Midnight,

And I gaze through an open window
Into a reality that feels too sharp in contrast with my own hazy fantasy My cheek rests upon the underside of my arm
My hand delicately dangling off the painted white frame
Caressing the warm night air while you teasingly recite:
See, how she leans her cheek upon her hand! O that I were a glove upon that hand, That I might touch that cheek!
My only response is a drowsy smile, to you
Then up toward the moon
My peripherals shaking the shadows that are tucked ominously away from the light

Oh,
Your face
Such sweet sorrow as your eyes close and one comer of your mouth drifts peacefully up Smirking about some sleepy secret I know you intend to keep
One hand on the small of my back, it burns
The other curving carelessly upward, almost touching mine
Making me shudder as the static energy of a budding romance erupts in all the places our skin barely touches

Or perhaps

That's the cold one o'clock breeze slowly drifting in, so quiet
The kind of silence that makes the world seem small And only the two of us exist
All the small peaks of me rise and there's this unexpected, overwhelming sense
An indescribable ache in my soul and stutter in my heart
As if we've been here before
Or are to be here many times again

But then you close the window
And the feeling is gone.

Time to put on my favorite playlist
Something I can shake and shimmer to Something to aid me in pretending I'm someplace far, far away
The babies sleep inside their cartooned sheets upstairs
As music plays softly downstairs
And they dream of dancing, too

My mother twirls away her worries in another part of town
She's so beautiful as the beat moves through her
In perfect synchronicity with her pain
I long to catch the spinning hem of her skirts as she flies around the room
To leap next to her as she pirouettes the angry marks from her skin
Catch her as she's whirling with the nagging reminder of what if
And make her stay

When the last note of some nameless song echoes into vacant air
I try to mirror her, the way I imagine her in my head
I try to laugh at you and your ominous, invisible presence next to our back door
And the frightened feelings you left lingering behind

Permanently bruised; we dance so we won't cry
Irreparably broken by you, my mother and I.

There are moments in life that capture you so
When you think back, you are surprised you never saw the importance before
Like bounding through your childhood, completely carefree or
Glimpsing a strange girl spin drunkenly beneath a bare winter tree or
Staring up from your bedroom window at a hundred spring flowers draped from their branches
And not knowing it's beautiful

When reality hits, you think back again
How you could have grown up so fast, your childhood so brief or
Letting the strange girl spin close enough to love you
Before spinning away
The startling heartache when your father tells you he trimmed the hundred spring flowers hanging above your bedroom window
For you
For your best interest

So you could come to know the feeling of loss.

I stand on top of the world, an incandescent goddess
Feeling golden, smoldering, radiant
Words flow like melted butter from my lips and everyone smiles around me

The sight of me is enchanting
I have permanent hold of everyone's gaze
I collect their eyes like treasured trinkets, keeping each pair in my back pocket
For as long as I please

I don't just look good, my God, I feel good Indestructible, unbreakable, everlasting
Not even Death himself can touch me

I dance on my perch, elevated
Peering down at everyone below me with a patronizing stare
In the distance, I feel the spark of something coming at me fast
It's creeping up on me
Perhaps to take my immortality?
I try to ignore the waves of unrest lapping away in my stomach

It's upon me now, though, nagging at my feet I feel annoyed at its persistent presence and suddenly everything is red
Far too bright, like a sunset seconds before the darkness of night takes over
Everyone is loud, asking incessantly if I'm okay
And all can think is, what the **** does that mean?
The implications make me want to scream

As the weight of my senses start wearing me down, I close my eyes
I thought I was twirling on top of the world, wasn't I?
But now my eyes are open again and I'm careening on the top ledge of a ***** parking garage
I'm unsure anything is real at all
There's a bitter taste in my mouth where a mouth's worth of various pills come spilling forth from where they were hidden
In the folds of my cheeks and under my tongue
I feel crazed, yet apathetic
I feel remarkably mortal now

I could've sworn I was just invincible, merely a moment ago
I want to feel that way again, but it comes with a price
An inescapable duality
I'm left desperately grasping at it's vanishing trail
And the spot on the ground below me, where know I'd land if I jumped
Starts to look more and more enticing

I'll leap if it means I can leave this all behind If it means can lie in a pool of my own blood, warm like a blanket
If it means I can encase myself in the void
And feel absolutely
Nothing at all.

If I had the eyes of a fly
And could see with miniscule diamond lenses
Everything would multiply and maximize
To the tips of hair rising on a goose bumped arm
To the vastness of galaxies unseen

I could see into other realms, where they hear with their hands and kiss with their feet
I could identify the inner workings of the most complicated things
I could detect distances that never existed before I came to be
And glimpse visions that have only been dreamed of, deep within someone’s unconscious

With orbs like mine, I could look upon a girl and know that she yearns for the taste of something sweet
I could glance at a man and simply understand that he is unbearably forlorn
When someone lies, I can tell by the way tiny beads of sweat protrude
And when they tell me they love me, my eyes would preclude

But instead, I am only human
I see what a human does see

I can't tell if far away, there are other planets
I wouldn't notice if your hair did rise
My eyes only consist of scientific parts; cornea, pupil, and iris
I know nothing of a girl or a man
And if someone said, I love you
I would never be able to tell they were lying.

Loving you is no different
Than the way one might adore the moon
Sleepless within the early hours of the morning

Fully alone
Trapped in the elongated seconds just before the translucent, glimmering fingers of the sun extend over the mountainside
And dawn arrives
Shattering like broken glass across the horizon

I sit
Wrapped loosely in a wool coat on some balcony, somewhere
Shivering as the icy air freckles my arms with goosebumps
A gray gush of smoke rushes to escape from my lips
Yet lingers on my tongue
Like the inevitable current of a stream
Lapping at a sandy shore
Before flowing upward toward the fading stars

Cold and foggy
An empty stare settles upon my face
Fixating on the trains speeding by
One after the other
Never ceasing
Thundering, like my desperation for one last kiss
Before you disappear into the smoldering fire of a vast, rainbow sky.

6:23 AM
And my Sun crests over a mountain of blue cloth
Like a crimson dawn
Bloodied and beautiful

Many say I’m the one who’s created life
Yet, you have given me mine
A goddess of vitality, they said
But I was no deity
Only a ghost of a woman before I knew you, wispy and worn

What a staggering achievement of mine
To have produced physical perfection
Painted the deep brown of your chocolate eyes
Embroidered every stitch at the seams of your limbs
Wrote the curve of your cheek as you slept peacefully against my breast
Designed your every inch from the blank canvas of my womb

I am but a humbled artist
And you, my greatest masterpiece
I thought, perhaps, I had loved before
But you have taken the breath directly from my heart
And I am entirely empty
But for my devotion to you.