You know,
Sometimes i feel the echo
Of my former disease
Wonder why instead of living
I write silent poetry
Whisper my secrets
Into my books
Or speak, shaken
Stuttering breath to a stranger
On a plush chair
In a rented office space

I know one day
I'll no longer be here
By hand, by wandering feet
Or by happenstance
But that is not freedom
Only something similar
I can not be free
If i am not there
To live it

I tell anyone with ears
To listen to me
Listen to my mournful
Empty tales of
Empty life
But it can always get emptier
Distilled down into
A spectre merely mirroring
Making no memories
And spending all of my time
In such a daze
Laying the way sunshine hazes
Over a hot summer morning
Just falling asleep with its rise

That hollowed out feeling
In the throat and in the soul
Not predator or prey
But other
Focused attention
Only on the body
That has been me
I could still do it
Be the beautiful that carves
But does not imprint
The stone scale monument
That pressures and presents
Too, too acutely
Those brittle, thin fingers
And protruding spine
From every angle
Even the sides

Or, force myself
To wait out the urge, the blame
To suffer and suffocate,
Stay the too-quick beating
The unfathomable
Ache of my heart
And quiet its cries
For the scales to balance back out
For the knife to reverse course
Stop stabbing inwards
To make its sickening point
My own worst enemy
I did not place this curse

You told me again
In not so many words

This time I didn’t ask you
Why I was drowning in sand

Your hilarious moments
My part in your hands

You did not say why but
You did tell me when

And it was a month after I asked you
And you denied, denied my plans

But this time, you laid it out
Plainly and it really hurt

To see that you chose another when
I was still here in the world

So you will not be my lasting
My handsome prince

I did not choose to walk away
But you did, you did

I will chase you down
If you don’t love me
Fashion hairpins from
Fish ribs
Bring myself to anti-******
Thinking of your
Valleys and hills
Carry buckets of water
Over all the trails

I’ll teach you the value
Of holding my hand
And the separate pleasure
Meeting for moonlight sonata
In the middle of daybreak
And I will do it
Drag the entire world down
To fit in your palm
I will do it

I’d like to meet you in a daydream
On the foothills of the Appalachia
Spreading seeds and carrying
My harvest basket
I’d meet you for board game night
Across the table
And I’d meet you at a quarter past three
The dead silent night
Lift up my arms and bask in it
Surrounded by all of you

The stars were never this bright until tonight

I am standing on street corners
And huddled in the shelter
Every other
Fourth night
When the weather
Just, the frigid weather
Turns my bones to ice

He won’t drink with me like this
He can’t think beyond his brains, his fists

There was nothing behind it
The sainted windows
Where I sat and I waited
Peering beyond my own face

Ice cream cones and Captain America
No, I won't do it, I can't go it alone
Transparent through the glass
Nobody wonders if nobody knows

But you knew then
When the grins dashed behind our lips
The snowfall cushioning every footprint
You knew even when I didn't know

And all I have is the imprint
Your eyes
Because, you're just gone and you never said
Never told me
Never let me be alright

I've been big and small
Bent muscles and snapping sinew
Ate grief for breakfast
Pancake platters
Black coffee
And an endless summer where
I sat over the river on the
Train tracks
Looking up

No one sees me now
As they did not then
But now I have myself
An itch, memories
My only friend

I've sat up all night
Gazed out the window
To see lights
Blue
And white
If I'm not living
Well
I won't leave at all
It's my life

I could make you live again
Pealing laughter, movie reels
Scandals, scarlet, moving through time
I can make the sheets unwrap themselves
It's you and I, you and I, alive

The wildest fantasies
Your secreted-away dreams
Victim, poison
Feather-light fingertips
Again I have shown you what I fear
It's you and I, you and I, tonight