it was a saturday, slow,
an early dark
dripping in my boots
i was a fool
to believe this
might simply end
with a whimper
when endings, for me,
are typically punctuated  
with a bang
a forest fire
a collapsed galaxy

i remember the
ripples of time
spreading out from
my fingertips
and i thought i might die
and it was terrifying
and then it was

silence
peace
a pool of
luxurious
nothingness

and then i was awake
left to wonder how survival
could feel like
such a punishment

i wish i had steady hands.
i wish my voice never shook,
never stumbled.
i wish i was more patient,
less tired.
i wish i complimented strangers,
paid for their coffee once in awhile.
i wish i could say i never yelled
at my cats or thought
unkind things.
i wish i could say i've never
done wrong, never cheated,
never lied.
i wish i was clean,
unblemished.
i wish i didn't have this temper,
wish i'd learned to control it
sooner.
i wish i could be many things,
a great deal of them softer,
more of them stronger.
i wish i could forgive myself
for all the things i am and am not,
i wish pathological perfection
didn't break down at the most minor
mistake.
i wish i could give myself the grace
i'd give anyone else,
the room for their humanity.
i wish i could stop feeling indebted,
permanently deserving of some ever so
slight punishment.
i wish i could forgive myself for who
i was at my most hurt.
i wish i could be proud of myself for
everything i've become
since.

i feel little bits
of the universe
crumble around me
feel like i am stuck
in rewind
watching the same movie
over and over, every
terrible thing
while i cook dinner
clean the kitchen
take out the garbage
listen to the headlines
one punch, another
feeling like a lace tablecloth
laid across a landmine
and i'm realizing
there are so many ways
to be undone
to be brought to your knees
to do your best
to be your best
and to lose it all
anyway

there's almost a punishment
in healing, an unraveling
a relief and an unrest
in the weaving
in the rewriting

settling old wounds,
finding new ones
hidden in the outskirts of
thigh sized bruises
in puddles of blood
spreading out wider than
dinner plates, oceans

it's just the way pain seeps into
the bones, the cartilage
seals itself into the veins,
an unwelcome teacher,
a treacherous friend.

i just imagine some other version of me
out there in some other universe
a soft, silly girl unmarred and whole
and i am so, so envious of her.

i could hate you
i could wish you the worst
(sometimes, i do)
i could summon karma nightly
on your behalf
i could remind you every day
of the ways you harmed me,
permanently altered me

but i'm tired, you know?
tired of the visceral memories of
this night or that night
tired of the way it
suffocates me
even years later
tired of you having so many
pieces of me still, tired
of trying to untangle the love
from the violence
tired of ever knowing any part
of you

mostly, i just hope you look in the mirror
one of these days
and realize the man looking back at you
would finally make good ol' step dad
real ******' proud

if i were really honest
i'd tell you about the rage
the angry little girl howling inside me
begging to be let out
how i'm afraid she'd never stop
if i did
i'd tell you about the apologies i'll never get
the apologies i'll never give
all the unsaid things living in my bones
i'd tell you how my friends
drifted away when the Trauma
made me unpalatable
how pulling myself out of the rot alone
was almost more painful
than the Trauma itself
i'd tell you about the days the girl in the mirror
looks so unfamiliar
how words don't seem to fit in my mouth anymore
how the space between
worse and better starts to feel like
an unscratchable itch
but not nearly as unbearable
as the girl living in my skin five years ago
and how i miss her and how i hate her
how she probably hates me
buried under years of therapy and medication
and deep breathing techniques and
have you tried meditation?
yes ma'am, i have meditated myself into a
near constant state of TV static
and once in awhile that girl
tries to change the channel, remind me
of the weightlessness of giving in
to the doom spiral, to the drinking, to the drugs
to the boys who will do nothing but
destroy what we've built

but to tell you the truth i wouldn't go back
not to that girl, not to the girl we were before
she mutated into existence -
not even to keep the most painful things
i've ever lost

a grief
a gift
a collision of moments

do you have any idea?
do you think they said
hello
to each other

on the way out,
on the way in?

do you think maybe
it was never supposed to be mine

always meant
to be yours?

i have allowed
too many careless hands
to cradle my soft, scarred heart

none so careless
as my own

at the end,
i burned the village
to the ground,
every bridge in,
every road out.

i made sure there was
nothing left, still found myself
weeping in the wreckage

wondering why you didn't
try to save us
why you didn't
stop me -

and the guilt
and the anger
and the love
and the longing

a brutal cocktail
when i was already drunk.

in the years since,
i cleaned up the wreckage,
built a nice little memorial.

i don't visit much anymore.

wish i would've just said
i miss you
instead

it's okay
i'm still here

doodling on napkins and
writing a line or two in a notepad

never committing
to much of anything or anyone.

i'm not sure exactly when it all emptied out,
all the words, all the ideas, all of me.

nothing paints the canvas in my mind
anymore.

i can only write so many poems about
heartbreak and trauma

and all the ways i've been torn apart
the last couple years.

it gets old, even for me.
but recovery is long and lonely

and sometimes it's just wide open desert
for miles
and miles.

once upon a time, i loved a boy
until he broke me

once upon a time, a boy loved me
until i broke him

once upon a time, a boy loved me
until he broke me

sometimes there are
no princes
no princesses,
just sad little girls and sad little boys
and no happy endings.

some doors are closed for good reason
and some doors are not mine to open

all are lessons
learned the hard way

the cracks in the sidewalk
outside my window have begun
to fill with sprouts, with
little tendrils of green
stretching out of the chasms,
a promised exchange of light
for colors

and maybe i'll plant tulips in
the cracks that have splintered
inside of me, maybe i'll fill them
with gold paint

maybe one day i will be a garden
maybe one day i will be a work of art

i miss you
(all the time)

but it is what it is
(my fault).

grief hangs heavy,
guilt swallows my ankles, my knees -
and sometimes i think
i'll really just let them take me under
this time.

i have lost people
i love dearly
to my own doings
and yet you
have caused more damage
combined.

never laid a hand on me
but i am still more bruised
than i have ever been -

and you ride your carousel,
hiding your grief in woman
after woman and maybe
you did love me as much
as you said

but maybe you loved me
for what i did for you
and when i stopped
you stopped

and around and around
you go.

in the absence,
the vacancy,
i am alone
with me
and we are
learning how
to sit in silence
together, how to
make dinner for
just us, how to be whole
again.

i am feeling less like
a caricature of myself,
less colored outside the
lines and haphazard
and the more i cut
away at the things which
do not serve, the more
i am my own for the first
time in so long.

to be tethered to no one
but me, i am finally,
finally free.

do i miss you?
i miss a lot of things.
i miss the sound of the garage door
of the house i grew up in.
i miss the toughness
of the acres of yellowing
grass bruising my baby feet.
i miss the smell of chlorine early
in the morning and the
sound of the windchimes in the
late evening.
i miss the sound of the front door
of my first apartment,
i miss the creak of the wood floors
in the old house,
i miss the late nights and the
fearlessness of being 22, 23, 24.
i miss a lot of things that were
impermanent milestones,
and i left them behind
when the  time came.
so when you ask if i miss you,
the answer is yes,
in the same kneejerk
way you miss all the things that
once mattered.

letting go is an art form,
untangling from the fears
and the what ifs -
i realize they do not just
vanish, and therein lies
the art.

salt in the wound
twenty seven and
still unsettled in a

permanent detachment,
the only kind of
permanence

i've laid hands on,
an emptiness that
never fills -

salt in the wound
still here, still here.
unsettled.

if i had a portrait
like dorian gray's
i wonder what it
would look like.

i do not look like
my world has shattered
overnight more times
than i can count

and while my scars have faded
quite substantially with time,

they'd probably bleed
through the portrait -

the blood running down my wrists
the blood running down my thighs.

i hope it burns
i hope you choke
on every word
i hope it haunts you
i hope it hurts

i hope you get everything you deserve.

it all goes back to that one
little moment
the pill in my hand
the table underneath
my elbows
the floor underneath
my feet.

i wish i would have given it back.
i wish i would have said no.
i wish i would have listened to
that terrified little voice in the back
of my head that this would be too
much.

i swallowed it.
let ecstasy swallow my life.
it's been years now
and i still feel like
i never really got it back.

the jagged pieces
left behind
are too many
to hold
now

they cut my
fingers
leave my skin

bleeding
and raw

and i can't
put them down
can't give them
back

they were gifts,
right?

i wish i could just
float away with the
current

to something
to nothing

it hardly matters
these days

if you ever wonder if i miss you
too

i do.

maybe
maybe i am choking
maybe the love you feed me
is poison, is ash,
maybe the hands you lay
on me are hands to harm
not to hold

maybe
maybe i am so used to
love that hurts that you
are swallowing me, stealing
all of my leftover parts
and maybe
i am such a fool
to let you.

one morning
in our kitchen
over coffee
i told you
you were the love of my life
and you didn't say it back
didn't really say anything

and i don't know why it
took me so long to realize
i was never yours.

every day
***** the air out of my lungs
a little more

and I wonder how
much longer
they expect me to keep going
like this

suffocating with a smile

fragile boy
too weak to
shoulder any
blame:

I am not the resting place
for your guilt,
for your regret,
for your shame.

and how dare you
leave me to clean up
your mess.

i think
i made you
too
much
space

when i let you in

i think in trying
to let you make yourself
at home

i gave you
real property

put your name
on the deed.

you
don't live there
anymore

don't visit
don't write
     and that's okay

we've long since
gone our
separate
ways

parallel lines

different
people

but what a greedy thing
to do

leaving
like that

but still keeping
your little plot of land.

the fear
that after all this
time, all this
mess, all this
fight

that I will only lose
you to the
war in your
mind

there's a trail of my blood
that runs from one of this
town to the other, right
up the steps to my front
door.

this town has seen
all my ugliest moments
and yet I am still here,
sleeping in the same bed
cooking at the same stove,
living in the same house
I have already grieved
so many losses in.

this town is home and hell
and I want to escape just
as much as I never want
to leave and it depends
on the sky and it depends
on the day and it depends
if I see your faces, or my own,
in all the memories it carries.

every quaking breath,
every flash of memory,
every little puzzle piece
I could never make fit -

absence, too, is a gift.

we take what we can get
but the well never fills -
water slips through fingers
and again and again
we are left begging
with open, empty hands.

sometimes I can't help feeling this
is the dream, the one where I relive
my entire life, just before I die.

i feel at odds with the existence,
lingering somewhere between
this is where i'm meant to be
and i do not belong here.  

i feel strongly anchored in some
memories, like i'm dreaming and
i can't wake up, like this is the worst
high and i'm stuck in the comedown.

i woke up different on the bathroom floor,
a different person, a different energy
and i'm still struggling to understand
if i woke up better or worse
or if i ever woke up at all.

it runs in circles
around my head
can't let go
can't breathe
can't say it
can't take it
the carousel
never stops
turning

knock down one wall
just to find another.
i am no architect
but i have managed
to build myself a fortress,
the initials of all my pain
carved into each layer.
it'll be a miracle
if i ever find myself free.

I am so, so afraid
I've already given all
the love I had to give.
burned out, ash,
wax on the table,
nothing left to give
the hearts that have
the misfortune
to love mine after
the years of bleed and
leech. I am spent,
isolated ache,
want and crave and
empty space. I promise
I tried, I'm trying,
I'm trying.

sometimes
I catch my breath,
sometimes the storm
stops long enough
to see the horizon
again and sometimes
the arms holding me
under are the arms
pulling me up.
the taste of air,
the relief for just a moment
I am not fighting for every
moment of life -

until the undercurrent
catches me, until the sky goes
black all over again
and the water in my lungs
reminds me that the bitter survival
I fight so hard for
is all I really deserve.

needle and thread
can only mend so many wounds,
can only mend
so many tears.

you've watched me, for years,
worrying at all our holes,
repairing them until my
fingers bled,
until my wounds became
too deep for stitches.

not that you'd stitch them up anyways.
never our wounds, and certainly
never mine.

pull my
marionette strings
and I will sing
for my supper,
do as I'm told
at the mercy
of your fingertips.

i'm watching the sunset
from the parking lot after work
and all the tendrils of all
the thoughts and feelings
in my head are lost to me,
close enough to see the silhouette,
too far to grasp.
i think of all of our sunsets
and i wish i'd held onto them,
those moments, a little longer.
lived them a little deeper.
we're strangers now, all of that
come and gone so quickly,
too quickly. and that's okay.
or it will be, someday.
the winds have changed,
and i have changed,
but my regret hangs in the
air like the purple in the clouds.
the sunset of you will
set one day and the sunset
will always remind me of you
but you'll become one of those
tendrils, the shape of something
that used to mean something
but unreachable,
like you were always
going to be.

the pieces of me,
the pieces i have left
don't really fit together.
collected over the years
from hundreds of puzzles,
i am left with an image
maybe designed by a
toddler or maybe a psychopath -
the kaleidoscope view of
somebody who couldn't
keep track of all the pieces
all the pictures
all the puzzles.
but i guess they tried,
because here i am
in all of my mismatched glory -
all at once a gift and an apology.

sometimes the crows
talk to me
and I imagine
you sent them
from your little
corner of the world

I pretend they
say "I miss you"

because truth be told
I miss you
too.

finally found your portrait
(dorian)
hidden behind your veneer
and your charm
and it is far uglier
than I could have
ever imagined

and all at once
letting you go was the easiest thing
I've ever done.

the thirst
the hunger
the echoes
of thousands of voices
screaming for relief
for patience
for salvation
home
permanence
the secret
wishes of the
mangled hearts
the wrecked spirits
the ones who have
given up
who have made friends
with the shadows
in the corner
made art of the
dandelions in the
sidewalks and the
****** fingerprints
on the window panes

some days the warrior
some days the worrier
and i'm never more
unsavable
than the days your
absence hits the hardest -
when everything smells
like you, and i hear your voice
the clearest and the
soundtrack in my head
is the alternating verses of you
telling me you love me
and telling me to use a sharper
knife next time -

these are the days
i find myself the
most numb,
trembling, aching for sleep,
for an escape from the pain
that comes with missing you
so deeply
even after all this time.