I knew a woman once,
with worn couches,
and gentle words,
that would describe me as doe-eyed and wild-hearted,
though no one would ever notice that again.
And she told me that my body should be thought of
as a work of art,
instead of a shameful relic.
I thought that over for awhile,
the idea that the scars I had accumulated
over the course of this lifetime
could be considered beautiful.
And I began to paint my canvas
with beautiful things,
stories of past loves,
past lives,
the places I had once considered home..
So I painted birds across my back,
in honor of my wandering heart,
and the daydreams I had as a child,
of being free.
Inscribed words on my ribs,
from the book that had once so closely
resembled my own soul
I truly believed that they had been written for me.
And you.
I painted you,
my love,
on my shoulder,
as a dragon,
for all the nights we spent
across time and space,
miles and phone lines.
All the hours you had spit flames upon my demons,
sent them cowering into the depths of the night,
all the while saving my soul from
the great unknown.
For if what they say is true,
and my body is temple,
then you have been inscribed on my soul,
like the Gods were inscribed on the walls
of the temples of Delhi.
It is here.
It is here.
"It is here."

I remember the last time,
I felt like I was flying.
Do you remember?
In that club on High Street,
with too many shadows,
and too little sincerity.
That time
that song came on,
the one that had suddenly convinced us
that everything could be beautiful
that for three minutes and thirty six seconds,
everything could really be this easy.
Life could be this simple.
We could own the night,
our destiny,
the rest of time and space as we knew it.
That song,
had somehow
negated the existence of anything
outside those florescent walls,
a world where we were merely human,
because to the sound of that bassline,
we had become gods.
Do you remember,
how I looked at you,
and smiled,
as you threw me onto your shoulders,
and I threw my hands into the air,
as the world turned faster and slower
all at once.
That night,
for that song,
in those three minutes and thirty six seconds,
if never again,
in that club on High Street,
I was flying.
And I was infinite.

Screaming rings out through the glass panes
of the house across the street.
And it sounds just like them.
The nights she spent screaming about
the mistresses
and the nightmare she felt was her life.
Before he would leave.
He always left.
Well, mostly.
Some nights she would come into our rooms,
****** us out of our tossings and turnings
and run.
But only one of us.
She only ever took one of us.
And we would drive the twenty minute ride
to Martha's house,
where I,
or he,
would pretend to sleep on the couch,
while she drank,
and commiserated,
about how he didn't try.
And he didn't care.
How the **** from the emails,
didn't care that she was destroying a family,
or a life.
Or whatever the ****,
she thought she was fighting for.
But mostly,
most nights,
it was him leaving.
It was the sound of the door slamming,
and the engine of his '93 Volvo starting up
in our dirt driveway
as he disappeared into the night.
And I never understood.
I never understood why he left,
every time.
That is,
until the day came,
when I, myself, started leaving.

The boy with the frat tattoos
calls me again,
to tell me he still loves me.
He always will.
The annual surrender
to his overly wasted heart.
Tells me he's never met a girl
with so many secrets,
a girl with so many different lives.
He reminds me that no one will ever understand
the way my eyes turn grey when I'm sad,
or deep blue when I'm angry.
Asks if I'm still as angry as I was,
back when he used to show up
at 3am,
to my unlocked door.
He tells me he knows what I'm thinking
in pictures that he sees,
based solely on the colors of my irises.
Says he knows me,
Because he always knew me,
despite all the secrets,
despite all the lives.
He says loving me was like
trying to survive a hurricane.
And knowing me was like
attempting to choose what to save
while your home went up in flames.
But he loved me.
He says.
He'll always love me.
And I let him talk for a while
about the good times.
until I can hear him getting tired,
and the tequila setting in.
I wait until he starts to get quiet,
starts to tell me that he had to let me leave
because loving me was too exhausting.
Because I refused to let him in.
Because my skin was too thick,
and my eyes were too cold,
too much of the time..
It is then,
when he gets quiet,
that I remind him that there were no good times.
I was angry for reasons,
that I never told him,
because he never asked.
Because for all the 3ams,
and all the unlocked doors,
he never stayed long enough to appreciate
that I had let him in.
And he weeps.
Quietly,
so that he thinks I don't know.
Tells me he hopes that one day I stop spinning,
"One day,"
he says,
"I hope the sky that is your soul finally clears."
before hanging up for another year.
But he always knew I was a hurricane
and you can't tame a storm.

So what the **** did he expect?

The insomnia hits harder than it has in a while.
My head pounds,
My eyes ache
And my feeble heart is a wanderess.
Roaming through nostalgia like a gypsy
With a curse
Or a ship lost at sea
Following the voices of sirens that never actually existed.

Running equations in my headspace
Wondering where I went wrong
Or where I went right..
I honestly couldn't tell you,
I was never good at math anyway.

Too many variables.
Too many unknowns,
My life is the letter x.
And I'm sifting through square roots
At 2am on a Thursday.

And I can’t close my eyes
Because it only gets worse.
The racing and the wandering.
The backs of my eyelids become pull down screens
Like the ones in the cheap banquet halls
With the slide shows and “cash only” bars.

And the slideshow just flickers
With every blink
Every flirtation with sleep.
In bold Times New Roman
Black letters flash

“Do you regret it?”

“Was it all worth it?”

“Is this where you thought you would be?”  

My chest tightens.
My heart begins to race.
There’s a test at the end of this presentation
And I forgot to take notes.
Everyone else is so well prepared
So I look around for someone to cheat off of
Because I have to pass this test, right?
It’s my life,
I have to pass this test.

The answers have to be easy.

“Did you regret it?”
No.

“Was it all worth it?”
Yes.

“Is this where you thought this would be?”
Well, sure I guess...

I mean, how does anyone know?
Am I supposed to know?
Do I have any lifelines?
Can I phone a friend?

But the buzzer sounds.
The lights go dark.
The film reel starts.
Another study session begins.

The moment you fall in love with him.
Do you regret it?

The look in his eyes when he tells you he doesn’t love you.
Was it worth it?

The color of the sky when you find out he died.
Is this where you thought you would be.

No one will ever love you
the way that I have.
And no one will ever hate you
the way that I do.
I hate that there is nothing left of you here
nothing for me to hold on to of you
nothing to burn in place of you.
Because the only things I have left
are the images burned into
the deepest layers of my brain garden.
Past the wall where
Kurt Vonnegut is reading poetry,
the shelves that cradle the words of “Catcher in the Rye”
the lyrics of “American Pie”
past the wild flowers planted
by the sweet giggles of my daughter,
the orchids nurtured
by the smiles of my sweet boy..
deep
deep in my brain garden there is a corner,
behind an old iron fence,
where the images of you play on repeat..

I don’t walk back that far anymore.
I don’t open that gate.
For if I do,
if I cross that threshold,
I am bombarded by the times that we laid in that hotel room
and laughed until we ached,
where I awoke from a nightmare
to you stroking my hair
and holding me tightly.
Or the night
we made love in my apartment
and I caught you looking at me
like I was magic..
Before you shook the thought away,
just like that,
and the moment was gone.
Before you,
I never knew that you could fall in love with a moment.
Never knew
that you could fall in love with an instant,
a single solitary second where I thought
I could’ve sworn,
I saw you love me..
before I watched you
refuse to acknowledge
or accept even the idea
that you could love me.

I held onto that moment.
Planted wilted flowers in that moment.
And waited.
Waited for another fleeting moment
when you would let your guard down
and love me.
But while I waited,
your flowers began to grow
thorns but never petals.
After that moment,
those thorns engulfed my garden.
Every second
that you convinced me
that you didn’t love me,
those thorns spread,
twisting
and curling
around everything that attempted to flourish there.
Through the books I had loved,
and the songs I had danced to,
they covered the memories of past loves,
past lives
I had lived before you
until it was only thorns.
Until I truly thought
that gardens were supposed to be just...
thorns.

You.
Destroyed.
Me.

Then you left me.
Left me standing in the dark,
***** ground surrounded by nothing
but cobblestone remains,
walls that had crumbled
until there were only structures
that had once resembled castles.
And everything became just
dark.

Until one day,
when I met a boy who brought a single rose
into my desolate paradise.
A single rose
that would go on to multiply into a thousand different flowers,
flowers that would cover my brain garden,
grow higher than the clouds
you had covered me in
until the sunlight shattered the sky.  
Together,
he handed me brick,
by brick,
until there were castles again.
The books that had burned
in the trails of you insincere actions
rained down from the sky as beautiful new stories,
laced with golden scriptures.
And your thorns,
the thorns that you had planted,
retreated back,
back into the farthest corners of my garden.
And I built that gate.
And there you stayed.

When the first boy comes,
he will inspire you.
He will paint roses in your hands
and stars on your soul.
He will touch you gently,
like he is holding something
that would shatter the world
if it were to fall onto the linoleum
in his mother's kitchen.

When the first boy comes,
he will enchant you.
Your mouth will shiver with each delicate kiss
he leaves upon your naive lips
and he will change you.
But you will not understand the importance
of such deliberate,
cautious
tender actions.
You will not appreciate that he
is just as cautious
as you are.


When the second boy comes,
he will be less kind.