I am a pretender.

Looking through a window that is slightly open,
so that a breeze winds in
with gathered memories
of subliminal pain.

And I'm lost
partially wandering on a plot of unknown sand.
With the sun no longer reflecting,
refraction.
A reddening burn
and a quickened pulse
aching *****
and held breath.
I know where I am.

I am a fake.
But I cannot go through with it.
If I do not in the "real,"
why lie online?
Why hide myself
and view myself
criticize myself in comments with names that aren't mine,
not even who I want to be?

Why do I ignore myself,
and let fade into lingo.

Because I am human
and I don't want you to know me.
Even when I want you to feel,
I want you to share this moment with me.
And that is why
I post these
discombobulating pieces of no reckoning,
non-entertaing, ultimate **** "poems."
Because I want you to understand this
                                                                        me
in this instant.

My heart spills with everything I have learned in the past six months,
this is my anthropology homework and how to mix paint
the exact amount of seeds (two and two fifths) to grow a proper squash
how many raindrops have evaporated on your tongue as well as
how much of your saliva that has been on mine
sugar from three hundred cups of coffee, that image on CNN of a bus
filling with gasoline then flames on the way to school
an elderly gentleman who called me sunshine at a restaurant
and that somehow you know the perfect way to break my heart so
it shatters, overflows, thunders, a bird bath of these experiences I keep.

I wanted nothing of this, but you poured warm water
to scrub your dishes with and I decided to wash my veins of you instead;
I did not erase the memory of you but the feeling of you
severed my arteries like the levee that broke in New Orleans when I
was nine, it flooded the whole neighborhood.
We regret different things every day, but they both mean the same thing.

A band-aid, ace bandage for my heart so it can swell like a basket
hoarding chicken eggs and pennies and feelings inside,
we both want the nerves repaired
so I feel your touch again, so I can risk being broken again, so sweet.

Pretty gates over our head, the first time my eyes
made you hard, had no hands for an umbrella because one carried
plastic-bagged groceries the other held down my dress,
an aura dark as ***** hair,
pain so comfortable in your waist I felt like I fell off a train too,
I saw you squirm and get all glassy, all I could think about was how
sad it is that most people stop reading after middle school
else we may have known if a hospital was necessary,
else I may have known the way to get there
without getting a bump on my forehead, white picket fence
in the sky bruising my high
when I first realized I loved you so much I needed to fix you always.

you won't let yourself love me
but every so often your feelings
slip
through
the
cracks
and i catch them like fireflies
trap them in a glass jar
as reminders on the days
when things are bad.

~ ~ ~
And in the narrow vision of my half closed eyes I see
Dark shapes emerging
And descending into every favorite object
Of my long harbored hopes and fears
And yours.
Inflicting my beloved place with darkness
They mount and dive into the realms of physics
And of clarity;

And so we sit
In our favorite coffee house with tea and cake,  and ache
And ache for we can feel their presence
As they invoke in us that fear
Of breaking mirrors and of shaking ground;

And now partaking in our gestures and our face
- They come into this world
And break what we had hoped for with a grace
That only creatures from the underworld possess
To lessen our role in the real world –
They grab hold of our arms:
Yours first
Then mine
And climb with us onto a mountain top so dark
And so remote that we now feel
As though our eyes half-closed again.

And in the beauty of this sleep
I am no longer able to shake off the beasts
Of non-reality.

This is for all the men
Who tell me I am beautiful
I can't hear you
Through all those years
Of being an ugly duckling
This is for my dog
Big blue eyes
My baby snugglebug
Sniffing for donuts
Chewing my hands in the morning
And the nail biters
And the chefs
Who lose fingers to the meatgrinders
And the farmers
Staking lives
On a drop of rain
I am vain
This is for the men
Who have faith
I am not the ****** Mary
Just another pretty face
Another lacy thong to take off
This is for the underwear makers
The firecrackers
This is for the characters
Who explode in the night sky
Like the fourth of July
And ordinary people
Are blinded by the colors
This is for the mothers
And the big brothers
And the Prozac poppers
This is for the bees that have stung me
I've eaten their honey
And my cakes would not taste
So sweet without it
This is for the surgeons
And musicians
And fishermen
For the men who have bought me dinner
And never seen a return
On their investment
This is for the beards
And chest hair
This is for my little sister
Who is finally growing up
The word "love" on her tongue
And this is for America:
Land of the free
Home of the mancave
Beauty is only as deep
As your mineral rights
The copper and coal mines of your eyes
Beauty flies as high as kite
Melts away like cotton candy
After a baseball game
This is for the men who called me beautiful
For all the beauty in the world
All the beautiful
This is for you