I met my muse this morning
I put a bullet in her heart
She knew too much
But now I can't write

Oops

I have wandered among these sidewalks for lifetimes,
I have made a home out of busy sidewalks and small patches of dying grass
I meander with past friends in the middle of empty roads,
With no destination in mind.


I’ve lived amongst thousands of others,
We pass each other daily
Greeting each other with shy smiles and a brief nod
To part and never unite again


I have interacted with this city through the earth
I walk its roads until I can no longer feel my legs,
And I shall continue
Until I have mapped out every inch of my home


This city consists of my raw emotions;
I will always carry this city with me


No matter which new streets I may roam,
No matter which new sidewalks I may take solace in.

Some days there is an ache
That ripples through my soul like an echo in an empty cave.
Where it started, I'll never know
But it seems endless on my empty days.

it's cold in this motel
all the paisley carpet in the world
won't make the halls warm  

a faux fire is burning in the lobby
the clerk is long numb to it, and to the rest of the world
it appears--no guest has disturbed him for hours

I don't want to go upstairs, to a room
where my only daughter waits, curled in the covers
like chrysalis in cocoon

eyes dried from crying all the tears
eyes can make--still she dry sobs--still she aches
for a mother she believes abandoned her, in a motel,
like this one, a lifetime ago

we will attend the service early today--too late
for a reconciliation between mother and daughter
the tether torn a decade past

I will hold my daughter close;
her eyes will dart around the room,
wondering who the mourners are, how they knew
the mother she did not

until then, I will sit a while longer
by this timid flicker of light, before I don the black suit,
before I knot my tie in the mirror and see the face of the man
who could not forgive a transgression, a human misstep

and robbed a girl of her mother, until today,
when words will spill from strangers' mouths,
the only biography my daughter will ever have of her
and I will wish for short epitaphs, a quick return to the earth
while those words and truths haunt my soul

She stands across these past few months like staring down a calm ocean. Her thoughts are completely empty and she's wondering how did I ever make it out alive? Sinking to the bottom is my everything, my lingerie, and our photographs. Everything is a coldness she can't shake. Lightening crashes and her love was swallowed by the sea. It was too late to get out, and all she knew was this war for months, malnourished, lips cracked, eyes bloodshot as everything drowned. And then the silence. And the crystal clear mirror that was the ocean made her look very hard at how that ship sank. The bruises and the screams are stories too difficult to tell. She only tried to reach land by bearing through it, not really believing she'd actually make it, that she'd actually be here, that she'd actually be staring at the shipwrecked man. He lay like handsome prince charming in the sand, and for the tiniest moment, it was all not true. They still trusted each other and the sirens were leagues under the sea.