Where are the ants trying to go?

The ones littering my bedroom floor

Skittering in crevices unwanted

Finding their way to my skin

What do they want with the scars and marks

Sinew and dirt tainting the surface

Unfit for habitation

Nowhere to go

Nowhere to cling to

To sink and burrow and build

My body is not a home for you

Any more than it is a home for me

Your little bodies traverse the surface

Like hands and fingers never have

I itch with your touch

Sting with your bite

And you choose to stay

In a way no one ever has

Unrelenting

Unceasing

Unsavoured

Did you ever think we could've been twins? Not like born together. Not fused like the two sides of an oyster encapsulating a precious pearl. No, I mean like the two sides of a mirror. Perfect opposites. Equally opposite damaged from long days of staring and hoping, and laughing and crying. Begging for things to maybe resolve, maybe become clearer. Maybe disappear with the steam of the 2.AM shower in the pitch dark. Hiding imperfections so that maybe they won't exist. I want to look at us both without fear of what I might see.
I want to see the correct way of viewing things and not the enhanced wrongness of a backward reflection. If we are the same then tell me that from your side we are better. That from your side we are stronger. That....just maybe...from your side, I am right for once.

Remember when we were younger?

In biology class when everything was tactile and new

Experimental and combustible

And we checked each others' pulses

To count and measure

To give reason to rhythm

And you found mine with ease

Cool fingers near the carotid

Unwanted sparks from lack of use

And when I went to you

Placing unclean hands between chin and collar

Trying to finds signs of life

And finding none

As you pressed my fingers further in

Insistent and sure of your steady heart

And it's ironic how years later

When your face is a fading memory

And your presence a ghost no longer haunting

That I realize I never knew

If you were really alive

It's the static along frail nerves
And the sweet people in bitter places
...
A dichotomy

There something about remembering
The ripples in the current
The break in the silence
An ever ringing tone
that rebounds through the sea
and oh my nostalgia
How long has it been
Since you have left me
The center of that breaking wave
The remembrance of my longing heart
Long ago a core reminder
And now shallow pulls in a raging ocean
Take me back to that quiet breaking water
Where I was once a little fish
In a small pond
Yearning to be free

Sugar will never
be as sweet as that first taste
When we were young and wanton
Careless to the world
And that first sharp sickly trickle
From the fountain of youth
Stuck to our mouths
With far more haste
Than the honey we were spoon fed
As infants wrapped in milky swaths
Waiting for this exciting new world
to swallow our cries
And then sugar's grit opened our eyes
From the inherited blindness
Of a world without sight
And we saw the sadness
This sweet song could bring
As it took our hearts and curled around
Restricting its melody
And submerging its sound
In a world more sour than we had imagined.
A world more weary than that fountain guaranteed
And now I hardly remember
When milk and honey
could taste so achingly sweet
I wish we could go back to that land
Before bitterness swallowed it
To lay waste beneath
In a tangle of fears
and wants
and slowly rotting teeth.

I was born with dollar signs on my back
As if that is all I would ever be worth
As if that was all I would ever be good for
The amount splayed under my fingernails
From digging into my skin
A gold mine that was never mine
A land mine I'd one day die in.
I was a wealth of potential
And then expectations
And then disappointment
And then simply vibrations
Of thoughts and feelings
Constant worries
A jackpot siren of insecurity
A lottery I was born to win
Where winning meant spending
The last of my birth
On a life too cheap
To mean anything
And a lifetime of work
To make it cost more

I'm not old.
I'm immature.
Senseless and careless.
Full of faults that I constantly trip over.
And devoid of cracks that aren't hairline fractures.
I'm young.
Afraid to live.
And afraid to die without growing out of the youth I now own.
I am young and old.
Fragile with uncertainty.
Yet strong with determination.
Or not really.
Maybe foolish with hope and too doe eyed to see it.
Maybe too young to understand that life isn't a game actually meant to be won
but one which is endured.
Like tomatoes ripened in the sun.
Maybe I'm not old enough to be bottled and sold.
Maybe I'm fresh fruit.
Picked from a vine and placed in a barrel.
Aged slowly and sweetly.
Future red wine.
But for now.
Young grapes.
In a process.
Unripened.

This is a dedication
To the people who have never been met
And to those who will never meet
An easy night
When wine tastes best on parched lips
And the cool air of night is the prelude to warmth
A kiss so brutal
And yet more tender than the morning after
Fighting the stars for their predictions
Of endless dark
And love that will never be met
Life that has not one chance
To leave its’ aching bruise
Its’ chameleon colored mark