Whatever you do, do not
threaten suicide in Arizona
ever again.

Why do you do this
to yourself, to your sister, what
is it about the decaying heat
of the desert that reminds you of
your soul?

Nothing can survive in either,
they will be suffocated by your rays.
You can love a thing to death.
The sun does it
every day.

You think you're saving them
but you're killing them, you've killed every
poor and lost soul that has wandered in
to this wasteland,
by accident.

Never
on purpose.

What is it about Arizona that makes you
feel so alone? People running from box to box
to escape the heat, lonely as hell.
But at least
they're comfortable.

What is it inside of you
that wants to die
wherever you are? On vacation, sitting
by the pool. Why do you buy sunscreen
if you're just going to
off yourself anyways?
It doesn't make any
******* sense.

You did this in Paris, made people
worry, notice, told them it was better for you
to die abroad, cheaper, somehow, than
cleaning up the mess at home. Maybe it's because
France has free health insurance.
They still pity
the sick.

Fountains and men and Towers of light.
It was your dream. It was perfect.
Some days you wanted to die. But the good days,
my God, you were beautiful.
You lit up entire rooms.
Life was worth living.

Now, you're in the desert.
You are sick. You are hot,
walking on the scolding black pavement
wherever you go. The desert burns
everyone you have ever known.
Don't threaten suicide
in Arizona.

I explained
a long time ago
the feelings I don't
have for you.

Do you need a constant reminder
of the lack, the space, the cold
air that lines our skin as it touches,
my turned back, my closed eyes,
do you need me to spell
it out for you?

What would make
the idea sink into
your thick skull?
A four letter word to describe
how lonely people fall in love
and what they do to
get through
the night.

You never hear me
when I say my heart
does not beat
in your arms.

if i ever came close
to belonging, this
must be the spot.
the place where
failures and friends collect
like the white cloudy residue on the bank
of a river, stuck, wanting
to escape, giving anything to flow
again down life's fast and
unforgiving current, being endlessly
turned and turned in one spot,
moving
but stuck.
accumulating next to
your white filmy comrads
who also got caught
in the whirlpool trap
going nowhere.
going home.

I never was any good at
letting go. Like the balloon
at the fair twenty-something
years ago.

I tried so hard to hold on
to it, red and bursting
with helium and love. The harder
my little hand grasped the string, the more
it slipped away until, regrettably,
it floated up. Slowly and then
all at once. But it's not the
red balloons fault, I hold
no grudge, nor do I blame
you.

The only direction you could go
was up. Into the atmosphere.
I was a weight holding you,
in all your firey-red glory, to the earth. A
water filled ball
and chain.

Watching you float further
and further away from me, turning
into a tiny spec, my eyes still trying to see
where you would go, where your destiny
and the wind
would take you.

The tiny red balloon
became a piece of my heart
that went missing. Landing
a random place, thousands of
miles away, maybe, existing to
remind me
of all
that I've lost.

The balloon that got away
is the only one
I remember. The only
color I saw fading
into the clouds. The only
one I ever
loved.

Because my story is so
much more than the depressed one
I told you. It was, for
the most part, fiction.

I'm not unhappy,
I'm tall and brilliant.

My life is not simply pointless,
it is adventurous and
multi-colored. I am not boring,
I am mysterious.

I've swam across oceans
to get here.

I've learned that there is
a high probability that sadness
and extraordinary passion
come from
the same
place.

Everyone you meet
is broken glass, a
destroyed
pile of a
person.

Pieces of us lie all over the ground.
You have to be careful
where you step.
We have all been
dropped and cracked
and kicked.

We are all ******- some worse
than you. You at least tried to
pick up the mess
along the way. Most people
leave pieces
stranded. A fraction of
a soul as
road ****.

Everyone is stepped on and crushed
and dug into the ground,
soaked like red wine into the
off-white carpet.
There will never not
be a stain.

You handed me one of your
puzzle pieces,
a fragment of shell,
a souvenir.
I tried to glue you back
together, to carry you, to fix
you, my darling, because
we traded.

I tried to give you
my pain as well, heart shaped and
sharp like chipped bone. But
it didn't fit, and it was heavy,
and it was mine. So you
gave it back.

Thank you for your time
and participation but
I'm sorry to say,
this was just a test.

A ******, social
and psychological
experiment on how
you handle insanity
in others.

You had impeccable defense
when I said, "I love you."
Immediate silence. Close your heart
like a steel door. The strongest
and most successful
response to
this behavior.

Some participants explode in the
test maze, can't handle any
mind games, loneliness,
suicide threats, pleas for
attention, among
other things.

You were my favorite
test subject. So much potential
I thought you might actually
get it. But, not quite
yet.

I'm sorry to put you through this,
my dear, my lab rat,
I just needed to push you
as far as you could possibly go
in order to maybe, one day,
feel you
push back.