Things are messy
even when put together.
Even when in order,
neat and tidy,
alphabetically arranged.
But blood was spilt here and
no amount of bleach or apologies can remove the stain.
No amount of sanding, replacement or deep cleaning can erase what was let.
You'll scrub until your knuckles bleed
but the secrets that poured from what was broken will remain.
Fossilized for passing strangers and curious eyes.
The weathered plaque will read:
*"Humanity: the blood of what was, what is, and what will always be."

lately,
my heart
has been louder
even in echo than my head and
i am here
trying to navigate the oceans between
too much and not
enough.

looking ever-closer to where i think
the peaks of mountains
can be measured between fingertips;
measured between dividers;
backed by a steady needle’s weight.

a sea claimed Bering
through a marshy coastline
lit only by oil and torch -
where buoyancy can balance
treacherous watery routes and  
rough, shaky hands can trace the  
pulling of sails through knots
towards the exhaling light of an imminent shore.

though i am unsure of the differences between finger-lengths,
am i holding back
because i cannot accurately predict
the pulls of the moon;
the swells of tides;
the seasons of rough storms?

perhaps even the spark of embers against my heaving backbone -
and what of the humming gears of sentience
in my chest?

am i holding back because
what i lay in permanence always meets
a spray of waves?
the crash of undercurrents against the breath leaving
your lips? -

currents that unapologetically meet
the rise of the earth and the
curve of your back
forcing the Weems
to stretch for topography that maybe even my knees cannot lock against.

go down with the ship,
i will swallow the grasp reflex that builds
in my throat and in my palms.

a million times over i will meet the breaking of every tensile structure in my body
if it means catching your swell.

and like the greek merchant’s ship cast deep into the dead sea’s belly,
i will be overcome with every ounce of your pressure
even if every time
i am fated to lose the rise and fall of my lungs to salt water;
to a watery grave;
to knit sheets and a sailor’s prayer;
a promise of ever-lasting life.

There's a scar
across the fingers on your left hand.
You remember the radiator
beneath the window
in the house on 2nd and Bell View.
No matter how many times Mother told you,
"Don't touch, you'll get burnt!"
You'd insist on making that reach.

There's a scar
deep inside your chest.
You remember the face,
the body beneath the shared covers
in your bed that past winter.
No matter how many times Mother told you,
"Don't touch, you'll get burnt!"
You insisted on reaching.

In existence she is victim,
By nature she is soft.
Tame, timid and tender, she is conditioned prey.
She is taught submission, a creation of fear.
She is comprised of silent "no's" and forced "yes's" and voices that are not her own.

In existence she is victim,
By nature she is ******.
She is tangible, thus targeted;
Woundable, wavering and weightless.
She is physical form: areas made for pleasure teach her pain.
She is degradation.
Her skin is easily soiled, her divinity is readily tainted, clean is stripped from her.

In existence she is victim.
By nature she is less.
She is sentient, sentimental and susceptible.
She is weak, for she is second.
Regarded as inferior, she is lacking, she is without caliber, she is separate.

In existence she is victim.
By nature she is bare.
She is blood-stained, benign and bereaved.
She is subject to violence; object of violence.
She is eternally marred.
She is born victim.
Nature has made her woman.

I'll wash you away from my hands.
Scrub you off like a disease
just to replant the seed
you planted so kindly in me.

Bloodied, battered and bruised
I'll fall in love with you again,
because I am not broken,
I can easily bend.
And bend to you I will;
over and over, again and again.

And it's a loop of loss,
a loop of ever needing.
So I'll pick myself up
and let you leave me pleading,
crying and kicking and screaming.
I am not broken, I can easily bend.

And I'm not one to ever say goodbye,
compared to the countless hellos
I've given to you in the night.
We wear our mistakes on forearms;
reminders of why
we are not broken, we can easily bend.

I wrote poetry for you.
Words in the form of small scribbles
and cursive letters.
Tender whispers and heavier sighs.
Only to learn,
that your words,
the poems you whispered,
were meant for someone else.

Never fall in love with a poet,* he said.
Their words are too soft.
Their words are too harsh.
And like their eyes,
their words are full, promising and plentiful.
But the ones so whole, wound deeper.
The ones so beautiful, bleed better.
The ones that lead you, last longer.
Never fall in love with a poet, he said.
Double-edged, they will leave you longing.

And by all that is holy,
I will take Adam's rib
from my chest telling God,
*"I am not made from man's image."

Kind eyes, you are hollow.
My chest caves in with every word.
"I love you" weighted on each end.
The inhale sharp with longing,
forming words I hardly know.
And every exhale brings you back to me,
every ending circles you around.
I don't recognize the words.
"I love you" hinders on safety,
while we border urgency.
Our arms grabbing what we have left.
Desperately pulling ourselves back up.
Drawing us together again with every
"I love you,"
paired with every
*"I'm sorry."

Last night I cut a hole along my hips
to try and remove the 10-year-old-stain.
Your skin regenerates every 27 days.
What a comfort that has been.
Yet your touch has seeped through the surface
and has sprouted roots inside my body.
Like a cancer, it grows.
Stretching and grabbing.
Devouring and swallowing up
the only thing I can call my own.
A sacred place, an area less than.

I cut a hole along my chest and opened up my ribcage.
Another place you left your mark.
Remove the point of disease and the disease will cease to exist.
I ripped and tore and thrashed away.
The muscle left weak but still beating.
Breathless and shaking I realized,
your roots continued to grow.

I cut a hole along the palm of my hand.
The hand I used to grab yours.
The hand I entrusted to you.
The hand that failed me.
The hand that saved me.
And what a sick irony that has been.
I separated the tendons, the ligaments from the muscle.
I looked for you between my fingers and under my nails.
The entire thing was tainted black.
Useless to me now, without former or future purpose.

I cut a hole along my neck.
The voice that abandoned my resides here.
I made a small puncture and drained it out.
But the infection wouldn't stop flowing.
It was no longer my voice, but yours that spilled from me.
It was endless, deep, thick and violent.
It felt warm like you.
And then cold again.

Defeated, last night, I cut holes.

I'd like to know
the topography of your body;
every mountain range,
every valley.
I'd like to know you
with my eyes closed,
become familiar with every curve.
Use my fingertips to trace
mazes on your skin.
Use my lips to wander across places
undiscovered.

when reading of icarus i
cannot help but fear the crushing weight of king minos combined with the over-zealous
wit of daedalus.

for icarus was perhaps too prideful;
met with a moment of weakness;
adrenaline coursing through his veins;
and a sheer loss of control
blinded by the highest point of the sun
in a blooming sky.

perhaps even he failed
to head his father’s warning
as the burning wax of his wings
melted upon his shoulders.

yet king minos sentenced daedalus
and too his son,
who later fell to the fate of his father’s own design.
not once
but twice.
not once,
but twice -
but twice,
but twice a child
returned with confidence
to his father.

and the ringing in my head still continues to be  that the child is not to blame for
the sins of the father.
the child does not carry
the sins of the father.

so it goes that in the end
daedalus was granted athena’s wings ever-soaring.
perhaps in grief;
perhaps in empathy;
perhaps by the grace of a woman’s forgiving touch.

but icarus still drowned in the spring.
and the ploughing of the fields
remained uninterrupted as his scorched  
waxen body fell into
the jowls of the sea.

Lacking tangibility.
A sense associated with memory.
Scientifically proven to be attached to neurological stimulus.
But in its simpler form,
it reminds us of Sunday afternoons
and coffee stains.
It reminds us of the rain
and the sheets of your bed.
It can't be felt,
only recognized.
And like you,
it can soften in an inhale
and hurt in an exhale.

i swear my heart mimics
the crescendo of the ocean’s tireless hum
and i am overcome with both solace and grief in knowing that my own rhythm will fall in defeat long before the waves ever stop crashing into the shore

Is chaos really
Attracted to chaos?
I found love in serenity.
And it's daft to think
That I,
A hurricane,
Could be attracted to
The eye.
The stillness,
The calm.
The confident,
The independent,
The strong...
But I,
A never-ending causality,
Can possess
Love for
Absolution.
"Forgive me father
for I have sinned,"
I stumble breathlessly on my admission.
"I have found mercy."

You're a knot, a curd,
a piece of heavy machinery
stuck idling in my throat.
You're the crack, the shell-shock
of a breaking,
broken
bone.
You're the weight of love,
a thief,
the bitter sting in my nose.
You're that beautiful head spin,
the needed kick,
the heavy fist,
the flicker of a nerve.

It's a character flaw,
or perhaps a strength - correction;
it's a contradiction
with little satisfaction
because I am lacking
the will to be more.
Fretfully forgetting who
I'm giving for.
Losing myself in the equation
because your tongue
is poisoned with persuasion.
And I am without worth,
without cause,
I can no longer feel the earth
beneath my feet.
You've taken that in your reach.
Your grasp all too familiar:
I am sacrificial,
little will to live.
It's an immeasurable amount;
the amount of self I am willing to give.

You are Monday mornings,
breathless; exhausting.
And I,
I am hues of blue,
shades of red;
deep and sunken in.
You are the stream of light
peeking through my curtains
beckoning to me:
*"Wake up tenderly.
The sun will not wait
for you."

i would have let you
make me into poetry
given you a map of my skin
taken your fingertips to my lips so you could push your thumb to my teeth
and guide the love letters from my throat
up to dance upon my tongue
leading every word to rest
gently upon your neck.

A finger *****; a dilation.
The cracked rib on your life side.
I long to paint pictures of the subconscious;
the places we never get to see.
And as the sun starts to set,
as night eclipses over the earth
I will scream until my throat is bleeding.
I will drag my body across the pavement,
punch my fists into walls
leaving the stain of humanity on every street corner.
I will cut across the plain of existence with my fingertips and
I will pull reality from its womb.
I will drag it on the ground behind me
until it is bloodied and worn -
I'll scream in it s face and ask,
Why?
I want existence to feel everything I have felt;
Ten times over, amplified and without mercy.

lately //
i’ve been making a noose of my own heartstrings //
but my father is a fisherman who taught me that the best knots don’t slip //
so i carry a bowline in my pocket for security and a tangled mess of forevers on my sleeve.
But I’ve also been tying anchor bends since i realized my grip was not equal to atlas’ shoulders.
And what a cruel paradox that is //
to think that a god can carry the earth beneath our feet but our hands // molded from clay and mud in the same image //could never be enough of a last resort to anchor our hearts in our chests.
so the loophole here,
so to speak,
is the anchor bend knot //
but! //
you know what’s funny about loopholes actually?? // you see, they were made to allow arrows to be shot from an opening // but the structure of that opening prevents counter arrows from being shot back in.
such an invention is why it’s always been nearly impossible to storm a castle’s wall and my, // have many a noble men fallen at the feet of such entrances.
so nowadays, i carry my trusty bowline //alongside the endless loopholes of those old-fashioned anchor bends.
however, I’m sure you know that the bowline is regarded as “the knot of all knots” right? it’s good for tying just about anything without give.
but the first time i ever went sailing // i learned about the round turn and two half hitches. this knot is pretty cool because the more tension you apply to the rope, the tighter the knot will get //
highly reliable for most things.
i guess the irony here is that // i am personally, most identifiable with this knot.
i don’t really ever use it. i am not a sailor or a fishermen. but i do have a really bad tendency of fastening myself to things that have a lot of pull.
the tightening tension of it
is similar to the mythical 13 knots in a hangman’s noose and what an incredibly genius stroke of engineering.
to think that the masterful art of knot-tying comes down to the basic idea that a knot will hold under tension is simply and utterly graceful without fault.
but here’s the thing;
as soon as i learned to tie a knot that won’t slip,
i taught myself the hangman’s knot:
a knot that essentially slips, but still holds merciless tension around its victim.

i’ve been tying nooses with what causes me the most pain.
with what bleeds the most love //
but as the one and only descendant of my father, the great fisher king,
i am starting to learn that if the knot slips,

you cut the line and start again.

He said,
"There is a reason
the trees grow so high,
the fruit just out of reach.
It is so man cannot touch,
man cannot take,
what they do not own,
what is not their's,
what is not to be stolen."

It's an ache unlike any other.
It's rough round each edge.
Hard to swallow,
it burns as it goes down.
It's constant.
Lover's quarrel.
Void in between each other.
Void in our bed.
Void in between each word.
Deafening.
Tu me manques,
I am missing without you.
Tu me manques,
without you, I am missing.
To me manques,
you are missing from me.

It is a passed down trait;
An inherent gene.
You are weak.
Every square foot of her body teaches her.
Nature has taught her physiological function
is equal to psychological conditioning.
The most complex ***** in her body
disciplines her into fear.
Her fear manifests into her hands,
trembling with insecurity.
Her unwavering quivering builds into her shoulders.
Her shoulders hold tension, thus affecting her posture.
Her appearance renders her vulnerable
and the holy place between her legs
becomes saturated with pain.
Whether by false hand, or natural purpose,
pain becomes her.
This lesson alone teaches her feet the importance of urgency.
A tool meant for grounding quickly learns to run.
Urgency seeks comfort,
a comfort found in an ache.
Relief is found across her skin.
Her guilt travels from her arms into her stomach.
A sinking feeling, heavy and haunting.
Her guilt transgresses into anger,
her heart circulates blood and rage.
Her shame finds a home along her thighs;
a place she will keep hidden.
Secrecy desperately looks for security in which
is born in her own embrace.
Safety is found when she wraps her arms around herself
returning back again to the familiar position she was created in.
Safety in the womb, safety in the fetal position.
Her cycle repeats in rapid succession,
never slowing,
forever spinning.
This is habituation.
This is her burden.
This is what her body has taught her.