For once in always
Nobody is home
And I rummage deeper
And deeper
Into the depths of the paper stacks
Crumpled notes smeared with blood
From broken hearts
Letters of apology stained
With lie after lie after lie

They stabbed her in the chest
Like martyrs for love
But they ever so slowly
Killed her.
She didn’t eat a lot.
She didn’t have the words
To say, “I’m afraid you’ll leave”
Until now

When she leaves him.
Years after he pushes her children
Poisons her soul with words foul
Enough to eliminate it
And after she scraped my teenage life
From the sidewalk she said
Know this: it was never your fault.
And she left him.

Erased from memory as if he never happened
Crumped notes in my room
Stained with Rubinoff and milky pens
Shoved in shoe boxes
For the next me to find one day
In the paper stacks

Terrified you will be another one
just another one
who doesn't call
or leaves me trapped
behind my own closed doors
just waiting for you
to open them.

They have been closed for centuries.

I learned
to stop waiting
when I was seven.
let downs are more
painful than any burn.
the flick of a match.
a scarring wound.

When he didn't show up
to my birthday party.
birthday parties are dumb, he said.
but it would have meant
everything
if he came.  

Don't be the one
who pushes me down
head to pavement
a breath I can't catch
soccer ball to stomach
leaving me with words upon words
that I can't say.

You said I should open my doors
Let me in, you said.
I told you my locks are broken.
I tried to explain to you
the depths of these doors
and the patterns of their locks.
And somehow I have let you in
just a foot.
And you scurried for the inner most treasures
caressing them, tenderly.

Void.
Empty.
Lifeless.
Most importantly, misunderstood.
By who?
You.
Me.
Today I witnessed
Betrayal.
By who?
The world when it rains for days.
Myself when I turn my back on others.
Never will I be good enough.
For who?
you?
No.
Me.
I've been caught in Charlotte's web.
Trapped between a fog covered window,
and a spider.
In an abandoned house.
Abandoned by who?
Him.
Her.
Their names written in dust.
My name sealed across their lips.
As they travel far away from here,
on an empty boat.

I never thought about geese migrating south
they always come back
to their mating ground,
never to once mate abroad.
Away from their home they fly miles
brisk winds over feathers,
death of loved ones
mid-flight.
Before takeoff, they huddle in the sun patches
soaking up the warmth of the last days
before their adventure begins.

I never though about the trees
and their intertwining branches.
Reaching for love in each direction
Branching off of ideas
Death of leaves mid-year
Only to liven again though the seasons.
The cycle goes on, and I stand still.
Where is my cycle?
Should I migrate, take an adventure?
Should I branch out new ideas?
When I huddle for warmth,
how do I know
where the best sunspots are?
Certainly not under the branches.
They say the apple falls not far
from the tree.
Will I do it like they did?

The crease between his eyes
when he laughs. The fact that
he is the epitome
of beautiful. The other fact,
that he
can't
stand
it
when I call him beautiful.
He is beautiful,
in the essence of the word.
Because he is ever so genuine.
Innocent like a baby bird.
Because he is a bulldozer,
pushing through the rough terrain;
he makes it look easy.
Gentle, a feather grazing a cheek
Passionate; fire unfolding and unfolding
into ferocious flames; intimate coals,
sizzling with heat as they huddle.
Because he bobs like a turtle,
draws cartoons that are real
and sparks my renewing imagination.
The fact that he withstood the bubonic plague
and kept me on the other side.
The fact that a poem is nowhere near
enough to explain
what he means to me.
He is the mountains.

The prisoner inside my rib cage thumps
against my chest and I wish I could let her
leap out of my body; pound across fields
and race through the landscapes like she wants to.
But locked away, inside myself she will stay.
She used to pound loudly like a boulder and I couldn't
ignore her. She screamed for freedom. My lungs would collapse
with pins and needles and my legs would betray my body like
jello, unable to keep me standing. I couldn't figure out what she
wanted from me. Just simply to be free from me? No. And It wasn't
until recently that I realized what she wanted. She wanted to know
she was loved. She wanted to feel free from the past. I knew she didn't want to
hurt me. She didn't want to be a prisoner to herself anymore.

Yesterday I sat next to a boy on the swings; holding hands and laughing
as we went higher and higher. His smile made her jump, and she danced
inside my chest like a ballerina, and she was happy. She was in love. And she knew it from the way she leaped across my chest as if it were a stage.

My boy's beard is red
and it feels so familiar
and it took until I was
smashed, cocked, ******, HAMMERED
to notice. Why do I always follow the pattern
of his face like a map; why does it feel like I
have finally found my old blanket, resting in
its plastic bag, in pieces; in pieces.
I asked him if he liked pumpkins. He said
yes because he knew that's what I wanted. He
said he baked the seeds. And I remembered loving them.
I was never good at soccer and I refuse to play
in the games at school. They think I'm a fool. But I
know why. Because instead of soccer I did cartwheels.
And I picked the dandelions. And I wove my fingers
through the net like artwork and I was Picasso. I was
Picasso. And his voice echoed through my head like
a football stadium. I was never good at football. I hid behind the
trees and plucked the peddles from the daffodils
one by one like mermaids do. And my father, he never cared
for daffodils. And he never cared for pumpkins. And the echo
from the stadium was faint to him. Faint to him. But to me,
it was a symphony. A cluster of voices from within.
And
I never doubted it.