You're my storm cloud disguised as sunshine
but your masquerade never stops the rain.
Laughs like lightning flashing across your face
sharp and dangerous, followed by the thunder of
my ignorance, cluing you in on how far your lies
stretch into my desperation to be wanted.

Lightning.
Thunder.
Oh I never thought
I was that funny
Your electric strings
Pull the punch lines out of my mouth.
Thunder.
The lightning's best friend.

Thunder.
You must really like me
You must have told your friends about me too.
Because that cackles coming out of their
throats when I tell a joke sound just like
the storm, the zigzags of fire that tear through the clouds.
telling me how funny I am, how much they love having me around.
How you need me.
Time for my response… its my job right?
Thunder.

Thunder.

Why is it now that the way you curl your lips
when I make my jokes
looking
less
and less
like a smile?
Your friends know that shape
and they know how to make their lips look the same way.
Is it some contagious thing that they all have, and disease
passed around the room every time that lightning escapes.
But they all think I am funny
It must just be a friend thing…
I should learn how to do it too.
Thunder.

Thunder.

Streaming pixels
Blurry faces of “friends”
it must have been a mistake
The love me
next time,
I’ll make sure to clear it up with them
why wouldn't they want me to attend?
Thunder.

Thunder.


Glances like knives
Darting through the air like flies
and infestation of insects that
carry messages that
I don’t understand.
But they do.
Like a major league team
catch after catch
never missing those eyes that
seem a little bit darker
and a little bit colder.
Passing the ball around the bases
returning the favor.
Why can’t I grip ball that seems to bind
them all together
leaving trails of
text messages
and parties
that I was not invited to
this ball that seems to always
keep me on the outfield.
And how come everytime that ball goes
around
and
around….
its feels like
a punch to the stomach
never ceasing to knock me
down
and
leave me
breathless.


This must be what friendship feels like…
Thunder.


Is it?
because I look around
these hallways
where I always walk to fast
trying to keep up
yet I am always
one
step
behind.
I see that
these other girls
walk in straight lines
arms joined so that no one
falls
too
far behind
yet I’m always walking in
dizzy circles
wondering when they will
turn around to see if I am
still following,
still standing,
still funny.

Thunder, the lightning's best friend…
but that is never who I was to you.

Wind tumbles leaves from their branches 
Like a hatchling from its nest

Sometimes nature's like an alarm
Pushing us from rest

But one thing I have learned from this
Is that the world knows what it's doing

It gives a little shove when needed
And into our future, we're parachuting

my feet felt far away but they were where they’d always been. my hands were gone, that i knew. my hands were with your hands in the pockets of your creased black trousers somewhere in your mother’s house.

i walked right out, high tides rushing up my spine, until i found myself submerged in a sudden plan to never speak to you again.

i forgot all versions of you, the slow of your smile, your shape next to my shape. i forgot myself, intermittently, and bruised my way to a beginning, stretched so long, so thin that it disappeared entirely.

how tired. how tired you became at loving. you said, i need to trim this ingrown soul of mine, twenty times, and i shook wildly, remembering, but trying not to; you were the one who left, not me.

in a public toilet: i find remaining parts of you, of me, resting gently on my cheeks. i make a wish, blow them away.

and i think, *i knew someone once,
he could retell his dreams like well-thought-out novels,
his eyelashes reminded me of stars,
his silence was a heavy drone.

65 years from now when my grandchild looks me and asks me
"Grandma do your cheeks look like they are falling and why does your backbone rise higher than the rest of you?"
I will answer:

Baby girl what they don't teach you in school is that the older you get the more gravity pulls at you.
Keeping your feet planted and your mind out of the clouds.
Life moves down instead of forward.

Bones grow frail and muscles shrivel up and weaken just like your ability to dream.
Dream of what you’re going to be,
"when you grow up" because,
darling this is it. I'm all grown up.
I am all I was ever meant to be.
My clay has hardened,
no longer able to bend and curve with the wind.  
Too weak to keep walking forward.

That is why baby run while you still can,
discover the world.
Leave footprints in every corner of existence,
because when you're as old as me your feet will be sore
and won't be able to venture deeper into the pockets of the universe.
Roots now bind me to this little house where I will keep moving down.

Gravity is too strong for me now dear. My skin has already given up. Succumbing to the mighty force. Falling away from my bones that lie hollow inside my cheeks engraved,with the memories too valuable lose after  lifetime.
So that when this world had
changed,
beyond recognition,
I will still hold inside of me the days that I spent in the sun .

As for my back.
Honey, the best thing you can have is a backbone ,
because when everything in this world in pulling you down,
you're going to need something
to keep holding you up.

My backbone,
a tribute to the years
I spent tiptoeing across
the coal beds of this life’s mighty fire.  But one day it will turn into a white flag of surrender.

That is when you know that gravity has won.
I will sink back into the earth
and maybe start again…

i) Tell me what you think about when you can't go to sleep at night. When you're on your bed, staring up at the ceiling, heat reverberating off the skin on your body. Desperation hanging off your lips; her name rolling violently around the inside of your mouth like a storm, pausing every now and then to dangle treacherously off the edges of your tongue. Why are you still sleeping with her ghost darling? I wish you would stop missing her so much sometimes.

ii) These days, you get out of bed at 2 in the morning and head to the liquor store down the street with my red flannel wrapped around your waist. I don't know how long you're gone but you wake me with whiskey-tinged kisses and bloodshot eyes. I tell myself this is just a phase, that loving a sad person isn't that hard really, but when I'm in the shower scrubbing her name off my skin with warm water and soap, I can hear you calling out for her, in a drunken stupor, as you stretch your lanky arms out to my side of the bed. I tell myself things will get better.

iii) We visit her grave on Wednesday. I make you tomato sandwiches for the ride and pick dandelions off the sidewalk because I know they're her favourite; you've mentioned it at least ten times. When we get there, you're on your knees, head buried into the soft grass, I'm not sure if you're crying, I don't want to know. The dandelions now lie crushed within the creases of your palms, and I start to wonder if the sadness that's tucked behind the corners of your ears will ever dissipate.

iv) On the car ride home, you won't shut up. "she's dead, she's dead, she's dead," you keep muttering in short, frayed breaths. I don't know what else to do, so I put on some music, slide my hand into yours and feel your fingers tighten around mine. "I can feel her slipping away," you say, and I think about how that's not such a bad thing.

vi) You're tired when we finally reach the door, and your eyes are droopy; you almost can't walk. So I guide you to our room; one hand on the small of your back, the other wrapped around your waist. I tuck you into bed, and make sure your blanket covers the peaks of your toes.

vii)You've drifted off into nothingness, you're sleeping in soft and heavy breaths now. Her name escapes from the gap between your lips, and a sigh escapes from mine. I can't help but wonder if this is what loving a ghost feels like.