I am next to you
In the velvety darkness.
I can hear the city breathing
From just outside your window,
Breathing like you.
Your soft, rhythmic sighing blends with the sounds of life drifting in from the street
And it's like you're the same,
Uncontainable, indescribable.
The light kisses the soft lines of you
And your lovely, wild hair cascades down the pillows.
I feel...
This is what I want my nights to be like.
I want to know you're safe, sleeping beside me, I want to feel you here-
The smoothness of your skin pressed up against mine intermittently
The way I can feel your heartbeat through your chest.
You're so present, so real and warm and... Mine,
And I want to kiss you dizzy
I want to map every inch of you with my hands,
Always longing to be closer.
But I just lie back into the pillows, feel you breathe.
I wonder, are you dreaming?
Behind those green eyes
What worlds are there, playing out the musings of such a soul?
Ah, the familiar feeling-
I long to know you
Every part of you
Every shame and insecurity you are worried I'll find
I want to find them and love them all
With the same tenderness that I love your voice and your lips and your passionate mind.
I want to be close to you in ways I don't even know what to think of.
You turn, mumbling, and reach for me
And something in my chest
Rises and falls all at the same time.
I never know
In this life
How long I will get to be happy
But this is forever
This right now
This
Is something that I won't come back the same from
No matter what happens.
So safe, so tender...
I could be anything with you.
I could grow into anything, nourished by your gentle glow.
I long for you
And I long for the person I will become the longer I spend in your arms.
Change me.
Make me.
Heal
Me.
For all my fears that you will tire of my gifts
And of my constancy
For all the scars I bare and all the times my world has ended
When I look into your eyes I cannot fear you-
I am too alive.

I fear these days. These days of silence from you.
Not the days I fritter away waiting for you to speak,
Worrying, wondering, wishing.
Not those.
I fear these days.
The days when you do not speak,
And I do not need you to.
I am afraid to miss you all the time.
But what I am truly terrified of are the rare, heartstoppingly brutal moments
When I don't.

"Wow. No wonder everyone's in love with you."

Well, what am I to say to that?
How can I possibly explain
That I know I am loved,
And the terrible truth that it doesn't really matter
If it's not the *right love-
From you, or her,
Or a handful of scattered people
Whose pain has touched me in the deepest way
And made me want to touch it back?

To be loved is what we all want, right?
And we shouldn't be picky, I'm told,
But I am.
Sometimes I wonder if I imagined my love, anyway.
The moments I've felt,
With few and far between
A special person here
And there,
To send sparks down my spine like wire
And set my heart ablaze with sizzling light.
Sometimes I wonder if I made them up,
These people I chase after,
And that they don't remember
And so of course they do not spare a glance
For the strange girl with the dark eyes
Watching them with hope
And awe.

Absence makes the heart grow fonder
I know that I should be gone longer
Every time I miss you now
I wait, long as my heart allows.

I want your love, I crave it so
I know that I should let you grow
And let you go
Let you be the one who says hello,
And have faith you'll return, but even so
I never know,
And by the hour my soul gets low,
And the seconds tick my heart to woe,
I wish I could be calm, but no.

If I could, I'd make you wait,
I'd let you wonder, show up late.
I'd let you miss me for a while
I'd let you long to see my smile,
But
See,
I'm too afraid that I
Don't mean enough to say goodbye
And hope that you'd say "Oh, don't leave."
If I were gone, love, would you grieve?
I just don't know, and so I fold
And keep your love close, grab ahold,
I'm scared I'll lose you by staying near,
Drive you crazy with my fear.
But I fear as much if I step back,
That you won't feel a space, a lack,
Without me there to love you so,
And so I never let it go.
I'm sorry I've not got it right,
A few more months and I just might.
You're important, see, and I love you,
So please forgive the things I do:

Absence makes the heart grow fonder,
I wish my feeble heart was stronger.
But when I think of hearing your perfect voice,
I know there isn't any choice.

I think I might have better been a fish
Skittering up and down among the waving weeds,
Free of thought and love and dream and wish,
Cuddled by a current like a breeze.

And I would linger on or then be eaten
Because those are the options to be had.
But never by another bled or beaten-
My wanting blood now cool and never sad.

And never would I drown in pride or sin
Because I'd take my breath beneath the water
But if I were to drown and nature win,
My departure from the world would hardly matter.

How lovely life would be in blue green quiet,
To know just what I should be and to be it.
Never again to feel love or deny it,
And forget what I have seen soon as I see it.

You're beautiful.
I wish I didn't know your expiration date was coming
Sooner
Rather than later.
Last night in the stage lights you were breathtaking.
I saw from you a rawness I have always admired in your eyes,
But never fully glimpsed.
You hurt my heart with loveliness, my exquisite friend.
All I want for you are sunny days
And a long,
Long life.
Seeing you fall apart up there, knowing what I do,
It was agony.
"Goodbye love, hello disease"
And I crumbled.
I actually took my glasses off and openly wept for a moment,
And the man next to me looked at me strangely.
Who would guess that you are more invested in that role than you appear?
I know you love that,
The little references you can sprinkle through your life.
I know you're addicted to telling the truth through your subtleties-
If people only knew how many times you tell them!
I have one thing to ask of you,
Black haired beauty with piercing eyes of blue
And a heart of polished gold.
You are so amazing, so sweet and beautiful and complex and courageous, and so very
Alive.
I'm begging you: Don't die.
*Just

Don't

Die.

There is something about an empty path that calls to you, deep in your heart.
A tiny yearning rears its head and tugs at you,
Tug-tug-tug, growing.
I don’t know quite what it is that makes it so leading,
So enticing,
To stand at the end of a path or a road upon which there is no one else.
Maybe it is the intrepid human desire to explore and be FIRST.
Or maybe it is the insidious one- to be alone.
Either way, there is an undeniable pull to an empty path,
Exquisite and gravitational,
That hums through your bones like a charge.

You know that feeling
When you're standing on the edge of somewhere
Very high
And for a moment
For whatever reason
The muscles in your legs and feet
Roll just a little forward
And you sway towards that fall
And before the vertigo sets in,
Before the fear blooms like weeds in the core of your
Stomach,
There is a moment of utter awe?
That is how it feels to look at her.
I say awe,
It may not be the right word,
I considered "peace" or "joy"
But
See
Awe is both, perhaps,
But also neither.
Awe has the high stakes,
Awe is part fear part love,
And while peace settles in you like a comfy chair,
Awe soars like a rollercoaster hill,
And that's the real feeling,
As closely as I know how to say it.

I always wonder what it'd be like to belong to someone
Who would actually want to have me.
I've spent so many years of my life
Devoted
To people who weren't devoted to me.
Because
Well
I need to belong somewhere.
I need someone to wake up thinking of.
And it turns out
I need that more than I need to be valued
Or understood
Or even thought of.
I need it much more than I need to be loved.

And I try, I do, to exist as an island.
Sometimes I make it months before I fail
Spectacularly.
Sometimes I even forget how much I miss love.
But inevitably I remember.
And inevitably I fall in love
With people who don't fall in love with me.
Avoidance doesn't work,
Rushing in headlong to face my fears doesn't work,
Trying to be calm and subtle and normal...
Definitely doesn't work.

Frankly, I'm out of ideas.

Time after time I face this-
The fear, the vulnerability, the shadows of my past failures which loom around me.
I stay up nights
I make beautiful art
I cry
I laugh at nothing
I spend excruciating hours waiting and worrying for no good reason
I stop being hungry for food
But wander the streets like a starving animal all night
And for the past few months I've thought,
Isn't it nice to go to bed when I want to?
To not feel afraid all the time?
To have no one whose attention and affection I pine for?
(And believe me, pine is an understatement in even the mildest of cases for me.)
Isn't it nice to just be?

And maybe I didn't feel very alive,
Maybe my life was a little empty,
And my art untouched,
And my pages blank...
But I was hungry at every meal.
I woke up mornings feeling safe.
I felt sane.

Since I realized what it meant to love another person
It has been what I believe the purpose of my existence to be.
But what if I'm just... allergic to it?
What if it just makes me crazy?
And unstable?
And unsafe?
And exhausted?
What then?
And I still believe in love so much,
But after these past years
I have to wonder whether love
Believes in me,
Or whether I've just chosen to devote myself to
One
More
Thing
That... doesn't really care.

I saw your name
And this car ride
Turned into a game of Russian Roulette.
Amazing how the very thought of you
Can reverse my body chemistry
In a matter of seconds.
Smiling,
I didn't even have enough time to blow my cover
Because it hit that quick.
Now I sit, rigid, in the passenger's seat.
God, my legs are weak.
My fingers are cold,
And I have to clamp down on my leg with the tips of them
To keep my voice from shaking.
She can't know.
She can't know that my happiness has been left behind
Like you leave your insides at the top of a steep rollercoaster.
Later it will catch up, slam into me with its new claws, and wrench the food from my stomach
No matter what you've said.
But not now. Not
Now.
I am afraid
To get out of the car when we stop.
Will I collapse to the ground like a newborn colt?
These ****** legs
Shake
And itch to run.
My only composure
Is in my secrecy.
I can sit three inches from my own mother
Silently imploding
And she will never know.
She can't know.
She is all I have left to protect.
My heart rate has tripled
And even when I take deep breaths
They rattle in and out of my lungs.
It feels like there is an electric current running through me.
It feels like I've just lost a lot of blood and the adrenaline is vibrating through my whole body
To make up for the injury.
Every time we hit a bump
My knees seize up
All on their own
And a shiver passes through me.
My white hands flutter before me
Like moths
And if I don't concentrate
My lungs stutter in air uncontrollably
And little pinpoints of light stud my vision.
She can't know.
Just get home.
Bump
I grip the seat.
Bump
Sweat slides down the side of my face
Cold
Like the point of a knife.
I swear I can see it glinting out of the corner of my eye
But its only my white cheeks and glistening eyes reflected
In the blackened window glass.
The girl there is ghostly and deeply shadowed
And for a moment our eyes find each other
In terror and then in
Resignation.
This is our trip
To the gallows
This is
It
This ride
This car eating up the still damp pavement
Lights making the steam that billows from it swirl and dance.
This metallic taste that fear floods into my mouth
Is my last meal.
This is my chariot
And death doesn't know she's driving it
But my number is up
And I stare down my execution in the oncoming headlights of someone else's car
Someone who can probably breathe right now.
Lucky *******.
My ears ring
And the music from the speakers sounds like it's underwater.
Thank god I don't have to talk much.
Almost there
Turn, bump
And my heart tries to climb out of my ribcage
My veins cold with
Fight or flight
But some cruel little part of my mind laughs at my body's frail defenses-
I've known for years that neither
Can save me.
Almost there
No
Please-
I don't want this to end.
Because it's hell, sure,
Sitting here with a nuclear holocaust ripping through my organs,
But I know this devil.
I can systematically lock myself down,
Keep it in,
Keep it quiet.
But the second I leave this car...
The moment I get home,
I will have to know what you've said.
I'll have to face whatever you think of me
And that
Is the most terrifying thing
I have ever sped towards
So ******* fast.

My special talent is courage.
I know it maybe doesn't seem it. I know I sit small. I know talk soft. But courage is my special, special talent. I go for what I want. And sometimes I forget how rare that is. Sometimes I forget that people lay it all on the stage, but not on the table. I wear my scars in art all along my arms not to remind me that I have been hurt but to remind me that I fought for something. Something real. Something worth risking this for.
I live hard. I love hard. I risk, hard. And because of that I go to bed every night knowing that if there is something I want, I mean something I ache for with my whole heart and all the dark parts of my soul, if there is something I crave and I don't have it, I can sleep knowing I have done absolutely everything I can about it.
When I fail, I fail so spectacularly that you could write a play about it. And people would clap. When I fall I hit bottom so hard the echoes could level a city. And I love every moment. Because we aren't here to leave this life unscathed. I have broken so beautifully and so completely that now I am free. Little parts of me have scattered into all the corners of the places I've cried in, and now I find I CAN cry. I can breathe. I can love someone hard enough to run after them down the street, look them in the eyes, and tell them I'll love them until the day I die, even when I know they will turn around and walk away. I carry this beautiful, wild, mad devotion to my heart within me, and it is so dangerous, but it is so worth it. Whether I win or lose, it is so... worth it.
Life will ******* up, and kick you down, and bleed you until you think you have nothing left. But you don't. You only have nothing left if you decide you do. I have every ugly, exquisite moment I ever loved or lost and they fill me with pride. Because, you know, I did something about every, single, one of them. Never have I sat in silence and let my life lead me. Never have I given up and walked away from someone or something that made me feel even a little bit. And I never, ever will. Because I know why I'm here, and it's that.
And because every time I remember how truly, madly brave I am no matter the consequences, I feel nothing but joy.

"I believe the universe provides us with what we need.
I have always gotten what I wanted in the end."
Then you
Are a lucky man.
And I want to believe in the plan
Something has for me
Want to see my losses as steps
Forward
Want to let the pain roll out of me like rain
But
When I look around
I see so many people who do not know what it is to be
Stuck.
To be
Powerless.
To know that although they hold spinning galaxies in all their paper lantern bellies
They must
Be
Small.
I see people who say
That it is a choice to be free
And I think
How lucky you are, how
Blessed
With choice.
I am in pain.
I am
Bound.
And
I feel no envy
But
What I wouldn't give
(If anything I treasured were mine to give)
What
I wouldn't give
To choose
Otherwise.

Love makes you an addict.
Loss, a *******.
I have learned my legs again,
The shocking tenderness of my fingerprints,
Rediscovered the planes of my own face
By touch
And found them sharp enough to cut.
I have risen from the belly of the earth
To hands and knees, to my unsteady feet,
And I have stood and asked the world again
To do its worst,
And give me its best.
I have read the changing seasons of my life
Like braille,
Felt my way
Until the day I gained the courage to open my eyes,
And found that the tears had all but dried and gone,
And that the light was chilling, to the bone.

I try to walk
As if my every step is a lullaby to the soil.
I try to tread lightly
And remember that I am a song
And songs are made
To be heard
To be sung
To be played.
I try to recall
With every step I take
That my voice is trying to reach you.
That you are
Something to sing about.
In a world where
Most people mutter their lives
Like curses under their breath
Which rises in plumes like smoke from chimney stacks
And disperses just as quickly,
I want to echo.
I want to ring
Across the land like a sweet, low bell
And clear the smog for a moment
To let the sun in.
I want to hum
With the brave joy I cannot stand to silence,
The song I sing
Because I know you.

Silence often stills me.
I don't like it.
Sometimes I will accidentally find myself sitting in silence
And a cascade of sadness will begin to drift over me
And inside I will see it coming
And in my mind I will flee from it.
But...
It's like sleep paralysis, almost.
If you've ever woken up unable to move when you want to, you know the feeling I mean.
Get up! I think.
Turn on the television.
Take your pills.
Eat something.
Get a voice besides your own into your head
Now
Or it will be dire.
And I sit there
Still.
Paralyzed.
Feeling black ice glaze over where my panic should be
And depression creeping towards me like a dense fog.
And just as I am about to be swallowed by it
My mind returns to my body
And I jump up, escaping.
It is
Disconcerting to say the least.

I think maybe she is sad today.
And the idea pulls me toward her.
I sit in the hall,
Although the floor is cold and I could be anywhere else.
I have to be near her.
I can't go farther.
I have to be here, just in case I can look at her for a moment and judge how happy or unhappy she might be.
Oh, I want to give her something.
The need is consuming.
So I give her the only thing I can think of-
My time.
I sit in the hall and wait,
In case perhaps I could see her and maybe make her smile.

Write on me.
Scrawl a curly-lettered note.
Let it hate me, let it love me, but I want to feel it.
I want it all along my collarbones, and choking around my neck.
I want it twisting down my arms and pulling softly at my spine.
I want it caving in my stomach, I want it eating at my heart,
I want it sinking in beneath my skin,
I want it to reach the inside.
I want words of yours carved in my ribs,
So that when I gasp another breath,
They scrape along the underside of my flesh.
I want them to find my pulse, to grip it like a vice.
I want your sentiments racing through my blood like venom and cure,
I want your words wrapped around my lungs like gauze,
Curling through my mind like smoke.
I am so fragile.
I want you to write on me.
Tell me how you'll touch me again, break me again.
Make me stop.
Say how you'll hate me again, love me again...make it stop!
Write me eternal, fleeting,
Stop time.
Stop this.
Stop me.
Stop, oh, stop...
Please, write on me.

I will never get used to the way pettiness lives in the people I love, right along side their depth and beauty and tenderness. The people who write things that fill my heart up, whose thoughts glitter like ice in starlight, whose kindness cuts through the murk of everyday life like something divine... The same people... They are cruel. They are human. They are jealous, and insecure. They are defensive and rash. Those same exquisite, heart wrenchingly lovely people can be ugly, too- more ugly inside than others, just as they are more beautiful inside than others. Those same people can be... Tragically vicious.
I will never get used to it.

Since I was a child I have been beset with words.
Besotted with them.
Besmirched, beguiled, become, by words.
They have been my solace and the knife by which my deepest wounds have been carved.
They have been my curse and my gift,
They have bubbled out of me, as if I were a cup too-full,
Merely a vessel for my thoughts that spew forth of their own accord.
And so, with my abundance of words, I made a life for myself.
And yet, when I decided to end it, I could find none.
Not until the last moments did I realize the importance of the space between them,
Nor the effect of silence.
You will get no reason for my departure:
My words were taken for granted in life.
Every day I threw my thoughts out into the world,
Hurled them at the people surrounding me,
And no one took hold of one.
My words were wasted in life,
For no one cared to see what they meant.
And now in death, you have my silence,
When you want my goodbyes.

I don't know what I'm doing.
Your hands on me
Don't feel like fire
Or ice.
They feel like hands.
Your wanderings don't make me gasp
But they can make me sigh.
I wonder what she'd think if she knew.
I wonder if she'd care.
I don't tell her
In fear that she won't.
Your lips don't send lightning down my spine,
Or earthquakes through my stomach
But... they are warm
And I am lonely
And you said it was a game you played often.
All the same, I saw your eyes
I felt your fingertips-
They betrayed you,
And when I wrote you back "I'll talk to you tomorrow."
I wanted to add
"P.S. Don't love me."

If I treat you like a church
Will you treat me like a headstone?
If you are sacred ground to me
Am I dead and buried beneath you?
If I give you the reverence that thunders through my veins
Will you treasure it like prayer beads
Or anoint every passerby with it
Like blessed water
That you know is really from the tap?
If I touch you like you're made of glass
Will you cut me up with that?
Are you looking for a graffiti artist
Who will scrawl his name on your cheek in mud?
Are you out for blood-
Your own-
In sacrifice to make someone else the temple?
If you are
I fear I will be mumbled like a thoughtless prayer
That nobody really cares the meaning of
And tossed away with a shrug
Like a coin into the collector's basket
Because you know you "should".
The world is my religion
And I see divinity in people.
If I tell you I wish I was shorter
So that I could look up at you
Because it just doesn't feel right to be eye to eye
Will you know what I really mean?
Or will you leave me to wander at night
And wonder why
The church doors are locked
To somebody who worships every waking moment?

Be proud, be terrified, be awed
That you lead two lives,
That you are subtly but undeniably immortalized
Every time I can't keep the thought of you
Out of my head, away from my art, off of my skin,
Can't keep you from being the undertone of every word I ever speak, the push behind every step I take, the weight that pulls my eyelids closed at night.
Be amazed that you will live in every person who ever remembers me,
And by god,
I know you know I'm hard to forget.
Be astonished that when I promised you the world, I truly intended to give it to you,
One person, one street, one sunrise at a time.
I'm yours. And I am vast.
And I will pour myself into every crack and ***** in the armor of this universe,
And you will have it, all.
You will have it whether you love me or not.

Some days I wonder if I will crumble
Into my own lap
Like a sandcastle built by a loving child
And abandoned to the waves
To fall to ruin
At the break of day.
I often wonder if I'll end up
Just that way
And if I'll regret a moment of having been something
Other than the earth.

Oh, yes, I was in love with you.
I hadn't noticed,
I didn't know.
Someone else burned in my sky like the sun and blinded me,
But, still, quietly, you were there.
You were different.

I think I loved you because you smirked at me.
Because you cried to me.
I loved your mischief,
Your fragility.
I was mesmerized by your rawness, the tortured look deep in your eyes that made me want to hold you,
And captivated by your wit, and your playfulness, so jarringly out of sync
With your shattered-mirror soul.
You were so beautiful
And when I'd catch myself thinking it
I don't know how I explained my love away.
You could draw me in,
Hypnotize me
With your paradoxes-

You were made of glass, but you had the entrancing audacity
To dance anyway

And yes, I see now
That of course I was in love with you.

I think when god punches you in the stomach, he's waiting to see
If you'll grovel on the floor
Or straighten back up and say, "I will make something beautiful of this, just to spite you."
But then again,
We have never been on good terms, he and I.

Sometimes I can feel that you love me
In a tender way that makes me want to cry
Because I can't hold the way it moves me inside
And cracks apart the shell that hardens over my heart from everyday living.
I know you give me things.
I feel every
Single
One
Hit me like a drum, and I shudder with the sound that crashes through my bones,
A yearning, a singing, a perfect storm.
I notice every single thing you give me, love,
Don't ever doubt it.
Every "I love you"
Strategically said when you know
I am falling apart.
Every reassurance, every little tenderness,
I feel them all,
And they feed the fire of loving you that consumes me
And they chase away the cold in my bones
Until I am nothing but a blaze of "She is my sun."
You throw them out,
Little phrases tacked on the end of things,
So casual, so offhand,
As if I might miss them entirely-
"I missed talking to you."
But you must know that long after you have said them
Those words are still sinking into my skin
And scoring themselves into my ribs
In your handwriting,
And that I love
Every moment of it.

Within the smoking city, soul ridden and draped with strops of gloom like cobwebs
Catching embers like squirming fireflies,
Under a sky dotted with cold white fire,
Indifferent to the net of searing orange flames that climbs the iron steps of every black building, zigzags up,
Escape becomes the hunter.
Stalks you blind in a dusk made of soft sable and thick, hot grey fog.
You ***** in the dark.
It sees without eyes.
You run and it licks at your ankles like flames.
And it will have you.

I always remember having lost you,
Reminded when our storms paint the blue sky grey,
And all of the pain that I cost you,
But what hurts me are the sunny days.

Lying here soft by the window
My lover a doorway away,
And in a breeze the gauze curtains billow,
And I hear aloud words I never intended to say.

I see ghosts of the golden good memories that were.
Unbidden I wonder why you had to go,
And unasked-for the familiar stabbing ache stirs:

"I miss her," I murmur. "I know."

I think I finally understand.

I'm the part of you you'd love to ****,
And you're the part of me I'd love to die by.
We were a perfect, violent match
For a moment
And that is why although we never touched
Our craving and disgust for one another
Burns us whenever we meet eyes now.

You are beautiful, brilliant, talented,
But when I look at you
I wonder if you are happy.
You used to bring light to the whole room
With your joy
And now when I look at you I think of rain.
I love rain,
But you don’t.
Shadows pass across your face so often now
Like rolling clouds
And it scares me
Because I know that the storm which stirs my blood
Poisons yours
And I don’t wish it for you
But I see it in you.
Like recognizes like
And I see your darkness
The opposite of mine
Cold and weathered
A world you get lost in and swallowed by,
A burden you endure but cannot flourish beneath.
You were always sunlight, warmth, like springtime made flesh.
You were always alive in a different way from me,
A way that I loved you for
A way that I thought must be so vital to you
If it could be so nourishing for everyone who met you.
And now I hardly see you happy anymore-
When you smile it looks brittle, and vanishes quickly.
That mesmerizing light
So unquenchable years ago
Gutters like a candle in high wind
And its frailty is a wound in your eyes.
I see the weariness in your face
And your beauty has grown so sad-
No less captivating, but sobering, forlorn,
Somehow heavy.

I look at you and I no longer see your joy to be alive
And I wish
Quietly
Passionately
That I could somehow bring it back for you.

You see beauty
With such exquisite venom.
Vicious
To the pungent flowers,
The sun's morning rays,
The grin of a loved one.
Full of animosity
Where others are full of mewling awe.
Your hatred for living is thick in my fingers like velvet,
Your snarling words
Hot
So
Clear
Like liquor.
It burns and cleanses, medicinal and fiery and somehow truer for its blinding harshness.
Dear Sylvia,
Teach me how to see the world I love
With loathing.
It overwhelms me as it
Overwhelmed you.
Visceral,
Your words cringe from loveliness
And exalt the brutal little moments of life
That everyone else hurries to forget.
I want that wrongness
To live in me
Alongside all the other
Wrongnesses.
I am through trying to be right so that my loves may endure me.
Sylvia,
Teach me to be sadistic.

Of course it’s work-
People say that word like it means
Pain
But
I am not suffering.
I’m building something-
It is holy work
It is the only sacred thing,
The only war
Worth fighting.
The only oath
Worth keeping.
The only sacrifice
Worth making.
I have been pure and whole
But I have not been meek.
Why pledge yourself to a god whose only promise
Is that he will never touch you?
If you’re going to take vows,
Give yourself to skin
Give yourself to joy
Give yourself
To love
And **** the rest.
If you’re going to belong to someone
Belong to them with your whole being
Every little corner.
I vow to chase this feeling until I can’t run anymore.
I vow never to be satisfied.
I vow dignity through pain.
I vow courage in the face of defeat.
I vow sweetness when spite would taste better.
I vow to do my own
Sacred work
And if I pray it won’t be on my knees
But with my lips pressed to the forehead of someone
Whose eyes I want to drown in.
I vow to keep reaching for this world
Until my hands are too scarred to feel
And if I choose to worship anything or anyone
I want that faith to leave a mark.
I want it to burn.
I want it to pierce me to the core
And leave me new.

You had very kind eyes.
I have rarely ever seen a man
With truly kind eyes.

I was thinking, this morning
As my cat dragged my bacon off the plate and onto the new tablecloth
As my other cat tried to bury the newly smeared grease stain
As still another measured how far he could nudge a glass off the edge of the counter before it would fall and shatter,
And the first moved on to gnawing happily on the fresh flowers we'd tried to conceal from her,
And the second endeavored to pull the Christmas tree down by the bottom string of lights,
And the third clumsily swished a tail through what remained of my repast
I was thinking:
See, this is why we can't have nice things.

Someday you will be out in the world
Having pulled every root of yours
From the ground
And torn every heartstring
From those around you
On your way
Out.
Too busy
Too skittish
Too wild
Too cowardly
Too strong
For them all.
And you will turn around and find
That you are alone for the first time
My friend
And you will realize
That there is nobody left who is wishing they could talk to you
Nobody who would come running to your side
If you called them at 1 in the morning
Nobody who thinks of you every day or even every few
With fondness and hope.
And you will feel very sad
My friend
Because you will have so carefully pushed them all away that you will see nobody left who cares that you still live.
But
Even though you will not speak to me
Even though you hardly look at me
Even though
You don't want to know me
You'll be wrong, when you realize all that
Because there will still be me.
That is my last gift to you.

How ironic that some people run before they even truly see in me what there is to run from.
I am kind, perhaps too kind for you,
But I am not what you see.
I would be too sweet if not for my core.
I hide a quiet sort of watchfulness,
The sort a snake has before it strikes, the sort a jaguar has when it sees prey and all the world narrows and compresses to a point
Just out of distance.
I am not the blood. I am the teeth.
And I lie down with lambs who think they're lions, let them walk on me, let them lead.
How much easier people are to know when they think you weak!
And I have no need to use my power, no agenda, no want it would serve to let my nature slip.
Why then should I rise and bare my teeth?
Let them pass, let them sleep,
I have more to hunt than pride and fear:
I could make you kneel but WHY?
To be feared is not to be loved.
To be feared is not to be respected.
If I do not have your respect when I am small
It means nothing when I have expanded,
When I grow tall and loom, my shadow throwing darkness over your pale, surprised face.
All my life with this strong, lithe, wild thing I have lived
And it has crouched within me,
Waiting.
Sometimes it snarls, sometimes it tenses with such an urge to spring
That I must turn away and hold my head to hold it in,
But never once have we-
My beast and I-
Found a reason great enough to strike.
Although inside I move with the easy grace
Of something that knows it was born
To rule
To win
Something so settled in power that it has no need to show itself,
Although beneath my brittle china bones and porcelain skin
There lies another layer-
That of sinew and of black inky vigilance,
A sentient shadow.
Within me is that of claws and talons, that of fangs
That of such perfect, suspended stillness...
Within me lies the moment before the candle goes out
Within me breathes already a last breath
Within me is the moment before a kiss
And the moment before the taking of a life
All at once
All the same moment, in the end,
And yet
I kneel.
And yet I give,
And yet I choose love.
And even from this softened form, this gentle disguise
They flee.

You had just gone.
I heard your door close.
You'd touched my hair and smiled at me
And left
And I'd called after that you were beautiful,
That I meant it.
And when I'd heard the click,
The tears had started
And I'd let them come.
Crying over you feels like being saved.
I let my head fall back
As if basking in a summer rain
And eventually those tears brought me to my knees-
There is always a backlash, to feeling saved-
And I curled up as tight as I could on the floor
And- I don't know why I said it,
I never say things like this, never-
But I remember whispering very softly,
"I'm still here. Please know I'm still here.
Please come back out and check.
Please... I'm still here."
And a moment passed
In utter silence,
And I hauled myself off the ground,
Wiped away a good part of the tears,
Turned to the window to let the cold air kiss my face
And brace me for the walk back to my room

And I heard the door open.
No, it can't be...

You heard me.
You came back,
And took me in your arms,
And nobody
Has ever done that for me before.

I bet you think I know no anger like yours, love.
Oh, but it's just not true.
I know the anger of pride.
I know the hatred of righteousness.
And you know only the indignance of the broken.
The strong are angry in a different way, you know.
The whole, who have paid their price in blood to be so,
We know a rage without end, without shores
A black roiling sea.
It is careful contained most of the time,
For we have worked hard not to need it.
We know its power. We know its brutality.
We know it knows no remorse.

So when you needle the part of me that's proud
That it rose from its ashes
And clawed its way through funeral soil to light,
Tread lightly, my foolish dear.
Understand this:
That I never lied when I said all things have their balance in my head.
That I told you true when I said that for every love there is equal hatred,
Every kindness equal cruelty.
The capacity for one makes the other exist.
And so think now, back on all I've forgiven in you, in everyone.
Think now on my quick absolution of every sin, no matter how offensive.

Let me tell you a story, before you say "Talk to me when you've realized you're playing the victim."
Let me tell you a nice little fairytale from my past, all rosy with age and remembering
But still sharp.
Let me tell you-

Once my father fought with me. He said, "You're always playing the victim."
And he told me to go home
In the middle of an enormous city.
In my 6x tee and little black shoes, I cried.
But not for long.
You see, I didn't sit down and take it,
I went home.
I called his bluff and as my mother turned her car around to drive back to the train station and hug me close,
He said, "Call me when you want to see me again."
And stormed out,
And I sat and waited, swinging my little black shoes
Because my feet didn't reach from the bench to the floor.
When Mommy came and scooped me up,
She cried because I'd been alone.
But I didn't cry anymore.

And I didn't call him for a year.