i can't rip myself to shreds
and then wonder why you look at me
like some sort of miasma
of pity and misfortune
that your sun couldn't melt
and congeal into something
recognizable
something human
i wonder if you see just a beast
an animal whose only chance
at survival is
fight or flight

i see white and
your face burns away
bubbling in the heat
of my nuclear explosions

i bury land mines in my own backyard
and play games
leisurely strolls
blindfolds
and a racing heart
exploding from the center of my being
praying to ignite that
chain reaction

you tell me not to be stupid
not to do anything stupid
but stupid is a relative planet
orbiting myself
and eclipsing truth that
to the rest of the human race
is divine prophecy
and absolute reality

i'm alone even in your presence
because i'm not there
and can't you see it written
like neon braille across my face
and branded with a white-hot poker
into the blue green of my iris
why do i need to live when
this life is just as
construed as a dream
and as tangible as a nightmare

i'm lost

and i can't find your hand
as i ***** in the darkness
to lead me back to life
and sanity
but you aren't looking for me
because i'm standing right next to you
even though i'm gone.

it's called falling in love
but it's more like
the sudden stop
at the bottom

the *****-jarring
slam into
frigid water turned concrete
turned freeway
leading to the purest pain
and immaculate agony
of vulnerable viscera
and exhumed faith

and aren't i still a believer
when i spout blasphemy
like gagging bile
choking out your breath
erudite acidity of alacrity
from verbose confession

and didn't you warn me
of your limited vocabulary
when words have always
been my companion

how can you take their place
if you've never wrestled
an angel like Jacob
to steal a word from beyond
this holy of holies
grasping and groping
mute in darkness
still wet behind the ears

i still don't have the words
to quell your fear
of that one that lingers
on the tip of my tongue
threatening to jump out
and betray my cover

but you always see right through me

surgically slicing
to the heart of the matter
how is it not written
all over my face
when i've tattooed it across
the back of my eyelids
so i never can escape your face

who needs a sun
when in my core you've ignited
my own fission reactor
whose critical mass
is a capacity to love
and be loved
that you found splattered on
a highway
emotional roadkill
carrion long left to rot in
the baking sun

but who else would feed the raven?

the loneliness that gnaws
at me persistently

he'll never love you like that
like a three day weekend

and i'll never be like them
changing costumes more
than a washed up
Vegas showgirl
as used as my bones
and as looked at as my
naked body

people don't change
though you'll never admit it
until there is already
spaghetti on the wall
a broken dinner plate
and a shatter that reverberates
into my past and future
they're all the same
after all

but i think if i hadn't met you
if i hadn't loved you
i'd never know the weight
of four letters
to grind me to dust.

ripping paper and the
delicious sound of
detachment where there
was once a unity
screaming to the heavens
bleeding acid rain and
soaking me to my core
cold and wet watching you
watching me
at the window
mascara coursing down with
searing tears that
mix with rain and disappear
before you can see
the gaping hole
myself laid bare
bullet holes
and sink holes
collapsing in on themselves
and eating away
my body
silent screams escaping
the prison of my lips
praying
and praying
rending my garments
throwing myself prostrate
to be destroyed
consuming myself with
the pain of your absence
even when you are
sitting next to me and
i feel you slipping
along with my tenuous
sanity

you could have used a blade
a scalpel or razor
to leave clean cuts where
you extracted yourself from me
but you used a machete
a butter knife
rusted and dulled
hacking away to leave
jagged edges
screaming for relief
because i'd superglued you
into me
sutured your heart
where mine should have been
but yours burned brighter
than the stars in the universe
and i wanted to share
in that
and i wanted you closer
and closer
to absorb you into me
telling myself you wouldn't leave
but i'm bleeding on the ground
with only my pain
to keep me company

how can you know a feeling
if you've never felt it before

realizing that
it has finally absorbed into my pores
overthrown my body
and taken up residence
in the oceanic depths
the Marianas Trench of my heart
now holding the reins
a nameless shadow living in my chest cavity
and eating away at the resolve
that has shackled me
and driven me on slick black asphalt
into palpable darkness of
a world i've never seen

how can you feel
when you don't have words

holding a dictionary to my heart
and praying to the gods
Merriam
Webster
to provide me with the
mixture of letters that might
shatter my muteness
and provide
permutations of syllables to
intercede for me
and finally give me
a label for those ephemeral tendrils
i feel protruding from me
and reaching
reaching
for you

how can i use a word
that is merely ink on a page
when this inundation
has flooded the streets of
my hometown
swept me away
and the only anchor i can find
is the chocolate profundity
of your eyes
that you lower in
what is that emotion
another word without meaning
that lives more as a
crushing pressure
grinding my bones to dust
shrinking me to a singular point in space
and time

time

you tell me to go slow
slow down
but how can i when my foot
is glued to the accelerator
and i am driving full force
into the brick wall of
more emotions i can't
touch

always just out of my
groping hands
calling your name and
the only word i have found
that seems to incapsulate
this churning rapacious feeling and
exquisite pain that
needs simply a word to
help you understand
because you can't feel what i feel
though i would allow you
to vagabond through my cerebellum
and maybe spend a night
in the absolute obsidian night
of my cerebrum
where that unnameable emotion
is the only thing
that can keep me warm

i'm an alien without country
without language to
communicate with this foreign world
where i have latched on
to you
your remora
for you most certainly are a shark
circling your prey
and i wait to be devoured

i welcome your destruction
the fires that rage from
the tips of your fingers
as they trace the lines of my
enemy body
ready to explode with
that emotion you urge me
to put away
to repress
and wait for another day
to inform you that
i love you
even if you don't love me back.

how can you not see it?

when you envision the
bubblegum pink
rose petal future
whose softness you seem to
automatically expect
that i am certain is
a razor's edge dripping
with my inevitable blood
sanguinely falling in
pregnant dewdrops and
slicing my heart out of my chest.

cutting you out of me
snipping those meticulous stitches
weaving you into
my entire self and
consuming me with a
balmy warmth that i
fight against
balk at
because it cannot last when
i am an emotional
bull in a china shop
and destroy everything i touch.

i will eventually burn you

that fury and blinding pain
that lives in the pit of my stomach
and rises like refluxing acid
when i remember my own weakness
when i come back to reality
and realize the magnitude of my
inadequacy
the breadth of pain i inflict
a festering
oozing
wound red at the edges
neglected purposefully
for i welcome any pain
that reminds me
i deserve to hurt
suffering is not optional
when i am as disposable as
the receipt the cashier forces you to take
at the supermarket checkout
i bow to the wind
paper doll girl
waiting for a flame
my spontaneous combustion
seeing white
and then nothing.

i want to be better

for you

to somehow take myself
and mould the clay figurine
masquerading as
my authentic self
into a shape that fits
perfectly into the hole that
i sometimes see
when you let down the
veil concealing your
holy of holies
even just for a moment.

i want you to feel whole

to feel safe when you
wake in the night and find me
pressing myself ever closer
to you
even in my sleep
wanting you near me
the palpable reminder that
i am not alone
though i feel the inevitability
constantly.

i won't forget your precise smell
the feeling of
my bare skin against yours
or my head on your chest
even if you leave

which i know you will.

some say home is where the heart is
to mean that
there is an immutable place
magnetically manipulating
and tearing out my heart
keeping it lashed lasciviously
to that cold concrete
and steaming thunderstorms
that warmed my childhood face
and wet my bare feet
running wild

i don't miss my home
though i balk at the definition
of a part of myself that
is irrevocably tangled up with
that place where i burned
and razed myself to the ground
leaving only shimmering coals
abandoned in a lost forest of pain

my heart has no connection to that place

except perhaps the inescapable
the dripping bloodlust for
my own destruction
flames licking my ankles
as i threw gasoline on the blaze

that place was the incarnation of my loneliness

the weighted blanket
wrapped around my shoulders
me
a beast of burden expected
to carry the anvil of my anxious thoughts
whose fiery white heat kept me up nights
Atlas supporting the earth on his back

that place was the Sisyphaen interminable task

why would my heart attach itself to that pain

i don't believe home is a place
a warmth of welcome upon
my return into its
loving arms that cradled my childhood
those arms are not my comfort
they are the blades that
shredded me to ribbons
left me bleeding on the ground
until i limped away
and swore i'd never return

my home must be just as much
of a vagabond as my
meandering soul
and yet the refuge in the storm
that i can run to when
the demons come knocking
to abduct me and
leave my corporeal vessel
with glazed eyes
an empty shell

i've tethered my heart to you
intertwined those secret places
into the great hall of your heart
trembling with the unavoidable fear
of opening those chained doors
and making that ephemeral place
exposed
vulnerable
establishing a connection with
my wandering emotion
seeking the warmth of
a crackling fire on the
brick hearth radiating the heat of
my trust in you
my might-be love that
crashes into the barrier of my teeth
racing up my throat like
the bulimic ***** i used to spew
into toilets along with
my shame

no
for me
home is wherever you are
if you carry in yours the hearts of those who love you.

it's the sudden drop at the top of the roller coaster.

when you realize that
falling in love isn't some sort of
fairy tale descent into
wonderland of
warm scintillating certainty

no one told me that it hurts

that you can feel your stomach
lurch violently
and lodge directly in your throat
leaving you gagging and
gasping for any small
tenuous
breath you can pull
searing lungs screaming in your ears
to just expand and
take in the sweetest gulp of air
let go of the feeling
and run

this love thing isn't like a key sliding into a lock

something that fits perfectly
that has no imperfections
and sports no defects
to throw spanners into the engine
propelling me blindly forward
through acid rain showers of tears
smearing my mascara under my eyes
and scorching paths of fire down the cliff of my cheeks

he's had to pick my lock

meticulously listening for that
telling click that will
finally allow him to know
all of me
those uncharted regions he
sees just at the edge
of the falling sun's light
the shadowlands
those forgotten spaces i've cut out of myself
but can't rid myself of

is it love

when i accept that maybe
that peaceful high of simply
his company
his presence
is worth sacrificing to Janus and
shattering the locks that
seal off my heart

am i ready to say i love you

it is more than
an eddy at the top
of Niagara Falls where
you can relax in calm water
just at the Falls' edge
inches from a
stomach clenching freefall
and frigid water turned to cement.