is it really so much to want to be loved
when i love so intensely
that it threatens to engulf my entire self
a rip current pulling me out
into a sea of longing that will never
be reciprocated
the pain is the searing of salt water
filling up my lungs
starving me of oxygen
and i welcome the blackness that
covers me in its warm embrace
how can i feel more love in
death’s arms than in the look you give me
your evasive maneuvers
hiding yourself from me when
i’ve laid myself bare

and is there anything more painful
than unrequited love from
the one who i have come to trust
implicitly
yet can’t utter that one word
can’t feel that emotion
can’t love me
the broken and beaten
sullied *****
and i see the fear in your eyes
the distance you put between us
a football field that i can’t traverse
mine-filled
though the sport was once what
brought us together
and you told me that i was different
from any other female you’d
encountered in the wild
the untouched forest of your pain

you made me feel special then
convinced me to stop running
to hang up my battered sneakers
and allow myself to cross
the finish line of my marathon of avoidance
you somehow assured me that
fear
my infernal terror that until then
could not be assuaged by proclamations of
safety

but i trusted you

and i never knew that trust
would lead to love
and the pain of that longing
would threaten
no
promise
to consume me whole
leaving only my bones to
bleach in the burning sun that
was once powered by my
immense love for you
that would never be reciprocated
because though you told me to
abandon my fears
yours still live in your holy of holies
which i am not allowed to regard

i never knew i had the capacity
to love
to let myself be opened up
but you cracked my ribs and
tore out my heart
without even apologizing
for the broken promises
and the erroneously created dreams
that i saw for us
a happiness i was certain i’d never know
and now i know
it’s true

at least i was right
in the end

if there was
even a modicum of chance
that you’d return my declaration of love
i would shower you in reminders
but no shower can wash away
the excruciating ache seated
in the exact center of my chest
that word
love
the only thing i ever want to say
to you
to lay everything out in the open
and to embrace the forbidden

i’d tell you i love you
constantly
if i thought there was even a
minute chance
that you love me too
but i suppose
along with my capacity to love
did not indeed come
a capacity to be loved.

The grounds are in ruins
and the castle in decay
the hall of mirrors
has been reduced to liquid shards
running downhill
combining into a sharp ****** tidal wave.

Vines hold down the dilapidated stones
and moss creates a damp carpeting
to pad my footfalls
and cradle my arch with gentle porous support.

The living dust of inaction
hiding the biting words of steel
and buried land mines
that rain crimson accusations
when heavens become mirror
and the only image I can see
is myself in destruction.

An army marching indiscriminately
each soldier's face
morphs effortlessly into my own reflection
until I can feel the trigger
cold steel
pressed against my readied finger
revolver steel cooling my temple.

And with wanton abandon
execute this slash and burn campaign
so that where once was
great halls and feasts
there now stands only rubble
a dissolving memory.

could you be my equilibrium
that harmony of flux and flow that reaches
a peaceful equality to swirl
in indescribable complex patterns
spirals which drill into my bones
and anchor me to this world.

you hammer your nails into my hull
next to the mermaid whose home on the bow
of my sky-faring ship
watches that horizon always retreating
devouring the evening sun’s final rays
before being bathed in the night
the thick blanket held over me
protecting me from the liquid shards
the razor sharp realizations that
batter me onto the rocks when the waves
are too high to even see
and annihilation seems inevitable
so i welcome it.

i don’t know this serene scene before me
this water that stretches out like
a vitreous road
shimmering glass cobbles that threaten
to break if i even touch
a single toe to its transparent doorway into
a world laying through a looking glass
accelerating to infinity eternally beyond my grasp
as my fingers fumble
and my nails dig into your supple skin
as i grasp handfuls of your back
trying to pull pieces of you away
so perhaps i can return to them on a
day when the world is mist and i am Away
and only the tatters of you
shredded ribbons of your presence remain
disjointed memories
of me
unsure how to breathe
pressing myself ever closer to your body
as if to fuse myself to the natural rhythm
the rise and fall of your chest
your radiating warmth visibly distorting your features.

and i’m screaming.

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.

i would give everything i am to feel
settled in my own corporeal form
tied down to my organs and tethered to my body
intertwined in a reality that
others can access
and isn't their acknowledgment proof enough
that i am of the world
and here
here
her
that burning girl dancing in the
flames of my own house fire
since i doused myself in gasoline
and lit a match

look at me
burn your eyes out of their sockets

look at me
and remind me that i'm here
right here
with you

tell me you're not going anywhere
as i watch you drive away
in the smoke of your absence
so i light a cigarette
maybe the blue smoke curling from
the smoldering cherry
could recreate our life together
but it keeps me standing on that curb
and watching you disappear into the distance
to the horizon
where you fall off the face of the earth
my face
with gorges carved out by
sea salt tears
and i scream for punches
and slaps
i ache for raised bruises
slowly falling into the bluish purple of twilight
and lingering in the verdant green grass and
yellow morning sun
so i can't forget that pain
finally made evident
physical

and i scream into another dimension
so no one sees my anguish
i bottle my message and send it to sea
half hoping some caring soul discovers my secret shame
half hoping it is consumed by the tempestuous oceanic depths
but all i want
is to show it to you

i want to give you
everything i am

i want to share with you
an authenticity i have evaded
truths and reality i have run from
so maybe i know that
you can handle me
that your calloused hands can
grasp my flaming unbridled terror
without sublimating into nothing
and leaving me with
the inevitable culpability that
as always
implicates me in
the destruction of all things
and the death of all hope i had
lashed around the idea of you
and the naive thought that you
love me
and

everything i am

it was on the coast
wind in my hair
sand in between my toes.

waves crashing effortlessly
on the eroded rocks and boulders.

in and out in and out
with rugged consistency
like a memory that claws its way
back into my subconscious.

my consciousness ebbs and flows
like the waves i hear and feel
enveloping myself in their caress
of sweetness and salty warmth.

a field of green
a heap of *******
that piles and piles and reaches towards the stars
a piece blown away in the wind
aloft on the air
higher and higher until I can no longer see
it's shape.

a memory lost to the wind of the waves
to the air of the green of the field
the grass beneath my feet
as i cry into the silence.

maybe you never intended to love me
and i yearn with all of my being
to ask whether i was simply
some science experiment for you
why you led me on
why you stay with me when
it is obvious that
i am not the one
not the one who will melt your heart
the crystalline lattice of ice
that beats within you
behind a barbed wire fence
but i would shred my hands
trying to scale it
i would amputate any limb
if it might prove to you
that i love you
and it's killing me to
not be loved in return

i want you
no
now i've transcended want
i need you
i need you more than oxygen
i'd starve myself and i
wouldn't even feel the pangs of hunger
or my muscles consuming themselves
because the pain of
not being loved by you
when i love you so fiercely
eclipses all else and i
didn't even realize i was
bleeding on the pavement
the butchered wound in my belly
self inflicted
because i want to turn myself
inside out
to rip out my internal organs
and hand them to you on a silver platter

i would give you all of me

i have given you all of me

and yet it's not enough
perhaps it never will be
if you predetermined that you
would never love again
and i'm simply some sort of test
of your capacity to love
which you are slowly realizing
has disappeared

i would rather be tortured
physically ripped apart
i would throw myself upon the rack
the hangman would have no work
i would place the noose around my own neck
snap

but i realize my pain means nothing to you

because you are my judge and executioner
though what pleasure
can you derive from a condemned
dead woman walking
who welcomes physical pain
as glorious distraction
vacation from the
internal pain that no
medicine could touch
that scar tissue that is continuously
pulled apart again
when i see your face and
am reminded of the depth of my love
and your shallow eyes betray your cover
telling me the truth
that you'll never love me
because i am incapable of being loved

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

to have roots
and reach down
down down
into gritty earth
moist clay soliloquies
and whispers spoken
to secret places
to branches you’ve never
seen
dipping its leaves in rippling water
magnetic in its
cyclic purity
of pond to root to leaf back to pond

would that i were a tree
so that i could have known that love.