dark.
grass, soft and itchy and cozy
an ugly christmas sweater
that you pull eagerly over your
head and snuggle into.

I can reach up and
swirl my hand in a puddle of stars
and wach the ripples of
starlight.

a ladder to the roof,
to the sky
the grass is below,
the sweater is discarded by the
fire — too warm
for it but it is remembered
fondly, its woven green fronds.
energy of the logic circuit burns
everything in acrid scent.
but it's not forgotten.
cozy, off to the side.

I can reach out and clasp my
hands around the moon, obliterating
the light, but it won't be dark.
hard to see,
not dark.

I can let my hands open
and let the orb of light
roll, eerie and slow,
out of the sky

it will have a soft landing
a sweater woven of grass
and darkness

do they glow now?
do they glow with the
light I brought you?

darkness is soft
softly hiding itself
in the quest to hide everything
scary that has ever made us
afraid of the dark.

light asks, softly, to be looked at.

the dash between years.
its only function is to separate
the beginning from the end.
the middle is just the
waiting room of meaningless
magazines and children's tables.

there is no name, is there, for
waiting-room toys:
wooden beads on a twisting
and never-over path.
it's a short span of wire;
how does it never end.

while the child is waiting
he learns that the game is to
get all the beads from point a
to point b. they follow the wire
path and inevitably one or
two get left behind.
where gravity stops them,
that is their new end.

the first few times, he'll go back
for them.
     smooth wood gliding.
then the doctor will call him back;
his own story, getting in the way
of things again.

his first check-up, her first
loose tooth.
his last loose tooth.
                                                    wisdom­ teeth, snatched from him.
firsts and lasts,
those are the only things
he'll remember of the middle.
and in the end,
only the first first
and the last last

the rest

—

I ache

smiles glow like mobile little campfires
warming the room
comfy, cozy. home.
you are home in this place, because they're here.

arms wrap around shoulders and hug
them tight
comforting, together.
you belong here, because they're here.

eyes closed in laughter one minute
sparkling with care the next
depth, affection.
you are loved here more than anywhere, because they're here.

you breathe the air and taste the
sweetness of familiar voices,
snuggle into the cadences and timbres
instantly recognizable as
belonging.

this is a special place,
this place where you belong.
this place where you're together.

like an old favorite blanket
you have given the memory to me
of belonging with you
to wrap around my shoulders and
hug close when I am touched
by the chilling fingers
of sadness.

I ache
because I miss it, yes
but mainly because
it is such a beautiful thing
it hurts.

wine
cheese
beef. good beef.     (i am good, i am good)
things that get better with age.

antique cars
comics
old coins
things that increase in value with time.
rarities

i am rare.
even antique cars
have their duplicates
out there
but i am rare.
(i am the only me.)
i have to tell myself
this list.
there are things that get better
i'm worthless
only to me
only for now

leather gets softer, suppler.
fruit gets juicier, better, with the age of the tree.
a pile of compost, nothing but trash (worthless, worthless)
biodegrades (slowly, slowly)
—soil richer, plants grow stronger.

repeat after me:
*i am rare...

I feel you slipping
and it has me on edge
what are you nervous for?
nothing
you haven't got nails left
no.
why?

to the quick.
all the time.
because I remember not
two weeks ago
I was missing you with
an unforgettable ache

unforgettable. I remember
the ache. but I don't remember
the why.

I was scared you'd forget me
but now
I'm scared I'll forget you first

The New York City skyline
from across the water;
sunsets at sea;
the shadows of clouds
shifting over treetops;
my sisters wishing on
a shooting star;
the sunrise over the desert
from a hot air balloon;
the warmth and light of a
campfire as the voices rise
into the sky with the embers.

And I have tallied up these
beautiful things and kept
tabs on them, memories like
index cards in my mind, labeled,
categorized, logical, the way
I like my things to be:
landscape, cityscape, skyline,
harmony, melody, warmth,
friendship

and then somewhere in the back
of the drawer is a folder, a
category that is not a category
and it is spilling into the
other categories and it
is disorder and the absence
of order, the incapacity to
categorize beautiful things

overflowing, not logically

and then, there's *you

Out of sight, out of mind
       except
I haven't seen you for a while
and I see you everywhere
in everything

What if today was the last day I'll
see you?

                                                     What if it was yesterday, and I'm        
                                                                ­  not really here right now?

I love you.
      
                                                     ­ Who are you talking to?
                                                             ­                




                                            ­          I love you, too.

she used to say,
I want to go to a small school
where no one locks their doors
and everyone knows each
other

she came from a big high school
so many kids in the hallways
and naturally she got used to
being able to slip though the cracks

of the system and avoid the world,
to use the people to hide from the
people. oh, how she hated the people.
and now suddenly she is seeing

that in order to blend in and be quietly,
in order to hide from the people, you
need to be where there are lots of people.
humans are paradoxes in everything else

they do. why not this too.

I dive right in even though
I know that by the time I get
to the bottom the pool will
be shallow

and when I stand up and shake
the water from my hair and
open my eyes I know for certain
that the water will have drained

away entirely. Just me, soaking,
sopping, sobbing in an empty
pit of gray concrete. I will still
dive because that
                               fall
                                    
through the                      air

will be the most precious thing,
I suspect. I am sure it will be for
nothing in the end but before then,
it will be for you.

I will do it for you and for my
own selfish reasons, because it's
you, I know, and I will never find
another like you nor will I try.

When you leave I want to remember
you properly, with your eyes shining
but not from tears. Smiling eyes,
laughing pools of brown, open.

Always I will remember you and
I want the memories to be perfect
because I love you and I am not
as selfless as you and I want to

remember love this way so that
when I fall into the shallow water
and the shock flows up my spine
and stings my soul I can remember

your face and remember
that I did it for you, that love is strong
enough to push acrophobia off the
edge and send it     
                                 s       o    a    r       i    n    g  

with arms spread wide and eyes wide
open. Maybe if I can remember that, the
soaring before the fall, I will try again
to find it even though I know it won't

be your fall. I will continue in search
of it anyway, a hopeless search for
something halfhearted, but I will
continue it whole-heartedly, that I

might always be reminded of you.
And now, I will embrace the concrete
floor, the stinging of the spirit and
the soaring of the soul, as I fall, that

you might see my smile and enjoy
the fall with me,
before it crashes.

That is how much I love you.

once we were close.
once our heads would rest on
each other's as we laughed
and you would absentmindedly
reach out and push my hair out
of my eyes.

we would sit on the floor and I
would hug my legs to my chest and
you would absentmindedly drape
your arm over my knees and I
would cross my ankles over yours
and our fingers would lock
like children's, in a fairy tale.

we had a fairytale friendship.

you used to believe in fairies.

every once in a while you would
look me in the eye and I could tell
by the sparkle of depth, the richness of
brown, that you were going to say
something serious
'I'm glad we met
me too, friend. I'm glad I met you, too.
mm. what if I had never said that.
you'd regret it.
that's why I'm glad you're you
because I wouldn't have.
but I wanted to.
repeating after you
might not have been enough.

but every once in a while even you
would surprise me and you would
glance me over and hug me close
I'm glad you exist
I'm glad you exist too,
I'm glad for you.
like a child in a fairytale
stuttering over words, fumbling,
blind kitten

echoing you

with the hope
that you will hear the echo
in everything you say
so that when I am
forgotten you can catch
my voice on the breeze,
the echo, and you can remember
to pull down our dusty
fairytale storybook
from the shelf.

forgetting is the worst part

sometimes, even when it is
bothering no one, I turn
my music down and put

the earphones in, because
music is so precious and
personal, and sometimes

when I am hiding myself
deep within myself
I like to keep it that way.

mine.
within.

Admittedly, the beginning of this is not a poem. It is a link to a video that everyone in the world needs to see. The poem follows.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ROXTFfkcfo&list;=PL9ABB2F7C182BA1D8

this way people can see
because when the roles
are reversed, everything feels
wrong. you are suddenly
trapped in a world that is not
right. everywhere you turn, the
wrongness is blatant to you.
but not to them. to them it
is normal, a vague term,
an existential-crisis-invoking
term. but what do.

that is how it is. in a normal
world, the normalness surrounds
and suddenly it is like being trapped
underneath a bell jar of a dream
and everyone is acting like nothing
is wrong, but maybe they are just messing
with your fragile mind. because shouldn't
it be the other way around?

wait, what?

it's like everyone got the memo
except you and not a single
soul will share it with you,
because you should have gotten
the **** thing yourself,
and nothing makes sense, how
can they all think feeling this way
is so normal, it's reversed, it must be,
nothing makes sense and no one
will explain and some people feel
like that all the time.

what can you do
when no one is there

nothing. you can do
nothing. you must
be strong and you must
wait and you must
know that someone
is coming, someone must
come.

you must do nothing.
that way, you can stay
alive

for something.

i knew something was off

because usually i like to
seek out the sad ones
and give them someone

but that day i wanted
to find you.

19 April 2013.
Today is silent.

Today I write day of silence on the back
of my hand, letting the words sink into my
skin the way they try, heavy as they are, to sink
into the minds of the ignorant chatters who ask
why I haven't spoken. If, indeed, they've even
noticed. Nodding and smiling will get you pretty
far, and people hear their own voices so loudly
as to assume yours has just been drowned out
by their own superiority.

Today I get home before everyone else and
I scrub the words away, because while it means
the world to me and I stand for what it implies
I cannot show it to them; they don't know who I
am, but they think they do. I do not have the heart
to crush their reality. They're wrong. There is only the faintest
off-colored tinge to my hand now. It could be a scar.
But they won't notice it. People cannot hear something
as loud as silence— certainly, then, they cannot see
something as loud as scars.

Now not even the message remains.
Ink down the drain.

why is it that everything about heartbreak
sounds like a cliche

heartbreak is not cliche
it is different for everybody
it is the most personal thing
and the most painful

it demands  time
and space
and respect

it effects each person
so differently, so
profoundly,
and while only those
who have experienced
it can claim to understand,
even they cannot claim
to understand fully

or maybe people are just
so self centered, inherently,
that each assumes her
heartbreak to be the
deepest.
and how lonely it is
to be experiencing more
pain than all those surrounding
you.

just the sort of heart-wrenching
loneliness one wants
to wallow in
in times of heartbreak

I wonder if you pay as close attention
as I do to the little things,
the ones I go over in my mind
hours after you've walked away—
you turn and wave over your shoulder
and I walk the other way smiling at
myself like a fool.  I love it.

I am thinking about the slight tilt of
your head when you want me to
hurry up and follow you; about the soft
way you tap my arm with the back of
your hand, that I might turn round in time
to see what you're pointing at, something
you've decided I will enjoy, before it's
gone; the way, when I am sitting with my
gaze cast downward, that you reach out
and brush my hair away just to check that
my eyes are sparkling but not wet.

resting your knees against the tips of my
feet when they are in the way as we settle
into our little corner of the world, trying
to get comfortable. small things. I wonder if
they are but instinct to you. To me, they are
you claiming me as a friend.

I am weak. I let you, but I never claim you
back. I am no good at subtlety— everything
I do is too little, too late, or else it is too much
and far too soon. But words are forever, and
since I can barely speak at times, I have written
mine down.

Words are forever, and these are for you
my friend.

silence.
what? don't you have something to say?

darling, i always have something to say.
my mind is a construction site
alive and busy
people everywhere, moving
every which way
but it is so far away that
to me they are but ants
small and busy, so many of them
who knows what they are doing
what they are thinking.

i try to build words, but i am
too weak to lift them,
they are heavy as bricks
to my crew of small ants.
sentences thicken
into mortar that your
strength can master,
but when my ants
band together, bricks on
their backs, to spread it,
the weight crushes them
to the ground.

i fall before the words.

but
i always have something to say.

say it, then

.

life is contradictions, and love is contradictions.
both are complicated enough to give you a
headache but really they’re the simplest
things in the world. they are like the warm
weather; it sneaks up on you slowly and
it’s pleasant and soft and bright, optimistic
it caresses your skin so you might as well
go outside and you run along and you feel
the pain as you gasp for breath and you
push harder because you want your muscles
to be sore, to ache for days after this one,
you want to be reminded of this moment
and it is a painful moment, you want the
pain but you’re too cowardly to inflict it
yourself. so maybe if you appear to be
chasing a goal you can elude yourself,
or someone. maybe. so you’re running,
and you’re combatting inner pain by causing
outer, and it makes no sense and it hurts
like hell and you can’t stand it but you don’t
want to, you never did, and your balled-up fists
grow sweaty and uncomfortable and you
run and run and
boom
the warmth becomes heat and the softness
stabs you and surrounds you and the optimistic
sun blinds you with its light and you squint
your eyes against it
but there is no moving the sun.
it will go down on its own.

they say if you are with
a writer, and she never
writes about you, she
doesn't love you.
    
                          i say some things
                are within you that are
                      just too precious to
                                               share.

some things are buried
so deep in your soul,
your mind just can't form
the words.
                           so instead of saying
                     what i came here to say
                     let these words suffice:
                          some things are just
                         too precious to share.

she couldn't see it
she tried so hard
to be who she is
and she is
but she can't see

it shines in her eyes,
all the long hours
she's put in,
all the success
it shines so brightly
but she cannot see
her own eyes
or maybe the light
is just blinding her

she casts her eyes downward
content in herself
but it's not herself
it is her own warped version
of herself, that has
not been properly
reflected back to her
vision.

she is literally perfect
and she doesn't see it

why can't you ever help
her see it

it's heartbreaking.

I scare myself with bitterness:
Mersault found within him
an invincible summer in the midst of winter
but I do not want even to pretend
that that is what I am looking for.
I am numb beyond existentialism.
But not numb with cold.

In my youth, my favorite colour was green
because of spring and trees and turtles and frogs
and when the weather turned
and the leaves grew back
I would whittle the time away outside
barefoot, on the grass,
loving the warmth of sun-kissed skin
and the breeze on my dry cheeks.

Today the leaves grow back
and the green resurfaces
and the warmth has the world walking
with an optimistic spring it its step
but today I think that maybe I do not like green
that maybe my favorite colour is orange.
Dark but bright? Or yellow,
because it can be cheer to some
but the moment you place it beside white
suddenly yellow is impurity
and for all the pure innocence of spring,
everything is, is it not, washed over in a
translucent coat of yellow, stifling sunlight.

So I yearn for winter
and for cold
for numb fingers
just before they are thawed by yellow fires
for sweaters and scarves and hot cocoa
for bare trees outlined with snow
and for the world blanketed, from
green grass coated with frost
to yellow sun obliterated by clouds,
by the sparkling snow,
white in all its gloomy glory.

the sun is brighter than the moon
but its light washes over everything
till the world pales
into insignificance and routine
and night is more colorful than noon.

it wasn't snowing yet, but they'd told us it would.
probably I said something infantile, about how
I could smell it, the frostiness of snowflakes in the
air, because you smiled that knowing smile of yours,
like you were an adult and i was a child and you
didn't have the heart to take my innocence away.

that look always made my heart smile, sadly, and
it also drove me up a wall, partly because it made
me want to hug you close and pity you the
burden of assumed moral superiority, and whisper
that you, too were a child. but mostly because you
were right— I clung to my naiveté while you, you
had already had the good sense to push it away.
it followed you around with sad puppy eyes, but
you knew it and you kept it at arm's length.
you brave, brave soul.

when it did start to snow I wasn't surprised. you
were. you didn't say anything. we were in
a deserted school hallway, listening, removed
from the other kids' cries. we were
delighted too, but the others wanted to run home
early, and we knew the definition
of home better than they. and I can speak only for
myself but it seemed we both wanted only to stay
forever side by side, tucked away in our corner,
me reveling in the softness of love and friendship
and winter, you trying to be there with me but having
trouble leaving your mind, where that sad-eyed
puppy snapped at your heels. it whimpered
but you held your own.

and slowly, we built up moments like this one.
we wallowed in each other and in the coziness
of cloudy days. we read good poetry and
heard good music and took photographs as we
discussed life from our  softer world.
there were moments of such pure white happiness
that they came full circle to being sad,
simply because I knew I would never be that
happy again, and I was not wrong, and I didn't
want to be. and we had
sad moments, too, never ever think I am not
happy to be sad with you.

and slowly, too, your innocence knew its
defeat, and sat obediently at your feet,
and we shared things.
but I was a child, and a weak one at that, and
God knew I was not as strong as you so she
gave me no great suffering to speak of, to
share with you. no way to reciprocate the
vulnerability you gave, and that in
itself was suffering for me.

I regret that I was not good at saying things.
that while
you had to be your own adult and push childhood
away, I clung hopelessly to mine as
I discovered me and watched it slip
from my small hands.

among the plethora of reasons I can give for
bitterly hating sunny days is the
way the sun slanted through the window and lit
up your eyes and swilled particles around
your face like fairy dust on the day you reached
out and pulled my lanyard over your own neck.
look, you said, content. almost proud.
I'm wearing a bit of you around my
neck, and you wove it through your
sunlit fingers, eyes bright. you tugged on it,
lightly. that's what love does, it strangles
you. and we all want it.

and I gasped at the way that word sounded,
so harsh in such beautiful sunlight on such
a soft face. but I don't want to strangle
you. I said that. thoughtlessly,
instinctively. I regret it every day. in that regard,
you gave me a strength, but it's no german shepherd—
you are so **** strong.

when your ache tugged and tugged at you,
tore you from reality, or brought you closer to it,
it slipped its finger into that lanyard knot. loosened it.
I could have reached out right then, as you had when you
pulled the sun-soaked string over your head, and
tightened it. tightened us. been a friend.

I didn't tug the knot. if you run.
when you run,
I know that two grown dogs
will follow after you, blocked
from the sun by your receding shadow.