i have racked my mind
trying to figure this whole thing out
the staying, the going
the threads we claim hold us here
& the people who've stopped to play a tune on them
i sometimes relate it
to waking up in waist deep snow
in our former selves
the us we wish we could give one another
the children we've sat on the shelves
trapped, like the looks
we leave behind in snow globes
i sometimes imagine ships
dragging the bottom to the sea of "me"
for sleep & pieces of my old self
to sell to the new one
like history doesn't repeat itself
it gets me wondering
if you too want an apology from the rain
or if you dream of burning family photo albums
and wearing the ashes like perfume
if you're anything like me
how i hope god chokes
on memories of me blowing out candles as a child
i know i shouldn't reference my reader  
but don't you know, the only difference
between alone & lonely is you?
that if my hands could talk
the only thing they'd be able to say
is "dear god we've missed you"
and how can you tell me it isn't love
when even the rain refuses to fall
in places where i've kissed you
i remember the day
you found my smile at a yard sale
it reminds me of how you'll leave
i wonder if when you go
you'll tell yourself
the person in the rear view mirror
is closer than they appear

I hadn't cried in years.  
I was always taught that strength
was not having the courage to let yourself feel but
******* it up, holding it in.
I am sick of "You're going soft on us, honey"
Today I came to understand that
you are completely okay with writing the same poem
over and over again.
This is a metaphor for the way you ****** her in my bed.
This is a metaphor for the night you copy and pasted love letters.
This is a metaphor for what really happened-
I never fall in the same place twice.
Except when I do.
I think the critical difference between the two of us,
critical because there are many differences
but- I think our hamartia, our fatal flaw,
our end scene is this:
if people didn't like my poetry, if nobody listened,
if I walked out on stage and nobody snapped their
fingers, I would still write for just your eyes.
I would still cramp my crooked, birth defect,
quadruple jointed fingers writing to you about the nights
you loved me back,
for a minute there you loved me back.
And you loved 20,000 other people back.
And you loved small towns back and big cities back and the entire west coast
back when you drove through, making temporary homes out of people
who should have been permanent
and I loved you.
And I hadn't cried in years.
Not because I wasn't sad, but because I was taught that showing emotion
was weakness.
So if my father made me memorize the How To's of strength,
if I were going by the book, today I'd be so fragile
you could say hello and I'd shatter so suddenly you'd
forget you were the one that let go.

i remember you
and that twinkle in your eye
the one that griped my heart so tight
on the day that you took flight

i remember it
like it was yesterday
that was when you went away
now here we are today

just the two of us
me and my lasting memory
if you think about it technically
with you, guess that makes three

which always seems to make me think
if in turn you remember me
and if you do, do you see
the fool in love i'll always be

He wanted to know her
he wanted to touch every inch
of her imperfectly perfect skin
to know every scar
to know her tiger stripes
from growth spurts and pregnancy
the pieces of metal left in her
and the dislocated bones
all had their own stories from childhood
the day she was caught on a fence
the tom boy in lace socks
her mum had dressed her in
for Sunday school
the ripped dress as she fell in mud
breaking her right elbow which to
this day left her with a bone pointing out
he wanted to spend days
just looking at her scarred face-
her upper lip – sat in the changing rooms
after a gymnastics competition
playing catch but the bottle of water
went right at her face
her forehead – walking at ten months
trips and falls, she hits her head
on the way down face to face
with the rockery -
incidentally the rockery where the cat
is buried
poor thing was stood on many times
as she was learning to walk
he counts the freckles on her left cheekbone
which on her porcelain skin
shine like Orion’s Belt on a clear night
he loved every part of her she did not
he memorized every feature that made
her “her”
he knew the truth had always been there
right in front of him since the first
time he saw her naked –
her naked soul exposed a long time before
anything he could ever make tangible.

© Sia Jane