1) October is a month for leaving
even the copper leaves
leave the embrace of the trees

2)Your ghost still haunts my bed.
If I made love to a priest
would that exorcise you
from my sheets?

3)Because I think we all have thought
about stepping on the gas
when we should have hit the brake.

We are beautiful contradictions.
Living, while dying,
and rarely satisfied with either.

I
The Boy
A child of broken whiskey bottles
and stained old carpet
built hastily, with scraps of stolen innocence
Porcelain in overalls,
with full harvest moon eyes.

II
Father
He had distant star eyes,
always looking for things far away
and when he found them,
doused them in *****
and set them ablaze, watching as they burned
in his saw mill hands.

III
Aunt
She was a war of a woman.
Embraced him with her entrenching arms,
a cloud of mustard gas perfume
rising from her breastworks,
into her flaming hair.

IV
Mother
Mother was a whispered name in grey stone,
a grey photograph on the brown mantel,
with perfect skin and dull eyes,
he'd seen her ghost at the piano one night.

V
Uncle
He had ****** hands
that he shoved into his pockets
when he put his cleaver down for the night.
He always offered crimson quarters
that bought red striped candies.

I am guilty of the sin of luck.
Serendipitously born into wholeness.
My head was filled with stars,
the sun placed in my hands.
And I never wanted more.
Who decreed me the fortunate one?
What stroke of fate, what hand of God?
I am grateful.
but why should I be whole
when so many others are broken?

Life is a sea.
Strong and bittersweet.
Float while you can, sink if you must.

Treat yourself as gently as you treat others.
Forgive yourself, forgive others.
"Perfection" does not exist on this earth.
Love is never measured in numbers.

Don't keep your hands clenched to tightly,
whatever you hold tightest
is what will leave you first.
Love, to often, means letting go.

You cannot save them
All you can do is show them they are worth saving.
You cannot fix them.
All you can do is hand them the tools.

Always be the last to end an embrace.
Behind harsh words are wounded hearts,
every scar has a story.

People will hate you, they will wrong you, but
You will never regret treating someone with kindness.
We are all only human.

Think before you speak,
but remember silence is a double edged sword
do not let fear
keep you from speaking
when you hold truth behind your lips.

Don't let your memories rule you,
They are the past
and you are a creature of the future
do not dwell where you cannot live.

And remember, you are always worth more than you imagine.

The ink in my veins seems to have run dry.
Circulation problems, maybe.
My soul is desperate to write,
but the pen isn't working,
and I'm left to make blank indentations
on a scrap of tattered paper.

My Soul has fallen in love with Sorrow
they make love and call it poetry.
My Spirit thinks he has overstayed his welcome.

This is how I’ll end;
not with a bang or a bonfire,
I’ve saved an apple for the pale rider’s horse,
and will smile when he bends down from the saddle
to carry me away.

Today I want to crawl away and bleach my mind.
A balloon of Worries rises in my chest
compressing my lungs till it's hard to draw breath.
classes,tuition, taxes, fear, nothing makes sense, I don't know what to do                          
I want to crawl back into the recesses of childhood,                                    
To the smell of the house in summer, open windows, old wood,
traipse through the woods to the creek,
spend hours digging under rocks for salamanders,
When I though a quarter was a fortune,
when school was just books and friends.

Sometimes I think I just want to abandon it all,
find a sweet, simple, country boy
settle down in a tiny house,
have children, a boy and a girl.
Elias James and Elaenor Elizabeth          
I will take them down to the creek,
teach them to catch salamanders,
and crawdads without getting pinched.
Wash their muddy faces and feet
when they come in for supper.

Then I'll send them to bed, with a kiss and a story,
and my husband and I will sit on the porch,
hand in hand, staring at the stars,
talking about God and Man and all that is.

They tell me I would regret
not having a career besides that of motherhood,
but days like these sure make me think twice.

I still recall the small, delicate, boy
on the ferry to Ellis Island,
With the large dove grey eyes
I'd never seen eyes so deep.
A girl will love you for those, someday
I told him telepathically.

Up top, where the wind blew,
The steel sky greeted us, in cool Manhattan fashion.
I watched a couple lean on the lattice railing.
They reminded me of  John and Yoko.
He looked like a boy--giddy with finding
a beautiful thing in his hands,
but unsure of how to handle it.
She had him gently wrapped around her finger,
tightening the knot with every smile.

I studied two old Orthodox Jews
beards streaked with fading black, faces wrinkled,
framed by the two thick curls
and staunch black hats.
I wondered what they thought of us,
teens in our jeans, disheveled from travel,
Or if they saw us at all.

I wonder if any remember me
the way I remember them.
Probably not.
No one takes notice
of the skinny red-head in the corner.

The cursed queen, to be sure.
Lonely you stand in your tower,
thickened waist and wrinkled cheeks.
There is no one but God here, now.
The men you loved are dead- one in body,
the other in spirit,
but still making love to another
on your broken marriage bed.
Your mother gone, and with her your children,
though their tiny things
still rest in the cupboard, their tiny hands still clutch your heart.
Your sister is mad, keening still
over the moulding coffin of her long-dead king.
Your one salvation, your living daughter,
small and kind with her parents red hair,
is shunned and rebuked as you are,
though you send her kisses on the wind.
Still you stand, refusing to fall to your knees
you have taken the armor of God
as you once took the armor of man.
Though under that armor
your heart is breaking.

Upon the hallowed ground she stood
The wind blew through her hair
A swallow swooped o’er the darkening sky
And the scent of rain filled the air

She heard the voices loud as thunder
Echo o'er hill and down
And warily she watched them
Ride their ghost mounts into the town

The rain now fell in torrents
Upon the hallowed field
But she moved not from her own same spot
As a deathly grip bid her yield

A hand of ice held fast her hem
Though she struggled against its grasp
She begged it there to let her go
Then from the earth she heard it rasp

‘One kiss my bonny sweetheart
the years were long since I saw thee last
It be cold here in the hallowed ground
Though I be but a memory of the past.’

‘I fought here on the battle ground
with rapier high and voice aloft
till down the enemy struck me fast
to lie in blood on the damp ground soft.’

The hand then loosed its steely grasp
And she saw her true love’s form
A cold and bleeding upon the ground
as more furious grew the storm

As the rain then pelted down around
The long lost lovers in their embrace
His bonny sweetheart spoke to him
With trembling lip and heart that raced

‘My own true love, my only
Long waited I for your return
I scorned the suitors who sought my hand
for your memory I would not scorn.

‘I prayed long for word or news
of thy well being or how thee faired,
but none e’re came to me at all
so I waited, hoping you had been spared.’

‘A truer love man never had
that would wait through tears and time
and keep the hope that I still lived
to find that in the ground I lie.

Forgive me, love, I’ve done thee wrong
To make thee wait for me so
Take my hand with one last kiss
And then my love, you must go.’

‘Nay my only, only love,
it’s here with you I’ll stay
I’ll not go back without thee,
I’ll stay by thy side, come what may.’

So upon the hallowed ground she lay
Hair damp and soaked to the skin
And by his side she lay all night
As she clutched his hand so thin.

The town knew not where she had gone
But in the morn they found
She’s gone to be with her one true love
Dead, upon the hallowed ground.

Invisibility is a lonely place.
Quiet, peaceful, but empty.
There are others here, too.
But we're to afraid to speak.
for fear our voices will shatter glass of silence
that shields us from the rest of the world.
A desire rests deep in our hands
to strike the pane, color our knuckles with something
as real as blood and pain.
To see life in liquid form,
coursing down our pale skin,
grasp a hand from the other side
to be lost in deep words
with a like minded companion.
Traipsing down the deer trails of thought
while the leaves of dreams
fall at our feet.

My hands,
Flightless birds with parchment skin,
marked with scars, glowing white.
They turn blue when the weather is cold.
The old wives say to look for men
with hard-working scars on their palms.
But what of a woman with marked hands?

Carve out the marrow in my bones
and plant a flower there.
Split my ribs for fence posts,
empty my skull for a watering can.
Use my hands for trowels,
plunge them into the earth.
I shall be pushing daisies
come the first sign of spring.

We will stand honestly together,
in the sfumato footsteps of the
centuries of lovers that met before us.
He will christen my eyes with kisses,
weave a crown of poetry in our intermingled locks,
whisper Neruda against my cheek.
We will smile
at the way our rib cages resemble wings,
our lungs, the birds, rising on each current
of fervent breath.

Looking back,
I found prayers scribbled in the margins
of my sociology notes.
Sometimes,
I am unsure if God still lives
or if we have killed him.
But considering the answers those prayers received,
I believe He is still kicking.

He tells me I could get a boyfriend
if I spoke in my bad British accent.
It's very illegitimate.
I've only ever been to Heathrow,
I have no idea what dialect it is.
But he still says it's ****.

It would catch attention, I'm sure.
Interest from long haired hipster boys
Maybe the occasional "Oh, are you from England?"
And I could fib and say yes,
because the average American can't hear the difference
between a girl imitating Masterpiece Classic and Keeping Up Appearances,
and a true born Bristolian or Brummie.

"You're sure to get a man," he says.
'But I don't want one.' I think in reply.
I think he really just wants to know
if I am considering replacing his memory.
"Not yet Govn'a," I say in my best Cockney.
Not yet.

Sparrows land on the telephone lines,
tiny scaled feet feeling the vibrations
of clumsy human speech
coursing through the connections beneath.
Come, tiny sparrow, nest in my hands.
My palms were hollowed to fit your wings,
My fingers poised to feel your heart
beat within the down breast.
I rejoice in finding something so beautifully real,
Authentic in your wanderings, your songs.
If only I could be half so truthful.

I am a paradoxical mix of vanity and self-hate.
I will catch my reflection,
caught in the lure of my own eyes,
wide, dark olive drab, soulful, some might say.
The full lips, naturally red.
Slender limbs, well made.

The next moment,
I am all acne scarred skin, pock marks,
tiny *******, weak chin, critiquing the weight my bones carry,
tracing through every thing I've eaten that day,
decided, on a biased scale, if it was too much,
and how much work
will be needed to take it off.

The dichotomy of beauty and ugliness,
each raising separate voices
within the same body.
Both deadly sins, in their own right.
My mind reminds me, I am more than body,
I am also a soul,
but my body if fond of stifling it.

And we never stop being girls at heart.
Even at 80, in the nursing home bathroom mirror,
I will probably stop
and stare, at the parchment-faced woman,
with wrinkled cheeks and drooping eyes,
and wonder where the acne faced girl,
with bright round eyes,
has hidden herself away.
I will smile at the young, handsome, CNA
as he passes in the hall, wondering
what he would think of me at 18.

I still wonder at the beauty of my sister
and the flocks she will draw at 16
piles of phone numbers at her feet,
Psyche incarnate, I the strange sibling
no servant of cinders, she is exalted.
Not that I am unloved, but it is strange to see
how much the contrast shows in family portraits.

I think my grandmother is convinced
that my ovaries will shrivel up
if I do not find a man by summer.

She was married by 19,
and has always wanted great grandchildren
she loves buying baby things, children's toys.
Kindergarten is the golden age of life.
I did not date in highschool,
but if she saw me looking at a boy,
she asked if he was single,
and told me to ask him over for dinner.

When I hit University,
I found a sweet, mad, mess of a boy
and she was quiet,
but we went our separate ways,
she started up again.

Scheming, the unwanted matchmaker.
Asking if the piano player at church was single,
(he's four years younger than I)
and trying to arrange play-dates for me
with unwitting high school acquaintances.

She means well, I know,
but despite the hopeless Romanticism I harbor
I know I need time, (there are still open wounds),
to fall back in love with myself,
before trying to fall for someone else.

He was born on Bastille day.
Very fitting, really.
The rag tag rebel with a thousand causes
worn down by hard life,
filled with an eternal fount of passion
that somehow renewed itself
after every failure and defeat
(and they were many).
Courageous heart, leathered and layered by scar tissue.
You'd storm every Bastille within your reach
If you thought there was even a sliver of injustice in it,
you'd even invent your own cause,
charge the windmills with a rusted sword,
screaming battle cries you once screamed over true battlefields.

I sewed my mouth shut with broken heart strings,
A shard of bone to pierce the lips.
A sliver of rib, I think.
My voice was never worth hearing
unless it was channeled in ink.

Let’s pour a little salt,
flavor the Earth,
so She’s the only one to remember
that we were ever here.

2. I painted Care and Sympathy’s portraits,
and (falsely) titled it Love.
And you hung it on your wall to remind yourself
you weren’t entirely alone.
But I’m sure you’ve taken it down by now
and it’s sitting in a corner, under the white sheet of time.

3. And if I faced death today,
I would like to think
I could face him without flinching.
As long as he would strike quickly, in the head or the heart.
I shouldn’t mind at all.

4. He called me tiny dancer
even though I couldn’t dance.
At least not very well.
He still insisted on waltzing
in my parent’s kitchen
despite my stepping on his toes.

I still remember how his dogtags felt around my neck.
They hung over my sternum, armor for the heart beneath.
Stamped-steel identity resting between my *******,
Name/SSN/USMC/O-POS/Christian
a piece of his soul, almost,
the soldier's lover's rosary.
I said more prayers than there were silver beads.
I'm still saying them.

I have luck in all the wrong places.
Right place at the wrong time,
I'm always early for everything.
My head, ten minutes fast,  
My heart, ten minutes slow,
so much for synchronization.
My soul gave up tracking time long ago
Anatomical or atomic.

My dreams are growing darker-
maybe it’s the weather
but my bed is growing colder
despite the extra sheets.

I dream of wars I’ve never been in
And men I’ve never seen,
dust rises all around me
in the distance drunken screams.

And the barren cold is creeping,
seeping deep into my bones
I feel the marrow freezing
will take years to thaw the frost

Where has all the color gone?
All fading grey, no black and white,
I’m tumbling down the rabbit hole;    
at least three dreams a night.

*And the barren cold is creeping,
seeping deep into my bones
I feel the marrow freezing
will take years to thaw the frost

I read stories of women,
dressed in silk and wool,
quiet, passive, faceless ladies
defined only by their spontaneous romances
with strangers on trains,
who dug out childish notions in their heads,
as they forsook their loving husbands of twenty years
for slick haired young men,
who pretend not to mind their sagging *******.

Madam Bovarys for a modern age.
Afraid of fading youth, dying embers,
bringing up the same high school insecurities,
they felt when their prom date flirted with the cheerleading captain.
And quenching them just as quickly
when they fogged up the windows of his father's car.

But maybe I should keep quiet.
What do I know?
A thin, ******, school girl,
who has known little of passion, but some of love.
And when I learned love, I learned loyalty.

By mental age they say I am 43.
Old soul, yes.
I have crows feet from perpetual introspection,
reading books in dim light, inspecting the folds of time
for the tiniest wrinkle
that proves I was born in the wrong century, wrong time.
By some un-ironed twist of fate, I was placed in the wrong womb.
But I am resourceful, I can bloom where I was planted,
Though I will always have heart strings in the past.

I do not know what to make of this.
these scraps of clay and paper
that were once “Us” and now are “you” and “I.”
Paper-mache remnants of lonely romantic’s dreams
you present to me as relics of a bygone year.
I know you would like to rebuild.
But things are better this way.
Our hearts have thrown enough punches in the dark.

I used to wonder
if I was going to die young. Not that I am so familiar with death
but that I could not imagine growing up.
Now, on the cusp of twenty,
the impossible age, in a sixth-grader’s mind,
those stale-******* memories fading fast,
I realize I still can’t think very far past thirty.
I’ve always got one foot in the past.

Most days, I can fade into the cracked, plaster walls
in their peeling blue paint, smeared with oily hand prints
from wayward class demonstrations.
A prison cell? No. A holding cell? Maybe.
Where I am interrogated
through glossy textbook pages and sickly fluorescent lights
these castles of learning
are dim places indeed.

I am not a woman of Mona Lisa smiles,
(if she's even trying to smile).
I am not coy, no pretense, simply shy.
There is really little mystery to me.
My heart is on my sleeve,
my mind is an open book.
Few take time to notice the blood drops on my clothes
Read the lines scrawled across my forehead,
inspect my ink stained hands,
or read the late night rambles I hesitate to call poetry.

I am simplistic, with stripes of imperfection,
My music has been called "Sweet"
as one might say a child is sweet,
in a winsome, ribbon-laced fashion.
I know it is simple. Juvenile.
But children can speak with more depth
than their mature, beautiful parents.
My poetry is merely fractions
of my soul, disguised on a page
to look like words.
Nothing quite a masterpiece,
I'd be shunned from the guilds of European masters.  
I am folk art, they are Rembrandt.
I've never been known to send someone to a dictionary,
or force a rhyme in Chaucer's name.

It is all simple shards of imagination
That managed to struggle out of my brain, down my arms,
and into my hands.
They're mangled by the time they arrive.
Colorful pilgrims worn by hard weather,
and lack of skill,
but no less pious.

She stood among the thin, goose-fleshed schoolgirls
with their full moon eyes
and straw braid hair.
Reciting Chaucer, Emerson, Frost,
as their feet scraped against
cured leather shoes,
toes curling with each word,
beauty lost in the hands of a sinister teacher,
no room for beauty with discipline.

Later she met the Janitor's boy in the broom closet,
She found beauty there, in his sweet, nonsense whispers,
fragments of Neruda bloomed in her mind,
Straw braid undone, leather shoes off.
Solomon's Song was written in his fingertips,
rough from mop handles and water buckets.
Their innocence burned in the dark,
their words unclouded,
Memorized verses on their breath,
they meant every line.
And she knew this was what the poets wrote of.

Here is another lost soul on campaign.
Hardened veteran of dark words,
fighting to retain the beachhead of sanity, so narrowly won.
Tell them to hang a black banner
for the mind missing in action.
Tell them not to hold their breath,
Waiting for a homecoming .
It will die on foreign, but familiar soil.
So it is with poets.
We few. We happy few.

She dreamed of pomegranates among lilies,
red orbs glowing among the white,
water beneath, black as soot and death,
while life drifted just above the surface.

She thought of Catherine of Aragon,
forlorn loves, starved dreams,
desolate, but beautiful, on the surface of death.
The most lovely thing about life,
is that it ends.

If you fall in love with this poet, (and she with you),
Remember, she will not tell you of the words she ascribed to your name
unless you ask to hear them.
(She likes her thoughts kept secret)

If you fall in love with this poet (and she with you)
Remember, she is not as solitary as she looks
and she will let you hold her till your arms ache.
(She’ll do the same with you)

If you fall in love with this poet (and she with you)
Remember her heart is paper, and on it she inscribes in blood
the words her soul could no longer hold.
(Your name will always be written there)

If you fall in love with this poet (and she with you)
Remember the things that made her smile,
she’s serious, but needs a break from
the things that go on behind her eyes, within her soul.
(They’re darker than you think)

Most importantly,
If you fall in love with this poet (and she with you)
Remember, you will never die.
Her words will last longer than she does.
(and as long as her heart beats, you are in it.)

And she reads Chekhov in the bathtub
thinking that 19th century Russia
must have been visually interesting, but literarily dull,
writing overstuffed with description and repetition.
It's pungent perfume pleasant at first, but soon overbearing.
She never made it through Anna K. either,
and only conquered Ilyich for academics sake.
Swimming in the long winded, emotional descriptions,
all she could think, was of what Northern ancestor
decided all Russians should go by three names
and what cunning linguist adored 'V' and 'Y' to such extent
that he proclaimed they should be used as much as humanly possible.
A popularized,  sadistic joke
for a younger brother with a speech impediment.

A sadness haunts that town.
stuffed between the cracks
of dilapidated matchbox houses,
and in the grit of rusty trailers.
Even below the green carpet of government buildings,
And the marble courthouse floor.

Poverty stares Wealth in the face from across the street,
his haunted, empty eyes
lit by the embers of discarded cigarettes.
Wealth is good at glossing over the cracks,
setting up the chain link fences and rail road tracks.
Iron curtains that could be stepped over,
if anyone knew they were there.

But no matter how many fences,
there's still that nameless sadness in the soil.
A potent concoction
of dead dreams, harsh realities, and broken hearts.
With a dash of Cherokee tears and lead from the War.
All stirred by Monotony,
who lights her cauldron fire
with electric bills and dollar store receipts.

Like a curse, it spares none.
Though they've learned how to smile
with tears in their eyes,
above moth eaten scarves or pearls.
It's permeated everything, down to the roots.

But not to leave the glass half empty;
Some still find happiness,
some are still sad.
That's just how it goes.
Hope and despair are but two notes in the same tune.

On the last, icy, breaths of December 2012,
I found a wounded sparrow,
who had mistaken glass for freedom.
The tiny neck was askew,
but the heart still fluttered against my palm.
I thought, for a moment, of ending his misery,
but the idea of bludgeoning the fragile skull,
or twisting the brittle neck,
turned my stomach sour.

I brought him home in a kleenex nest,
moved him to a basked of pine, lined with rags.
Tried to coax a few seeds and drops of water
into the tiny beak,
but to little avail.
He died new years eve, with the last breath of the old year,
and I buried the stiff body
in the garden with the dead rose bushes.

Had I, like the ancient greeks, believed in bird signs
I might have taken it as an ill omen,
run screaming to the oracle,
demanding what misfortune was to befall me,
with the first gasp of January.
But, like Achilles, I put more stock in my own two hands
than the silver-plated fingertips of Olympians.

And with that first cry of the new year,
came fates I could not have imagined,
no matter how many feathers and fates I followed.
Misfortune, of course, made her customary visit,
and stayed longer than expected.
But Joy did not shun my door,
and, by good fortune, stayed longer than her bitter sister.

Sit nos quibus pacem

Let us have peace,
tonight of all nights.
I know Time will not stand still,
I won't waste breath asking him to,
But, if, for the few hours,
till the break of day,
the guns could fall silent
the sharp tongues fall quiet,
and hate be taught for an hour, tolerance.

Sit nos quibus pacem

I know morning will break,
with joy for many, and with pain for more,
those to which this night,
is the same as the last, clanging with the hollow pains
of hunger and heartache and war,
but if we might,
for just one silver night,
have the peace
which you meant us to have from the start
I should be forever grateful.

Sit nos quibus pacem

And I wish that I could write
of pleasant things, of smiles and summer days,
But they would be dull, lifeless words,
that lie limp on the page,
like dusty plastic flowers.
My soul finds beauty in the palms of sorrow,
amid the lines of worry and heartache,
such beauty, that it can, and will,
describe it forever.

I've a bad habit.
Of bringing up the bodies
of memories, to make sure they're still in their graves.
Thought I've marked them well.
They rest comfortably in the deep furrows
carved in my brain
by wind and water and whispered words.
Eventually I'll let them rest in peace
When fresh new furrows have been dug,
and I'll plant forget-me-nots
before the tombstones
time himself has carved.

I skip that song again.
Too many memories still hang on the words,
the notes clang like old glass bottles
the woman with the red scarf tied to the oak tree,
they knock in the wind, fragile whiskey ghosts,
of times to sacred to be remembered now.
So I'll skip that song
till the bottle strings break,
and my someday-daughter asks
about the snowflake shards of glass
beneath the old oak tree.

It seems that depression
has a magnetic pull to poets.
We wear it, our stubborn scarlet letter,
Hidden between crinkled pages and ink spattered hands.
Our fickle muse,
if he stays around too long, he smothers us,
till we cannot even lift the pen,
and the words are left to swim around in circles
of darkening thought.

I was 17,
when we discussed workout routines in gym,
thin legs branching from ruby-red shorts,
skin pale and dappled in winter air.
I described my workout of 200's.
200 crunches, 200 sit-ups, etc. etc. etc.
"You make me feel fat,"
my model- built friend complained.

I stared down at my shrinking thighs,
wondering how fat she would feel,
with hollow spaces beneath her skin,
numbed by the gnawing of metabolism on muscle.
If she could feel her labored breaths circulate
through drained limbs,
and saw the stars and sparks in the haze of exhaustion,
that perpetuated around me.
If she shivered
walking home in without a coat in December
simply because
Cold burned more calories than warm.  

At 17, I learned
Electric blankets were invented for asylum patients
so they wouldn't freeze when they were lain outside
to get fresh air.
I shivered under mine in a warm house--
strangled by three layers of hoodies,
a morbidly comical scene-- the skeletal inmate cowering
in masses of cotton
and still cold.

The skeleton in the mirror had no eyes,
Only its bloated stomach stared back at me.
Forget the thigh-gap,
the stomach was the only thing that mattered.
It should be as flat as the unleavened bread
I refused at communion:
I didn't know how many calories it had.

I was 17,
when the word "beauty" fell from my vocabulary.  
Lank, unwashed hair hung limp to hide the
Inflamed scratches on my face: feeble efforts to eradicate
the hatred, guilt, over two extra bites,
and what I had become.
Here I was, in all my gollum-like, two by four perfection:
except the stomach.
That ****** bloated *****
I wished I could tear it from my body,
Throw it aside to rot on the heap
of moulding high-school dreams
I kept in the corner of my room.

But it remained, day after day,
the stubborn thing stayed on,
even when filled with saltwater,
to force it to give up the last bit of its contents.
Three mugs, and several tablespoons later
it finally relinquished,
in the emergency room,
as my mother stood
holding my hair and crying.
I still thought she was over-reacting.

I looked up at the ER doctor,
middle aged and blonde,
her eyes were sympathetic, but annoyed,
As she asked me if I was trying to **** myself.
"No," I said. Not Yet I thought,
I heard my dry throat crack with the words,
"I have an eating disorder."