Green is my favorite color.
But I hate that shade of it.
Because it will always remind me of
The green scrubs you wore,
haunting cold barren rooms,
Where they took your bootlaces
so you couldn’t choke the dreams out of yourself.

I wore blue that day because it was your favorite color.
You probably didn’t notice.
You felt hollow when I embraced you
All strength within seemed gone.
Your eyes, my favorite shade of green, were frighteningly distant.
You were there, but it wasn’t you.
Who were you? Who are you? Who should you have been if…?
You kissed me goodbye in front of the nurses,
And I saw tears in the corners of their eyes.  
Even my mother seemed touched.

I walked in a haze across the hospital yard,
It was a bright day.
I wanted it to storm.
The garish sun seemed to mock me
As I curled in the backseat of my father’s car,
Staring at the food I couldn’t eat.
I hadn’t known
“Sick with worry” to be literal.
I haven’t known it since.
I hate that shade of green.

Things fall apart.
my mother will be the first to go.
Stretched between school, a stubborn husband,
distance, and a daughter she believes is dying,
and the ever present thought
that she will never be good enough.
Taught as drum leather, she shudders,
Wracked and rent by memories of lost children
and protruding ribs.
I awoke to her crying in the next room this morning.
She greeted me with feigned happiness, but
red eyes stared truthfully back.
"I'm okay," she murmured.
"*******," I said softly.
She clung to me.
I felt the burden shift on her shoulders.
crushing her,
her over sized heart beat to pulp,
it's ****** remnants clinging to her dripping sleeve.
The people she tried to hold together,
slipping through her fingers
like sand-- as her brittle bones break.
Things fall apart.
And I wish I knew how
to put them together again.

I am queen of afterthoughts,
rarely of fore.
Especially not in matters of hearts.
I am dry heaving sighs,
with leaden guilt
and what ifs.
**** them.
**** me.

599

There is a pain—so utter—
It swallows substance up—
Then covers the Abyss with Trance—
So Memory can step
Around—across—upon it—
As one within a Swoon—
Goes safely—where an open eye—
Would drop Him—Bone by Bone.

I want you to know
one thing.

You know how this is:
if I look
at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists,
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats
that sail
toward those isles of yours that wait for me.

Well, now,
if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you little by little.

If suddenly
you forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.

If you think it long and mad,
the wind of banners
that passes through my life,
and you decide
to leave me at the shore
of the heart where I have roots,
remember
that on that day,
at that hour,
I shall lift my arms
and my roots will set off
to seek another land.

But
if each day,
each hour,
you feel that you are destined for me
with implacable sweetness,
if each day a flower
climbs up to your lips to seek me,
ah my love, ah my own,
in me all that fire is repeated,
in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,
my love feeds on your love, beloved,
and as long as you live it will be in your arms
without leaving mine

My eyes feel heavy enough
to fall shut
and never open,
eyelids clanging like a tin box lid
with cheap hinges.

My hands feel heavy enough
to fall down
to permanent attention
and never rise,
frozen like the tin soldier
who was lost in the ashes.

My feet feel heavy enough
to fall once more
and never lift again,
bolted, like a tin sign
to a rotting telephone pole.

The definition of "Bleeding Heart"
is "dangerously softhearted."
I recoil, then nod.
It is dangerous to care so much.
My heart will crush itself
under the burdens it takes on--
Fold like tinfoil, till it has turned into nothing
but a hard silver ball,
I cast into the kitchen garbage.