We always leave before the sun leaks through the faded curtains
Throwing clothes over our raw skin so the sky doesn't see us.
And you mostly pretend to sleep soundly on the bed, inching towards to crease where I fall asleep.
Because you're okay with leaving.
And because I've done it enough to prefer it.
Dances like ours aren't meant for the light of the day or the twinkle of the stars
But for the pitch black, utter, endless darkness of a windless night.
You are a cold breeze on my otherwise warm afternoon, giving me goosebumps and making me shiver.
Something I haven't decided if I like or not.

You are a rainstorm in an Arizona summer.
I don't know whether I should hide
Or bathe in you.

She just can't play with words anymore.
Everything is coated in a dreary layer of tired eyes and nostalgia.
Every word typed for a different person under a different name
For a different rhyme or reason.
There's no more feeling coming from those fingertips that once felt
The skin of someone not there. The sun when it wasn't shining.
The wind when it refused to howl.
There's only reality.

I am made up of an entire soul
Completely furnished with potential and with life.
That can love with a love that love has not imagined.
And I have thoughts that rage on like the rain beats against a window in the dead of February.
As the rain greets the Valentine's on their way to their nights I listen to my heart
Beat.
Beat.
Beat against my chest.
The strings of the violin I left at the church play on and on like a love song barely out of tune.
As the G and the D and the A and the E tell me to go
From the church that's too far for me to visit after so much wine.
I might sleep.
I might do a lot of things.
I might even write poetry.
But one thing I'll certainly do is love
with a love that love cannot even fathom.
And my heart may beat out of my chest.
And my lungs may collapse.
But I will love
until my heartstrings tear apart with yearning.
And then I'll drink more wine and pretend.
I don't love anything at all when we all know
That's just not true.

I like
Coffee
As a motif
For reasons I don't even know.
I think sometimes it's because wine comes and goes
But Coffee.
Coffee.
Coffee
I have every night.
To keep me up thinking about the
Bitter taste
That life leaves in my mouth.
Sometimes I think that it's coffee,
The one thing I have in common
With the rest of humanity,
That keeps me alive.
Maybe I need to be awake to feel
What coffee does to me
What you don't do to me.
You should do to me.
Coffee.
Coffee doesn't confuse me.
And coffee tastes the same.
And coffee comes
And coffee stays.
And wine.
And people,
They just don't.

See there's this guy that keeps me up at night.
He sits in the corner of my room-
Not on the floor, not on the ceiling, but just hovering there-
Just above my dresser.
And he just waltzes into my dreams.
And he says to me "Kasey, you know why I'm here."
Sometimes he looks like a woman without a face.
Sometimes like a child.
Sometimes he's a soldier or my father or my mother.
So I wake up. And I think.
About my Grandparents being married for sixty years
About working for that long at loving another person.
I think about who I am and who I want to be.
And where I'm going how I'm getting there.
All the while he's still hovering in the corner of my room
Telling me "Kasey, you know why I'm here."
And I won't leave you alone until you understand.
That to the left there is a path and to the right another
And one above you and one below you.
Through you and throughout you.
And there's no medium for which to make a choice
But your own two hands.
And you'll get up and write at three in the morning
For people who just don't care.
About things they don't care about.
And your migraine will not go away.
You know why I'm here, Kasey.
"You know why I'm here."

We're all lions here
And we're comparing the size of our teeth as if it's the teeth
and not the bite
That's the most deadly.
We're all swallowed by our pride here.
Apologizing left and right to make ourselves feel better about mistakes that aren't ours
We don't own them.
The moment the "I'm sorry" escapes from my lips it takes with it a
Solid and measurable piece of my soul.
I am waiting.
A lion in a pride of my own bounding on two feet
Looking down at your barred teeth grinning.
Because I will not be owned
Or enslaved
Because adolescence is a stage and I am not an actress in this play.
When the king of the jungle gives up his power where does it go?
Not to the juvenile. Not to the child.
To the one who hunts for it. Who grins while others growl and feasts while others sleep.
I will take it.
And you will whimper before me.