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They ask me what I see,
What I see when I'm dreaming,
What I see when I'm listening,
What I see when I'm writing,
But I don't see; I understand,

I understand how minds work,
I understand how hearts work,
I understand how my world works,
But I don't understand them.

Why can't people accept it?
Why do they need to know why?
Why do they want to know?
But they don't want to know why; they want to know what.

If I see their futures,
If I see the dead,
If I see words before me,
But I don't see; I understand.

So when they ask, what do I see in you?
I don't reply. I smile,
Because when I dream,
And I listen,
And I write,
You know what I see?
What I've always seen:
You.
You're a beautiful mystery clad in gorgeous enigma.
You're poetry that looks good in a skirt.

There's an orchestra on your tongue, playing the sound of your voice like a melody I can't forget,
matching the tempo of the drums in my heart
and the broken strings of my violin compliments.

You are a notebook, a yearbook, a sketchbook, a burn book,
every facet of you written in swirling cursive,
rhymes and famous signatures snaking between cinnamon hair and cleverness.

You are a pen running out of ink,
bleeding dry in Barnes and  Noble Moleskin journals,
but that's okay because I have more ink,
and you can borrow whatever you want from me--
store it in the heart you stole if you're bored enough to hunt my words for the pieces.
You have the key already.

You're the first dream of the boy too scared of nightmares to sleep again.

You are the taste of honey and cigarettes on the lips of the first girl that boy ever kissed,
because she was a rebel and he needed a hero
who wore boots instead of Mary-Janes
and band t-shirts instead of blouses.

You are the rose he drew when he was bored,
an outline with potential,
mysterious, entrancing, incomplete,
not yet ablaze with the red of desire
because he was never good at finishing things.
You are a dictionary. Your picture isn't just under "beautiful."
It's under "dangerous" and "witty" and "myth"
because Medusa bowed at your feet next to James Bond and Edgar Allan Poe,
and you're too good to be true anyways.

You are a poem, a telltale heart beating inside a lesson in vengeance,
temporary only because nothing gold can stay.
You've walked past where the sidewalk ends (certainly the road less traveled by)
and come back far more darling than any buds of May.

(You are the paperback novel he read under the covers,
the flashlight only bright enough to show paragraphs,
and every new page unique in shape and form
while the text remains the same.

You are the raw words read aloud by the daring poet,
standing beneath midnight moon,
the power of the throne,
the breath of a whispered promise falling upon the ear,
the warmth of kisses on the cheek,
the passion of all hope there ever was in trust and truth.

You are the fire in lightning,
the sparkle in the snow and the glitter in the rain,
the fierceness of the wind and the gentle, soothing peace,
the blazing chill of winter and the roar of summer's heat.)

But you're still a mystery.
A beautiful,
beautiful
mystery.
You probably understand. Or maybe you don't, after all. Either way, it is jumping around inside me and if I don't let it out soon all my carbonation will fizz up and run over the side of my glass and I don't want to waste all that sweetness.

I want to kiss you underwater.

I want that kiss to be the only thing keeping us alive. Down there we are foreigners, aliens. Grasping, I want to feel your flesh in stark contrast to the smooth wetness all around me, like a secret.

All that life where we cannot live. Exotic, forbidden, so lovely. I am sick with love.
 May 2013 Kate Martin
EgoFeeder
The softest touch of a loving friend
To the deepest **** from a charaded blade
Where does blissful sensation make its end;
Converting to the obtrusive pain enfilade?

A subtle ambiance from a serene musician
To the daily news of grief and causality
When do loving whispers of mutual affection;
Fade into a harsh scolding from authority?

An untasted sweetness of rare delicacy
To the sour lingering of bitter temptation
How does the favored indulgences' nuancy;
Shift to a bland routine of daily recreation?

A picturesque sight of undying fantasy accord
To the shocking reception of a suicide note
Why do relations flow from their distant discord;
Into the desperate end that fate already wrote?

The lavishing waft of a motley gardens' aroma;
To the putrid scent sifting in the house of flies
What's the difference between this mundane coma;
And the ignored certainty we all despise?

Aren't pain and bliss really just one in the same?
Like the lowest to highest on any sort of scale
Every single trace of emotion just felt by name;
Portrayed variably through each separate tale

— The End —