There is a cake.
There is a beautiful, rounded
Vanilla swiss buttercream well-iced cake
That they gave to you.  

This cake makes me miss you
Makes me miss running my fingers
Throughout your hair
And gently pressing my own soft lips
To yours, Instead of your lips pressing
     this stupid cake.
And I know that you love it.
And I know that if you do not have
every ounce
You will starve.  

I was jealous of this cake, I admit
Jealous indeed of the shiny new replacement
They gave for you for my love
It made you feel good inside and out, as well
Enriched your brain, and your appetite
I was jealous and stole a slice in spite of you.  

Then I realized, that you love this cake
You have waited for this cake, every year
Every birthday
Hoping for the envelope informing you
That the time for cake was now
That the cake WAS your time, now, and that
All of you was invested, in this succulent dessert
And you needed to keep as much as you could,
     for your sake,
I came to accept the fact, that you needed so.  

But like your hair, I brush this cake
with the tips of my fingers, I taste this cake
I understand the sweetness you enjoy
and the sanctity of it being left alone  

But if I dare to kiss this cake
because I adore the things you care about so much
and some icing comes onto my lips
Have I stolen something from you?

Sometimes I think I do too many things, and that it takes on my life,

And constricts my breathing

But in truth I am thankful for at least my stressful days are full

So many die and crow, 'if only, if only,'

Perhaps 'If only I had taken time to enjoy the small things,'

But I won't regret it because I can't regret putting too much of myself into the world,

In fact, I think my only regret would be not sharing enough of it

How could I, so blessed with life for another microsecond on this earth, be so selfish?

The chime of a bell and the tick of a clock
Time was invented by man but is god
Too much on our hands; too little too late
Our worlds all revolve 'bout our linear fate
Too much variety made world trade broken
So we regulated it gave each land a token
Of time they relied on to go 'bout their day
Slowly dissolving old lifestyles away
More loyal to chimes of a bell than the rule
Of how each culture functions, went far past a tool
"Your prioritizing is a big disappointment--"
"I'm so sorry sir, do you have an appointment?"
Schedules and calendars grew into the law
And soon the repairs became the new flaws

From daybreak to lights-out, at home or at desk
Lit screens bearing numbers define when I rest
Constant competition, endless applications
Upcoming interviews of unending durations
I spend so much of life prepping for the next step
Preschool to pre-K to K to grade school to Next
Then middle school grades prepared us for high
Since that's prep for college, where the end is nigh
But college just primes us for jobs we'll have someday
Tomorrow comes for us disguised as today.

Don't even get me started on earning promotions
Since the day you start work is the tip of commotion
To the top of it all with your assistant and office,
accountant, and ***-kissing levels of cautious
So perhaps one day you can have the cell in the corner
And dish out the rat race for its future owner
God knows you're too busy to appreciate now
You have children and a 401k on the Dow
Your mortgage and loans haunted you before you were hired
And terror they'll stay till the day you retire
So that's when the madness concludes, you would say
Tomorrow comes for us disguised as today.

We dream of a future where our present would do
A life we believe in where 5pm, we're through
Free to go home and watch our TV
Where someone can promise a product will free
Evidence of our stress from our skin and our tress-
-es which now grey with fear of outdated-ness
"Cause you're not young forever," goes the sickening cliche
Tomorrow comes for us disguised as today.

We feel what we feel and we fear the unknown
Too braced for the days we consider us grown
It doesn't mean we're inclined to give up our lives
To where relaxing's a thought that induces hives
"I'm just too stressed out!" We're not feeling okay
Because tomorrow comes for us disguised as today

So please do not tell me that I am too late
Please do not say I'll "regret this, some day"
For I'll break your laws with a snap of glass
Cogs and gears suddenly mangled and mashed
What will you do now?
Do you even know what now is?

Tell me that I
belong somewhere
I’ll take your word I promise
I will

Tell me I
couldn’t find
the place I was looking for
‘cause I’d never left it

Tell me we
couldn't see
each other because we weren't looking
don't tell me we were blind

We were both here
we'd never left
but we'd both been
left alone

They told me way too long
So I tried to make it short,
I shrank and shrank and shrank
     so very small.

They took away my feet
and then my ankles
then my knees,
Till not very much was left of me
     at all.

They told me take out bulk
That all it was was outside hulk
So I grew thin and frail and slender
   and see-through,

Until I couldn’t see me
without my confidence receeding;
I disappear sideways,
Do I look good enough for you?

They told me take out words
So I took out words and words
And I stole my broken grammar
     hardly sense bones.

They told me too many letters
I wrote to you, too many letters
Letters with only one address:
     living room floor,

But I felt they were at home
replacing ground with styrofoam
that came out of my mouth,
     my hollow core.

So I let them steal my letters
Let them rip and burn my letters
They tore my tiny heart out;
    left askew
They took away those letters
almost every ******* letter,
Until the only thing they left behind
     was U.

A gift bestowed me kindness
The warmth of your thought my crown
But came with it one deviant voice
Whom if I spoke would let you down

The small voice belonged a girl
Who might long-ago have said thank you
For the very same small gift she went
Onto forget and break through

And I do feel so unkind
For thinking things, questioning why
When I know you only shared it
'Cause it's now me who makes you shine.

...

(There is a conflict in my head
Between my waking and half-dead,
Where I judge my deemed importance
As menial, in your head)

To myself I know it's preposterous.
But at times I'm wont to think this way.

If you save that bit of love
that you made another girl
Should I feel special or dishonored,
Or ungrateful, for asking

I am a hypocrite, when I say
Nothing on earth should go to waste
When I do secretly wonder
        Why you kept the old remains
                of things for someone who was not worth it
And give them to me, if I'm so special?
Am I not special enough to earn
        something I inspired you to love?
Or have I just the trust and merit to guard keepsakes
        others sewn and snagged you from?

Please do not take this to mean that it is undervalued,
I really do love it so much.

I'm just bitter hands besides ours have wrapped around your heart
Despite knowing that the both of us have contributed that part
It's a truth of life I must respect, as I too, had past remains
I was just lucky enough, that those I'd shared with, were good and kept them safe.

I did my dance, I gave to you
The satin ribbon from my shoe
And now through my shoe it won’t lace
Nothing to hold me into place

For weeks I pondered on this choice
with fears too subtle to be voiced
Wondering if I’d given away
the thing that made me not to stray

You used this bow I’d kept for me
To tie me down, discipline me
Created puppet strings you’d lift
You made me dance with you, …

In the aftermath that night
I’d come to know every mom’s fright
And come the dawn you were, I see
Compelled to advertise your deeds
You tied the string around my head
To show off what you’d done in bed
You claimed it made me strong and pretty
Shame your claim wasn’t quite witty
Enough to fool me, they saw through me
No one lets girls who’ve been had truly
Free from perpetually being red
You won’t believe what they had said.

My satin bow became a noose
You’d wrapped it tight, I couldn’t loose
(en) it so slickly
I felt sickly
Every time I had you with me
I wish you’d just leave me alone
I threw you out, and changed my phone
(number) and left you
Called for rescue
Joined the show as I was meant to
Acknowledged everybody’s doubts
Was granted one chance, or be out.

And so I went hoping no change
Would affect my place on the old stage
They looked at me and said it’s fine
That I could still belong in line
Missing my shoes since they'd no bows
To cross themselves in neat-pulled rows

I took a step, onto the tile
The other dancers in a file
But I stood there in my bare feet
And I instead was shown a seat.

When you’re asleep I sit in the light, studying your movements
When you’re asleep a sit in the dark, syncing my breathing with yours
When you’re asleep I lie next to you, drinking your mumbles, the sounds your stomach make, the smacking of your lips
When you’re asleep I lie awake

There is something so very special
about the perk in the curl of your eyelashes
the lifts and dimples of your cheeks
and the way your lips part like blossoming flowers in the spring
flush with pale pink color that I draw my lips closer to touch

My worries dissolve like the flutter of your eyes
as you leave our world together and travel off to your own
maybe I can visit you there, but it doesn’t truly matter
I’ve elected to stay behind with the other half of you.
And it stays so very charming, when its fingers—your fingers
wrap themselves around mine when my hands reach for yours.

Why is there something so securing, so beautiful, and so safe
about being in a tide alongside someone who’s unconscious?
you’re hardly any good here, asleep, unaware of burdens round us
you can’t even fight the spider now crawling down the windowframe
you’ll never even know he was there, had I not been here with you
I’ll take care of it, darling, and you’ll never have to know
When you’re out and I’m still here I can rise, protect both of us.

Come on little spider,
oh please do not be afraid of me and this fateful kleenex tissue

Home fort is safe again. My focus is back onto you. And your lips.
And your nose. Is it even possible to admire someone this much?
A hair is poking out of it. Maybe two even. And yet you’re perfect.
Every trait of yours a detail on an exquisite piece of art. And god no it’s not your looks.

It’s your heart, really:
the one part of you that travels to both worlds.
By day it stays mine, loving me back as I try to hide my own
translating my affections into non-misheard obsessions
keeping me safe. And painting my world beautiful.
But at night it follows you, off to lands of magic and adventure
Painting your world full of color and light, even as you lie in the dark
Such a functionally simple *****. And yet somehow I’m alive in it.

This ending wasn’t meant to make sense.

That's what you are. And I can't articulate, because I'm not used to these feelings. I am not used to dragging out such light affections.

My work has been a treatment: for a sickness in my veins I'm desperate to abscond, because perhaps as ink the sad can haunt a jail whose bars are not my ribcage.

I have never used my skill to try and imprison a smile.

How could I anyway, bind with irony the freeing feeling that you give me? Release the helium that you are, and expect it to behave? No paper dares to catch you. No letter, no camera. It is a fundamental conflict between mediums: the joy of limitlessness against the object or pen loyal to the finite, captured world.

Perhaps it would be different, had you installed lesser gusto in me. As it stands, my discipline fell with a vow to seek life without constraint. This year I have been learning; I have been more open, I have been happier.

And with you, I feel infinite.

Been hurt once, and you'll never forget
You forgive, get sensitive
learn to learn from the mistakes
of the Blind Man cloaked by love
But never once trust the endurance
of the bluff beneath his bet
or the ground beneath his shoes
For one slip of either hand
marks the end of what he'd give
for that life you have to live
Alone in arrested darkness.

You were handed a key
And'd suddenly "stolen his heart"
And no jury would believe you
If you explained you'd very kindly
Tried to have given it back.
"I didn't break it," you promised
"I carried it around very gently!"
Some things are better not in their owner's possession.

So I swam out into the deep unsure if stumbling in my sleep,
Inept to help the starry sky escape the dawn's predestined reap.
And as the lights fell into dark I saw the sun slip into ocean,
Completely unaware of trends in simple harmonic motion.
I watched it be consumed in daily water-based disaster,
To return spat out at night to glow in shades more like its master.
It then occurred that even though it shone up high like royalty,
The sun was subject, all this time, to answer to the sea.

At the edge of the grounds, in a very large place,
Past the gardens, the fountains, the curtains of lace
A young girl lies enchanted by the sight of her face
Too young to discover things she’d rather replace

At age four she should know that her aquatic friend
Is none other than herself, shown back in light-bends
But as she leans forward, her nose end-to-end
It is only her mother that pulls her back and fends

The young girl gets older, as pale as a bone
Regarded as beautiful, through comments she’s shown
But sadly for her she persists feeling ‘lone
And grows longing feelings for times with her clone

If only she knew, where she had seen two,
Was only pieces of her heart out of tune
Desperation for friendship clouded how she grew
Blind to the friends just her subconscious knew

Of those folk one was sharp, and had recognized
The terrible sadness and fear in her eyes
She told of a trip, to waterfalls and blue skies
And he liked that and told her to have a good time

She promised she was getting to know someone better
Give her time, all said, don’t just head out and go get her

A week spend surrounded by azure waterfalls
Like the ones on her cheeks when no one had called
The only thing she had wanted was to not be at all
While the friend back at home wrote love notes on her wall

Nonetheless, the young girl had written a date
And its release was posthumous, so all were too late
To rescue her plunge to her own mirrored bait
Down to rest in the aquatic grave of her fate.

Please look at me, and judge
If I am okay, not by my surface
But by peeling back my skin, and see
If my insides do not scare you.

When you are looking, please check not
Merely for darkness plaguing my heart
Seek also for brittleness in my bones
And poor circulation that makes havers cold

Please look at me, in the eyes
Deep enough to find what behind them lies
Is it fear, anger, violence, regret
A dare to challenge you, or an internal death?

You could not see anything; all my insides are black
Infection from mankind's poisons attacked
The rest was once silver, shiny like gold
But tarnished from harshnesses as I grew old

I like you.
But realize the horrors I'd bring unto you
Is it worth it to risk such improbable strife?
Dependent on someone else's then-state of life

I fear it is not, as I'm sure you can see
The pitfalls associated with me
So farewell, my friend, I'm a half-empty cup
I hope you can forgive me for being messed up

I like to think of myself as footprints in the snow
You can see that I was there, but you can’t tell who I am.
I mean, sure, you can find out what kind of shoes I wore
How prepared I was for the weather, my style from the treads
Maybe my weight based on how far it’s sunk in
But do you really know anything about me?
Can you really tell anything about who I am?

I don’t go out into the cold often
It’s nothing like the dark, where I’m traceless, where I’m broken
I go out to the cold to start a new journey, to venture where it hurts
To fill the ice to my lungs and understand that I still breathe
That I keep breathing, that I can go on
Even though it at times it’s empty
Even though at times I can’t..quite..go on
Perhaps one day I hope you’ll follow me, to find out all the rest?
Please do not think you have the full story—though it remains representing me, since that’s what people do.

When I go out into the dark, you can’t see me, you can hear me
But you’ll never know me there if I do not make a sound
Out here you will know, I can’t hide from you at all
But the only thing you’ll ever learn is which way I was bound.

I miss you in moments and movies and music that we once used to share
I miss you at events I'd have to beg to have you there
I miss the many magic moments that from life’s stress gave lenience
Even though now I see everything required your convenience

We’d introduced and then declared ourselves: serial monogamists
But after the breakup I saw this statement strangely ominous
This seeming dedication, to love, until the right was found
Would reveal itself as—for you—passion easily re-bound

It’s so rare to find a partner, your best friend, a man in one
No one else on earth with whom I’d ever hoped to have such fun
And you would write and say the things to me that made me melt
Only to realize sometime later they were things said--not felt

How ironic, silly, useless, and ungrateful of me, now
To scorn your absence when from tragedy it disavowed
I should be thanking you for cutting short the growing hurt
That surely I’d endure for years as your affection grew more curt

Thank you, I guess, for being self-servicing enough to leave me,
But for not being so much so to both in faith and life bereave me
For I did not lose you--the man I’ve loved and lost’s a ghost
A man you haven’t been long before departing from this coast

You can’t help someone through the hurt they don’t admit exists
You can’t help someone soothe a fight they claim you fought with fists
You can’t convince an independent that love takes work to flow
You can’t love someone out of habits they don’t think they must outgrow

*Every day I wake up feeling slightly less impacted by a truck.
I’m confident that one day I’ll find for whom my love is luck.

If I could only be

the vine around your arm,
the kiss upon your lips
the laughter in your ears,

Then I would be eternal. But as it is,

you no longer hear me
you no longer see me
and my touch has long left your skin

This is accepted.

These slow songs crawl
under my skin, and itch
where you once kissed me

I’d try to make it stop
But I admit
I’m only as strong as I
convince myself that day

I’m made of steel
I’m made, of paper
that dissolves, to pulp, when wet

And lately, I feel like, my tears do the job
I’m falling apart when you’re not there…

I’d like to be, resilient, in the way
No one can make you be
That you become yourself

I’d like to be, as happy, as you once
Dared to make me when you took my hand
Cast me away, you wouldn’t have…

So play it off as old news, I don’t belong to you
I don’t know if I .. belong anywhere, actually
But don’t you dare say
I gave you away
You, were for me, the best in myself

Don’t let nostalgia
turn me a fool
I guess I’m already far gone

Don’t let your fears
cloud your hearing
No one else is calling my name

Except me….

[One day]
That will be enough.

The grass is greenest
Not where it appears distant
But where it’s watered

Love left me, for a day
And to myself I swore to stay
For if it was just dawn till dusk
It’s absence wouldn’t hurt too much
One day came to grow to two
When I first found me without you

My cadavers in lab are not the only autopsy I’ve been performing
In this year since I’ve been free of you
In this year you’ve made a fool of me
For believing so wholly
In a future that depended on anything outside myself.

I take apart my patient and peer into what feels like my own heart
Trying to make sense of the connections
Trying to understand where anything fits in
When what I am looking it seems empty, drained long ago
Pooled into a somber puddle I’d drown in, literally behind me,
If not for the drainage vents, or lacrimal glands, installed for said overflow.

“We are dried out and lifeless together,” I think, forcing grim humor to compensate for the horrors of the visions I now see three times a week. “We know what it’s like to have a heart that doesn’t work anymore.” Maybe one of my classmates will be able to understand it better than me. I’m kidding—but don’t worry, this is why I’m in therapy.

In the end and like in medicine, I must come to accept
That there are things in life you can’t make sense of
There are things in life you must try to treat, without knowing the pathology
Without understanding what went wrong, truly
No matter how frustrating that may be.

The compromises that seemed so hard,
Seemed like pulling teeth, seemed so grinding, and difficult
Were quickly then made mandatory, dissolved in Zero
Zero, time together on the phone,
Zero visits to each other throughout our busy year
Zero balance between us to balance, as one grabbed or took slack.
For a situation that seemed so complicated you went ahead and made it simple—
There won’t be anything that needs sorting out—
There won’t be anything, of us, period.

So thank you, I guess, for teaching the natural conclusion;
Despite it feeling like I mimic, my now cardiac-lack friend,
The only heart that’s truly missing in the equation was yours
And mine, just hidden in the shadow from all the bruises,
Just has to learn to heal.

The words swelled and I saw you / struggling that night / to keep them in
Your open mouth interrupted / the thoughts ebbing / pulled your lips closed
on the vacuum of the words that just vacated.
I had suspicions, and best left them / but it hurts me to see you, choking like this.
The words swelled up inside your mouth / begging, threatening,
Threatened all night to spill over your lips, and pour onto me.

I couldn’t watch you struggle to contain them any longer.

I gave you permission, and so you allowed yourself
And out came the words, sticky and plastic,
Dribbling out of your lips and into my ears

I wasn’t expecting them.
But they didn’t hurt.

I listened and tried to follow and found the symphony unfamiliar
Like an improvised song, turns happened unexpectedly
Parts of notes I’d anticipated would elsewhere skip place
I thought I knew this song; I didn’t know it at all.

My face is wet. But for once I’m not crying.
I feel the weight of the words trickle in broken stream, down my forehead, along my brows
Pooling at the edge of my face before bouncing off my eyelashes, on their way to my lips.
When they get there I can’t help but repeat them / your words, for myself
I have no words to offer you
I am flattered by the gift
I know that can be maddening.

I am too tired, have done too much, today, to deal
So I stay strong and swallowing, the taste of the statement slightly sweet
The sounded-out syllables dry on my lips
The bulk of them trapped in the back of my throat.
I tell you I’m strong, can be patient, can handle it
That I can as I have, keep good face and control myself
To not act with biases and to maintain control.
You insist you promise, this time you can do it
Just trust you, you’ll keep us protected you promise
Too tired, too desperate, (to believe it) / I believe you
No sooner placing that trust in your hands than it sprawled on the floor
In the tangle of all that followed / when I leaned back without its weight

The words spilled from your lips, and I caught them, as best I could
But you didn’t offer me a raincoat, or think of my feelings
So now I am cold, and wet. I just want to be warm.
Given the circumstances, this thing I can demand from you.