The all of me is a desert
Cracking at the surface
You withhold water
from your hands,
the skin is curling up
into greedy wrinkles
Seeds struggle underneath my lips
They could burst through
if you would just

I  am
a soaking secret at best,
Drenched in affliction
I am
a ghost gripping your shadows,
Hunting for the sun
All the while
You are
a voyager
Seeking hands under tables,
Locked doors,
Alleyways,
Elevators,
Vague descriptions and
Protective platonic stances
You are
a true modern day Columbus,
You find me, a flat dimension of self.
You are
an alluring Copperfield,
Hiding my declarative "no's" under hats
and turning them into whispered "yes's"
Your audience in awe
Unaware of what they are actually applauding

You are
sawed in half
"This can be enough," I tell myself

It isn't.

Should I dig up the roots and expose all that has brought my limbs to stretch towards the sky?
Or should I shave the bark to bare fleshy wet rings?
Naked to every year that has brought me to where I am now?

Small clenched fists
Dukes up
Resistant and Rioting against smiling in pictures and diamonds and last names and flaky white dresses and those ******* five senses that flood memories
They knock on the door of my hearts sinking ship
There are lifeboats I don't board
on purpose
As if being a martyr could take back all the wrong I've done to you

Should I press my veiny leaves on wax paper?
So you can preserve the road maps of my pain
And changing colors
With every season
So that I never crunch under foot and mold among the purity of the first snowfall

Should I offer you sips of my sap?
Poisoned with placating people and pretending to be okay
What a sour sticky substance
No, that will not do

Alas, I will offer you my soil  
Dig your fingers into the minerals
Into grainy brown slivers
This is where I have been quenched by the relatable tears of my clients
And fertilized by dear friends

Is that enough?

I was already mourning you
Before we even met
I was wiping waxy black mascara under eyes with the back of cotton long sleeves
I was already on hardwood floors closed up like a locket
Weeping into shiny silver hands
holding pictures of you
We hadn’t even met yet  
I was already calling my best friend while in the bathtub drinking wine
Listening to Leonard Cohen croon the pain my heart could never write through vein
I was already remembering the specific part in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Where she begs her doctor to take out her olfactory nerve so she can’t be reminded of her lovers scebt
I was already anticipating
the way you would haunt me through
all of the ******* five senses
I was already regretting how I shared all my favorite dishes around town with you and anticipating the weight loss to come shortly thereafter
I was already cutting off the vessel of my heart you would in roam
And attempt to inhabit
You see my dear
You were doomed from the very beginning

I walk along cobblestone
With childhood sterling bracelet
clanking on left wrist  
stacked with personalized pieces
sagging on linked chain

I drop charm by charm  
into cracks of amber granite

my last name
a diamond heart
a pink pony
a cross of roses
a ballerina slipper

a civilized timeline of marriage and kids and golden retrievers

my vowels
my lungs
my lips

I continue walking
wishing I could
Drop
my name at the end of your sentences
And all of the exclamation marks that usually

followed.

My silver bracelet emptied and open for

LGBTQ flags
DV advocacy
anti-trump
****** expression
poetry
the full moon
Zodiac signs
the *******.

A crimson curtain
Like a pleated skirt
You pull it back
with fibrous ropes of pain
Ten years, barred by rib-cage

Alas!
Ladies and gentlemen!
The main attraction
Has finally arrived!

Throbbing and cut
at the nape of aorta
Hailing hurt
valve. by. valve.
Bleeding cats and dogs
and
the animals within me
neighboring ribs
a shelter for the stray and wild and cross breed
                                    
                      ­                                  Center Stage

A moonbeam spotlight
shining light on age spots and pale pink vessels

Come and see
Is it all that you hoped for?
My sawed open vessel splayed on a single stool
barely pulsing.

A spectacle
of what my chest heavily heaves
A daily occurence

Nothing but a miserable audience.
Just me

Black and green scale segments
My coat of arms
I twisted around sage brush for 30 years
I had predators
and potential nests
Always
Foregoing eggs
Alone but capable of swallowing the world
Moving through long narrow casing
Like a jawbreaker swallowed by an ostrich

Then I met you

.Ecdysis.

I shed thin snow skin
A layer of suffering slowly flaking off of me
A new dermis of
a love I have never known
Affection I've never shown
and a part of me never grown.