence.
The beats.
The pause.
The breath.
The way it aches
and persists

and begs that,

if only for a moment,

our consciousness is only a whisper.
our bodies,
our lips,
the air that passes through falling chests
and stillness.

A melody of emotion.
Sleeping in the quiet of a heartbeat skipped
a word lost to the wind.

The wickedness of reticence
Encapsulated in air and time.

The moment stretched too long.
Hesitation perpetuated in the grip of fingernails
pressed into palms.

We cannot write silence,
but we can try.

to find a way to immortalize emotion
to create space
in the ceaseless drone of words that speak and spin.

I cannot write silence. But I can write
tears and years
and the burn of long-stretched lies.

I can write goodbyes and hellos
And dozen ways to say
I love to hate you
Or
I hate to love you
and sometimes
I cannot tell the difference.
Silence.
The space I have upheld for myself.

I love to hate you
Heart.

I hate to love you too.

I cannot write silence.
But I know it.
and I have held it in my hand.

timing was something i never believed in
i thought if two people wanted to be together
they would

i had known you for eight years
always in the same class
always sat next to each other
always could talk for hours
we blended so perfectly together
we balanced the other out
everyone could see we belonged together
but i was with someone else
i never saw you in that way
          and that was okay

two years later
we are up until 4am talking
not wanting to leave each other’s side
we kissed for the first time
it was like placing the last piece of the puzzle
          we fit so perfectly
but you were just visiting
living 1, 973 miles from me
i thought this was it
fairytale comes true
the classic
          “we all knew you would end up together”
but you left
with a glimmer of hope we’d be together
but we were on different paths
we want different things
we lived in different parts of the country
maybe our paths will cross again
maybe next time
we will have better timing