Are these the arms that
So carefully enveloped
My small, sinking shoulders?
My legs must be soldiers
To keep moving
Though my bones are lead
And the pain in my head
Echoes through every cell
That composes this broken body—
This body that is dead.
This body that is not mine.

I am a stranger.

     (Madeline
     Am I in love?

     It's not like they said it would be)

They say it is
What we are made to find,
The reason for human existence.
Is not everything we do
Driven by the mad desire
To feel cared for?

We're chasing a delusion:
Something people tell themselves
To help them fall asleep at night.
We live on children's bedtime stories,
Though we were never children.
Maybe one day we will be

After learning to cry more softly
As not to be made vulnerable
To those who do not wish to hear it,

After learning to stifle those tears
After the nightmares
And the panic attacks,

     (Madeline
     Find me—

    I have lost myself again
     But you seem to know me)

When my world comes crashing down
And my shattered limbs frame
My unevenly bruised skin.

     (Madeline
     Will you hold me again?
     I feel much stronger
     When you are here with me)

     (I've never
     Wanted to forget anything more
     Than I've wanted to forget myself)

I never knew that the drug
I would become addicted to
Would not be painkiller,
Nor antidepressants.

     (I never knew
     It would have soft
     Pale skin and clear
     Bright eyes and a
     Warmth that permeates even my
     Fossilized heart)

The violin
I have yet to pick up
It weeps for you
Someday
When my fingers learn to play
A tune so bittersweet
It causes the winds to tremble
And brush across the quivering leaves
To bring your heart back to me
To mine
Where your name is embossed
In fine carved mahogany

That the melancholy cries
Of the bow across the strings
Stretched thin across the miles
Could reach your pensive ears
And last you
Through the years
Only two until we are both free

Maybe nostalgia is a weapon
Or maybe I am too ambitious

I have yet to discover the depths
Of what I would become for you

Dancing Sun wise circles
around the top of the hill
she called on the intervention
a litany of saints she knew well
spoken since her childhood
out loud she implored their help
this small pilgrimage of faith
shone bright a candles light
in the darkness of unbelief
She danced for her God.

I think you should love a girl that writes
Live her many different imagined lives
In her vast collections of created worlds
Find her somewhere buried beneath them all
And when you find her pressed between
Scribbled pages and coffee cups filled with pens
Kiss her ink black fingers
Let them stain your lips so when she looks at you
She won’t forget
You’re the hero her books are about.

All ferries are cancelled making way for the storm
tied to their piers, rocking back and forth, back and forth
ropes pulled tight, taut, no mail today, no fresh supplies
this is Robinson Crusoe life lived alive in the 21st century
a time set aside, cut off, forgotten by the rest of the World.