I love your hair when you've just woken up.
I love your tired voice.
I love when you're kissing me and we start laughing.
I love the way just touching you skin to skin makes me feel home.
I love the faces you make in photos.
I love how many different shades of green your eyes are.
I love how you can never stay awake through a movie, but you'll say you're paying attention if I ask.
I love that you throw things when you're frustrated, cause it means you let it out and don't let it hurt you inside. Broken things can be fixed. Broken people are much harder to resolve.
I love when you sing along to your favorite songs and send me videos.
I love your writing.
I love that when you're drunk, all you want is me.
I love that when I kiss you it feels like we can't live without each other.
I love how truly, truly kind you are.
I love your colorful swear words.
I love taking care of you.
I love how you are always there for me.
I love holding your hand.
I love your integrity and how much you want to reach your goals.
I love your courage. You're so brave, and I don't even know if you realize.
I love that I always know when you're done sneezing, cause you only say "choo!" on the very last one.
I love that we say good night every night.
I love staying in bed with you ALL day.
I love when you make your inner monologue outer and I can hear all your beautiful, funny, brilliant thoughts.
I love that you don't let anyone treat you badly.
I love how much you love your dog.
I love your hands.
I love the way your neck smells.
I love falling asleep in your arms.
I love all the accents you do.
I love that curl that always goes inside out.
I love that you can make me laugh until I cry.
I love how much I want you, all the time.
I love that you have a cardboard cutout of that guy (Niall, as you told me vehemently) from one direction.
I love planning a life with you, and laughing and joking about naming our kids odd things, but knowing that underneath we are really going to have a life together.
I love that the only tears I ever shed over you are tears of love, laughter, and joy.
I love that you kept the rose I gave you on our first date.
I love how much I trust you.
I love that you love all the things about me I was worried nobody would ever love.
I love that you want to talk to me all the time the same way I want to talk to you all the time...
But most of all
I just love you. Always.

Valentines Day 2016

I trusted you.
That's really the gist of it.
That's why this won't go away.
I let many people into my life
Good and bad
Strong and weak
Tender and cold
But I trust so few.
Even those who deserve it
Even those who prove their loyalty
I trust
So few.
I trusted you.
I trusted you.
I think my trust must carry venom
And poison the people I bestow it on
Because you are not cruel.
Not you.
You are not sudden like the strike of a cobra.
You are not cold like ice.
Not you.

None of them were.
None of them ever were before they were
To me.

(Rage more.)

The truth is that I still trust you.
The truth is that I laugh when you say something funny to someone else and your face lights up,
And smile when you get what you want,
And wish you well whenever I look at you.
The truth is that I can't help it.

All I am is sad even though I try
I try so hard
To be angry at you for hurting me.
For hurting me and turning away
As if that helps anything.
For throwing your hands up at the first sign that perhaps
When I told you over and over that you had my trust
I meant it.
And that perhaps
You broke it.
And that perhaps
You might contribute to the storm that is me, well-
You've always stood for storms before
And let them reach your heart.
And you will stand for mine.
The day you didn't leave when I gave you your first chance
Was the day you chose to influence my heart and soul
My self worth
My happiness.
It is a choice I warn everyone not to make lightly.
It is a choice that few understand until they regret having made it.
You like the rain, darling?
You like
The thunder?
Rage MORE-
There is a hurricane in my blood
Every cell
Swirling and savage
And you
You stirred it up
You made it scalding sweet-
And you of all people
You who've seen so very many
Should know that there is no halting
A storm.
No fleeing from it.
No reasoning with it,
And no
Abandoning it.
I trusted you.
I
Trusted
You.

Rage more.

I am
So tired.
I am cold
And white
And blind.
On my wrists,
Defensive wounds
From a vicious love,
From the kisses
Of a black asp
With constellation eyes.

I have been reliving my death.
I have been choosing
That sweet, frigid venom,
An addict dripping poison into my veins.

But I am
So tired.
I am spent
And lost
And alone.
There are bruises on the soft insides of my arms
From a habit of worshiping
Sharp things.
Under my fingernails,
Dark soil
Evidence of a grave I've overcome
Too many times
And a struggle I've won
At a cost.

I am sick of death.
Sick of attending funerals for the futures I lose
Brutally and unexpectedly.
I am sick of being tolerated.
I am sick of being
Sorry.
I want to feel life in me.
I want to learn the taste of sunlight
And safety.
Of forgiveness--
I hear
It is sweet as warm honey.
(I wouldn't
Know)

I have gazed....
Oh, I have gazed long,
And the void saw me
As I saw it.
And long after I wished I could look elsewhere
I stood, gorgonized, on the edge.

Hold my hand.
Remind me that I have hands.
Spread light
In me.
Forgive me for my gravity as I lean forward on that hollow breeze that's always calling.
Pull me back and keep me
Steady.

I will never be
On solid ground.
I will never be easy.
I will never be
Safe.
I am half light and half shadow,
Half joy and half pain,
Half kindness and half anger.
I am a great, twisted tree,
With my branches in heaven
And my roots
In hell.
Love that in me,
Will you?
Will somebody?
I am ready
To bloom.
I am ready
To live.
I am ready to be exactly
What I am.

Fire, fire,
my heart caught fire!
rivers of fire,
monstrous flames,
are now flowing, burning,
inside my veins,
what's left of my spirit,
and remains.

Week 1: I was laughing exactly twenty-two minutes after I held your lifeless hand. They called it coping. I called it insanity.

Week 2: I haven't slept a full night in a week because I can't remember the last thing you said to me.

Week 3: I still reach for your hand every time an airplane flies by. I still despise planes.

Week 4: Can you ask God if I'm allowed to be angry yet?

Week 5: I mourn the grandchildren you will never meet and I will never bear because they might have your eyes.

Week 6: We lit a cigarette for you today as if God would let such a deadly sin into the pearly gates. Happy birthday.

Week 7: I've never liked this house.

Week 8: I jokingly call other people Dad until it doesn't sting to say that word anymore.

Week 9: "I want to have a better relationship with you," turned into "I'm so sorry," too quickly.

Week 10: Depression is such a mouthful, three course meal of arsenic.

Week 11: You always told me I had a natural beauty, didn't need to paint a face of porcelain. I wear a lot of makeup now.

Week 12: I'm still not ready to write about you yet.

'  Mum, what should I do
  Now that I'm married to Lucy?'
' Son, do what you may
   But never be like your daddy'.

'People in glass-houses should not throw stones'
What a great piece of advice
Last week I threw a stone at my neighbour's
I've built steel bars all over my house---I am wise.

Too often the heart can do what the brain can't and puts the grey matter to sleep---it has no limits and is free as the wind, it is spaceless and encircles the whole universe.  It is a mystery beyond the brain's finiteness.

THE HEART OR THE BRAIN?

In my youth I held
the brain to be superior to all
the seat of all wisdom
and the university dons said: 'the call

of genius lies
in grey matter-
nowhere else--you students should know
lest you academically falter'.

I wore my degree
on my sleeve
I could talk my way through
it only brought grief.

I found through the years and tears
reasoning and logic was dry as leaves in decay
I learnt to laugh and smile, I smelled the flowers
I talked to kids, I tried to write poetry and in every way

my childish innocence and wonder
returned and I was transformed and born again
I began to feel and understand life's mysteries
its wondrous  joys and its every deep pain

and how profound was peace and contentment
(who ever dared say ' Knowledge is the end-
the door to bliss?'   Trust not lofty philosophy
it's a cynic, a joy-destroyer and not a friend).

My heart is with me every moment
and with it I converse and only in it I place all my trust
my brain is arrogant, without warmth and obtrusive
garrulous and obtrusive---say goodbye to it I must.