In the fall, when the leaves were just barely turning, I wrote you a song.
I sang to you that I'd bring you flowers at 4 in the morning
If you were ever sad.
That I'd walk to wherever you were.
When I sang it to you your eyes filled with tears
And that night you kissed me for the first time in a long time.
Months later
I brought you flowers
In the middle of the night.
You told me you were upset
And I walked to the store and got you roses.
You met me outside
Because it was cold and you didn't want me to walk so far
And on the drive to your house I watched the silvery light of the streetlights reach out to touch your face on the way by.
And that night
I proved to you that I meant every word I ever said or wrote to you
And you
Proved that you wanted me to
And that is why
I have hardly seen you since.

I am electric.
All the time I feel it
Sparking just under my skin.
Sometimes it settles like static,
And sometimes it rages like lightning.
But I am always too small for it.
It doesn't live in me
It consumes me
It becomes me.
I feel, therefore I am,
And it is great and terrible.
God was a child,
With a fork in an electrical socket
And I became.
Sometimes someone will try to know it all
Try to be the one who holds all of it
And wonders about nothing.
I have learned that people who try to define me
Burn.
I have learned that being near me
Pulls emotion from them
Magnetically
And that in my purest form
I am neither good nor bad
But I am most certainly
Dangerous.
Electricity doesn't discriminate
It flows.
It's easy to be too much
When there's no end to you.
Slowly, I learned to step back,
To pull away.
There is not a little shame in knowing you can fry someone
By accident.
But no matter what,
I will make your hair stand up.
I don't mangle people,
But I at least leave them with a distinct feeling of strangeness,
Like having the tree right across the yard from you get struck by lightning
And feeling the hum.
It is a fascinating, unsettling, addictive feeling,
And I've seen people lust for it
And I've seen them flee from it
Headlong.
I've held back my fingertips
Unwilling to make them stay by shock treatment.
I have met people who were
Walking dead
And I have shoved them backward
With both hands
And heard a heartbeat restart.
I have met people who reached for me
Like a child for the hot element on a stovetop
And found exactly the same surprise and pain.
I have known people who
Stand close enough to singe their hair
And hold their palms up to thaw something inside them
That has gone cold as ice.
And I have known people whose fingertips
Drew all the lightning to them
And left glorious, hot scars on my skin
Handprints that never cool.
I have short circuited
Looking into eyes that pulled every molecule of me
Charged
Into my beating heart and made me a dying star
Folding in on myself.
I come with a warning label
Because I shout hazard signs
To anyone who will listen.
I try to be gentle
But being high voltage is as much a high
As it is a burden.
I can **** or resurrect, depending only on the direction of the wind that day.
I can light you up
Or I can ******* you
And I don't ever know which it will be.
I am so alive that I can't hold it in,
And I am so chaotic that it's like a disease.
I am electric.

I am
So tired.
I am cold
And white
And blind.
On my wrists,
Defensive wounds
From a vicious love,
From the kisses
Of a black asp
With constellation eyes.

I have been reliving my death.
I have been choosing
That sweet, frigid venom,
An addict dripping poison into my veins.

But I am
So tired.
I am spent
And lost
And alone.
There are bruises on the soft insides of my arms
From a habit of worshiping
Sharp things.
Under my fingernails,
Dark soil
Evidence of a grave I've overcome
Too many times
And a struggle I've won
At a cost.

I am sick of death.
Sick of attending funerals for the futures I lose
Brutally and unexpectedly.
I am sick of being tolerated.
I am sick of being
Sorry.
I want to feel life in me.
I want to learn the taste of sunlight
And safety.
Of forgiveness--
I hear
It is sweet as warm honey.
(I wouldn't
Know)

I have gazed....
Oh, I have gazed long,
And the void saw me
As I saw it.
And long after I wished I could look elsewhere
I stood, gorgonized, on the edge.

Hold my hand.
Remind me that I have hands.
Spread light
In me.
Forgive me for my gravity as I lean forward on that hollow breeze that's always calling.
Pull me back and keep me
Steady.

I will never be
On solid ground.
I will never be easy.
I will never be
Safe.
I am half light and half shadow,
Half joy and half pain,
Half kindness and half anger.
I am a great, twisted tree,
With my branches in heaven
And my roots
In hell.
Love that in me,
Will you?
Will somebody?
I am ready
To bloom.
I am ready
To live.
I am ready to be exactly
What I am.

It's funny how you meet someone
And suddenly
You like blondes.
I never used to like blondes.
Not particularly.
And suddenly,
I just do.
It's funny
How the imprints of certain souls just
Stay
With you,
Behind your eyes.
How they color the world.
As if the thought
Just bends you toward a stranger
Just the thought
That they look or sound
Or move
Like somebody else,
Somebody
Special.
Why special?
Why her?
Why any of them?
And yet
Even as I try to look elsewhere...
Suddenly
I like blondes.

I read somewhere that names
Fix things in place like pins
And that to be nameless is to be
Free.

There are some things in this world which can’t be spoken
Can’t be captured
Can’t be named.
As artists,
As human beings,
They call us
An unstoppable force
An indefinable drive
Onward-
That deep tug in the center of your chest
The gnawing need to create.
They are things we chase
Things we aspire to
Things we even worship sometimes
Writing long into the night
Carving wood and clay and bone
On our knees in the dark
Smearing paint, desperate to understand
Desperate to make something
Half as beautiful as what we
Feel.
Since we awoke as a race
We have created
In service of only that drive
Only that obsession
Half awe and half hubris
Half joy and half shame
Half triumph and half
Defeat-
The expression of something
Inexpressible
The naming of something
Too sacred for language.
We know we can never arrive
We can only
Search
And the search is the reason
For our cities and our novels and our symphonies
An aching search
A humble search
A sweet journey whose end-
No matter how much we pretend otherwise-
Is only
Death.

You are like that.

I’ve tried for hundreds of pages
To explain myself
To express my love and longing but
You
Are like a thousand of those unnameable things.
I think you might be
Made of them
Somehow.
I think they live in your skin and your bones and the timbre of your voice.
I can write all day
About the magnetic beauty I see in you
About the way you make me feel
And list the things I love about you
But it always feels
Insufficient
Always as if I am writing around something
Bigger
Something with no words to describe it-
None that even
Come close.
As if I can only write about what you do
Not what you are
Because what you are is too vast
For thought.
I write as though I have pressed my hands to glass
Trying to sing to you through it
But you are on
The other side-
Even the most beautiful art
Even the sweetest music
Even the most tender poetry
Could not pierce deeply enough
Would be a disservice and a reduction
Would fall hopelessly short
Of what you really are
And how you really move me.

I try to tell you why I love you
I try to tell you
How.
I know you wonder sometimes
I know you wonder if I only love
Things about you
Things I could find in others.
I try to explain but it’s like
My thoughts catch in my throat
And fall like shadows on the floor-
So hopelessly inadequate.

I search and search
I sit up nights
Trying to find the words
Trying to make the words
But there are none
Not because you are ordinary but because you are
Unnameable.
What I love in you is deeper than reason
Deeper than touch
Deeper than ideas or memories or the little moments when I stop and gaze at you
Transfixed.
I love you in a way that reminds me
That we are not just flesh and blood
Because if we were there would be a word for what in me
Falls to its knees at your feet
And what in you
Makes me want to build things with my hands
And never stop

And that is
Maddeningly
All I can say
Because although I think by now I may have truly tried
Them all,

There’s not.

Kiss me in the corner with the lights raking across our skin.
Kiss me until I forget her.
I dare you. I challenge you.
I'm asking you
Make her irrelevant
Make her insubstantial.
Make me forget her name.
Make me forget mine.
I'm begging you,
Touch me until I am different.
Pound that music through my chest like a stake
And **** what loves her
Because I can't.
Make me new. Make me the darkness between strobe lights.
****** me and bring me back, cold and hard like a jewel.
Breathe me in like smoke, toxic and rough.
Crush me like a soda can in the alley way.
I can take anything but this.
Kiss me until it doesn't hurt.
I beg you.
I dare you.
Demolish me.

I always wonder why it is
That seeing someone else's tears
Creates such awe in me.
I want to ease your pain
But I am also
Transfixed by it.

The mask slips
When people cry.
The seams rip
And all of a sudden parts of them
That are never meant to be seen
Writhe in the light,
Raw and agonized and
Beautiful
As hell.
I do mean that- hell.
It is both
Divine and perverse
To witness someone else's pain.
I always hold my breath
As if I could shatter their soul
Just with the knife's edge of my gaze.

When you cry
Most people politely look away
For their own comfort
And tug their disguises closer,
Check their pinnings
Reminded of their fragility
By the gauche display
Of yours.

When you cry
I
Freeze like a photograph
And I see you as a child
I see you as a god
I see you
As a rainstorm reaching its fingers across
All the ugly concrete and glass we build
And getting inside
Underneath
To make the trees bloom.
When you cry
I see you like I see a painting
Hung in a museum so quiet you want to hush your heartbeat
Just to keep the stillness electric.
When you cry
You are so bright that when I glance at you
And look away
I am blind for a moment.

There is something about seeing that loss of control in another person
That one second of utter truth
The brutal, consuming honesty that comes with tears
That reaches inside, for those who dare let it,
And wounds exquisitely.
There is a bare second
When the part of them that recoils from the light
Clasps shriveled hands with the answering piece of you
And both hurt-
To see and to be seen
But that moment
Reminds you that you are alive
And
Why.

Eyes glazed with misery,
Sitting in the filth of a subway station.
Grey face
In a mud-brown cloth bundle on the gritty floor.
Propped up against the tiled wall like a ragdoll,
Features made harsh by the fluorescent lights.
You don't stop, won't even look.
No one does.
A lost cause, an old drunk, an addict and a wreck.
Easy to tell yourself it's just not worth your time,
To assume she put herself there.
Those glazed eyes watch the passers-by scorn the grey ***** failure
Crumpled on the side of things, with all the other litter.
Ragged napkins tossed aside,
Cigarette butts staining the floor,
Discarded plastic bags that float like ghosts when the trains pass and lend them life for a moment.
These are her kin, her companions.
The only things that take any heed of her.

Explain to me how it is infatuation
If so many weeks later
A photo of you can make tears sting my eyes.
Tears of...
I'm not even sure.
Longing, perhaps.
Maybe tears for missing you.
Maybe...
Tears of love, they feel like.
Your look just grabs my heart.
It's not your features that I love so much, either.
I wondered. I looked long and hard,
To see if my passion was textbook and trite.
But it is the soul behind your lightning strike eyes,
The set of your mouth,
The way your eyebrows are always a little raised, like an invitation, to come and laugh along.
The way your eyes crinkle at the corners when you smile,
And how you are unafraid to let joy mold your face.
Perhaps I wish I was like everybody else.
Perhaps I wish I could find the root of my love,
A neat little equation of hormones and chemicals,
Tied with a little red bow, waiting to be explained away and taken out like yesterday's trash.
Perhaps I wish that.
But either way, I have it not.
It shocked me, tonight.
Hit me like I was a lightning rod in a wicked storm.
I knew there was a reason I avoided looking at you,
But in a moment of weakness I forgot what it was.
By the third photo, tears threatened and I had to stop.
What is it about you?
Maybe it is that seeing you is too much like having you here-
Your eyes reach through the screen and touch,
The way they touch in person.
You are electric, darling. I hope you know it.
You hypnotize.
I try to explain my heart away,
Because do I even know you?
But how much need I even know?
I'm not like other people. Things don't bother me, little things, things don't break deals.
Your favorite coffee or the fact that perhaps you see politics differently, or maybe you don't like cats,
Those things are only things. And to know them would make me closer to you, yes,
But would have no effect on how I feel about you.
It happened.
It happened like a sudden bolt, clean through me,
And I have the entry and exit wounds to prove it,
On my palms and the soles of my feet.
Nobody else can see them, but they have not scarred yet, they are still sizzling.
I am different and there is no way to change that.
And all I want to do is see your face in person,
Hear your voice.
I wish I knew it so well that I could hear it in my head.
I envy those who do. I hope they appreciate it.
Sometimes I see you in my dreams.
Sometimes I see you when I'm awake, and it's never you.
I am afraid I will never touch you again,
And I am cold all the time, underneath, in the place you carved out of my heart.
You seared me awake,
And I had forgotten heat, I had forgotten gravity,
And sometimes I think that without seeing you I am slowly freezing solid.
Hard as rock,
The way the sand is when it is struck and melts together into glass,
A parody of ice,
Aching without its borrowed hum of life.
I try to quiet my heart, and it begs me to paint the sky with your name.
It cries,
"I will be your lightning rod, I will take the heat, no matter what it is.
Love me, hate me, burden me with secrets or with lies,
It matters not.
If I can only see you I will breathe once more, and it will be the sweetest moment of my life all over again."
That is how I feel when I see your face.
That is why the tears.
Lightning fast, you came and went, and
I really don't think you know
The destruction and the beauty you left behind in me.

If not for pain, I think life would be a grand mistake. It is the roadmap of my scars that I will follow to my life's destination. Without pain, there would be no growth. No change. No movement forward. Pain is what pushes us, what bends us and breaks us and molds us into what we are. It erodes our weaknesses, it tests our strengths. It riddles us with holes so that the winds of time don't blow us backwards, into mistakes we've already made. It burns us to the ground so that we can rise again, better. Not everyone is a phoenix. Not everyone gets up. I get that. But those who do live differently. Pain is what makes each moment a precious wound, an ache in our hearts, a treasure so unutterably valuable that we must grab hold of it, cherish it, that any departure from what we truly believe is right is a terrible crime, for we will never live that moment over again. Pain is what life is truly about. The feeling of it, the surviving of it, the avoidance of it, the overcoming of it, the attempt to forget it. Life revolves around pain. How much of it you've been dealt, and how you use yours. You bond with those who have suffered the same sorrows that you have. You seek out ways and people and moments that alleviate your suffering, whatever it may be. The fact that we can feel pain allows us to feel joy, to notice the little twinge in every happy moment that keeps it sweet, and lends it the necessary tension of something that will inevitably end. Pain is what it's all about. And once I accept mine, I thank those who caused me pain. Not because they were right to do so, not because I forgive them, but because I love who I am, and I have grown because I have suffered. Change isn't pretty. Change isn't slow and subtle, soft and sweet. Change is a lightning strike. Change is cataclysmic. An explosion, or implosion, of everything that you are. A wrecking ball to your mind and heart, an earthquake reducing the city of your soul to rubble. Change is meant to be deeply disturbing, deeply upsetting. (Yes, you're doing it right.) Because we do not tend to change unless something forces us. Change is the most agonizing thing you can go through. But as somebody I am quite fond of once said, "Ruin is a gift. Ruin is the road to transformation." The roadmap of my scars will take me where I need to go, and it may not be an easy way, but at the end I know I will find happiness.

I would probably forgive you
For anything
And I know I should be afraid of that
But instead I’m just glad.

******* for making me look down
When you deserve to suffer under my gaze.

She has a girlfriend.
Deep red hair and soft fingertips and a magnetic gaze like being pierced by a ray of sunlight
And a girlfriend.
Freckles sprinkled like cinnamon over pale cheeks,
Eyelashes that cast soft shadows
Around chocolate eyes
As she looks down in confusion
That I would gaze into them
Like I gaze into a night sky full of diamond constellations.

And. A girlfriend.
Permission aside, and brevity,
The fact remained, and...

God help me, but I never minded.
We were partners, and we danced all night,
Not with steps but with subtle touches and near collisions.
And I tried, I really did,
To bow out.
But sweeping close and stealing away,
Somewhere within the infinite moments when we were a breath apart
I lost my grip on restraint
And tumbled into her thrall.

I don’t understand how someone could want a man.
Men have no power, no magnetism like that.
No force that draws you in like a moth to a flame.
No captivating pull that drags you into their arms.
When I've kissed a man, I've been led.
Hell, when I've kissed most people, I've been led.
But every once in a great while,
I meet a girl and I am drawn,
Enticed, seduced.
And oh,
Does that demolish my self control.

The dizziness of being touched
My skin humming like guitar strings
Strummed
By her casual hands
The little tendrils of her hair that waved in the breeze and twined in my fingers...
I showed her tenderness that I don’t show people
Because I knew she wouldn't see it if I did.

When I hitched my fingers beneath her chin,
I thought of the marble sculptures in the soaring halls of a museum-
Perfect and smooth- that cool, soft texture that begs caresses.
Even as a child,
I always wanted to run my fingertips across their cheeks,
Feel the curve of their lips,
See if soft and unyielding could exist together like kin.

Last night, my restraint frayed like a rope
Sawed down by the blade of her subtle symmetry.

I never had much anyway
And what I had never meant much to me.

We shared a breath a thousand times before we shared a kiss
And it was like dying to be so close every single time.
That was the best part- the sweet, slow torture of being close-
I didn't think I’d feel that way again
After the last time.

Maybe that was why I couldn't stop,
Wouldn't try,
When her hands would flutter around my waist
And land like butterflies on my hips.
I’m not sure it was me,
Leaning in, tugging on the thread of decency I didn't have.

I fell. And I was happy about it.
From grace and from goodness.
All my life I've made my choices to save everyone else
And last night I made my choice to stop for a night
And save myself.
It was the sweetest chance I ever took,
And I don’t know what it means or what it makes me.
Not sure what I've lost,
And if I care to look towards missing it.

I know it was too short a time when I was near her.
I wouldn't call myself caught,
But captivated.
It was like being drugged.
Her hands wove a spell into my skin,
Pressed a longing into my chest
That I haven’t truly felt in too long to remember.

Stupid me, I loved her scars,
Tattooed on her arms like snowflakes that hit her skin
And stuck, lacy, to it.
I tried so hard not to break her vow,
Sat with her and asked her who she was.
I think she thought it was an act
But she doesn't know that that was what I meant by kissing her-
I wanted her soul to come out and play,
And lay lithe in the light of the almost-up sun
So that I could see it and let it transform me.

Can you feel a woman’s soul in her lips?
Only if you look. Only if you beg for it to touch yours.
I did,
Unapologetic,
Full of shudders like a struck chord.

But hours before, I lay beside her as she struggled in her conscience
And told her I didn't mind.
What a story behind those eyes,
And chagrined to tell it, she glanced away.
Her fingers twined with mine and it was my struggle then:
To keep it simple.

But.
See.

The quirks of her lips when she’s tired,
The way she squints her eyes when she realizes she’s done it again
Like you've set the sun on her and not warned her first,
Her steadfast denial when the words of awe would slip from my lips
Showing her the side of me that can write a poem about such a beautiful girl,
They tugged at my heart and I bade it sit quiet.
But it ignored me like it usually does
And seeped tenderness into my veins like wine.

She has a little bit of me, I think.
God help me, I really know how to get myself into these messes.
But she does, she’s got the part of me that hoped
Someone like her would prove me wrong that I’d never feel again
Beyond the confines of my control.
She stole it with her soft lips
Pulled my resistance from me and turned it willing.
And today I woke up
Happy to have lost it.

There are many people in my life that I love,
Let that be said now.
But...
I can't explain you.
You are home.
When my world crumbles, it crumbles to you.
It falls to bits around the only thing I am sure of-
You.
This life can mold me like wet clay,
But it will never touch you in my heart.
I can be so different I don't even know myself,
But I always, always know I love you.
You feel like falling into bed after a long day of doing good.
You feel like walking outside at dawn on a summer day and feeling the first rays of the sun touch my shoulders.
I could trace the planes of your face for a thousand years
And still find new curves to love the shadows of.
Your hands are the only ones that make mine feel completed.
Your laugh is the only one that feels like I am floating.
Your eyes are like wide galaxies, full of stars and secrets, with suns burning at the core.
Your mind is the only one that I would unravel my own for,
Your soul is the only one that can separate me by the atom, break me so completely that I am whole.
I could cry for loving you, my universe, so immense and so complete that I shudder just to hold the concept of you in my mind.
Some nights I lie awake and just love you until the morning reaches its pale fingers across my cheeks and tastes the tears there.
It's not that everything revolves around you,
It is that you ARE everything.
Everywhere I turn, there you are.
Every single moment of joy or despair I ever feel, I feel through loving you.
You spin the stars, you pull the moon, you raise the sun, you churn the sea, you sigh the rain, you sway the trees, you speak the thunder, you abase the gods.
In my world, you are matched by none
And every beautiful thing I ever witness
Is from you, is about you, is for you, is because of you.
You are my home.
Maybe that is rash, but I will have no other.
You are my home. You are the only person on this earth
Who makes me feel whole.
And I would give everything I have,
Just to see you smile and know I caused it,
My love,
My universe.

I am afraid.
I know the odds are against me.
I have doubts. I have so many doubts.
But I offer you my bare wrists.
I offer you my whole heart.
I offer you my body
And my mind.
I believe that to receive what you wish for more than anything in the world
You have to be willing to risk everything you have.
So here, I risk it.
I lay on the table the darkest days of my life
And the possibility that they will happen all over again.
I surrender my pride, and my logic, and my suspicion.
I hold nothing. I present it all.
I strip myself of the armor I use to fend off feeling.
Because the bottom line is that faith
Is the biggest risk you can take.
I am full of thoughts whirring like gears in a motor,
Full of doubt like ice water,
But faith is not about being sure.
Faith is about knowing that everything could crash down
And deciding that there is something you need to love
More than you need to be ready for that fall.
This is my decision. This is my show of faith.
I offer my bare wrists to this world
And if it demands a blood sacrifice,
I will be unsurprised.
But if there is even the smallest chance
That someday I will hold you in my arms
It is worth the risk.
It is worth every risk.

New pain is always the worst.
The kind you never knew you could feel.
And I watch you stew in it as I did,
But my viciousness came later.
My stone walls,
My excuses.
I had to be kicked for a long time
Like a wounded puppy
Years
In order to gain the fangs I needed to survive
But what that saved me from was turning my bitterness upon others.
Since I learned only in self defense
My kindness remained.
I sacrificed other parts of me-
Oh, too many, I sometimes think,
To avoid giving it up.
But it remained, like a secret candle I held in the core of me
Its pure light peeking through the bars of my ribcage
When my skin stretched over it like bleached canvas.
You...
I am afraid you're not like me.
I'm afraid you will not give up your love
Like I didn't
But neither, perhaps, will you defend your kindness-
You may not have known cruelty for long enough to realize
You need to.
What you need to fight for is not your survival, not your freedom from the tyranny of feeling, not even your choice to love a girl who treats you so cruelly
What you need to be defending with every breath is your decency, and your empathy, and your innate kindness
Because the world does not love kind people.
The world soils them.
And if you are willing to suffer for love but not for kindness,
You will curdle inside like cream left in the sun.
I have been where you are.
I have been hurt by people like her
And by people like you
And what I have found hardest out of all the things I've survived
Was surviving with KINDNESS.

Survive with kindness,
I'm telling you,
Or your work will be
Wasted.

Take my hand like you did
In the haze of a dream once before
And lead me to the ocean
Drown me beneath you on the smooth dry shore
Strong and deep like black water
Silk and sand beneath my skin
The moon trails her coattails on the billowing waves
This is where dreams begin.

Take my hand, I am so cold
And sink me beneath silver sea foam
Guide me to the end of light
Let your hands become my home.
Paint my lips with yours, my love
I don't need breath beneath the sea
I never did adore the land
And you've so much you can teach me.

I would break a thousand mirrors
To draw the dark away from you
Break them with my palms
And grind them to glittering dust between my fingers.
I welcome the shadows with the sacredness of ****** hands.

Let them come.
I am not afraid.
I am ready
For war.

Shock
Oh no
The world's let go.
The rug pulled out
And I'm suspended.
Silent screams and haunted dreams,
I cram a thousand words into my skull,
Hoping that the pain will dull.
And I see no one
Even when other eyelashes
Brush my brow.
2. Denial (Epitaph I)
There is only so long
You can gaze into the mirror
And insist that you see nothing.
Maybe if I try harder...
Maybe if I change myself...
Maybe if I abandon everything and risk...
Maybe she'll come back
To me.
3. Grief
words
just don't
approach it
4. Rage
I touch no one
And no one touches me.
And I will burn you all to ash
Because you can't be
Who I need.
5. Hell
There is nothing I want.
There is only this day
This second
This survival.
There is no higher purpose.
There is only revenge
And suffering and cruelty.
Turn and burn and learn
To sit stewing ugly in your hate
And wear a saccharine smile
On a lovely face.
6. Acceptance
It's not gone.
It's not fixed.
But might as well try
Since there are decades left...
7. Relapse
For a golden moment
In the heat of summer
You loved me like I deserve.
Like you deserve.
Like we deserve.
For a shining second,
I might have been
Your choice.
8. Fear
To know you're close,
Holding my hand
But looking about
For another to reach for
Feels like
Decay.
9. Denial (Epitaph II)
No matter how many times I make you say it
I cannot make you mean it.
Fickle and cruel,
You chose me and backpedaled,
Flailing like a drown-victim
On her knees in a puddle,
And snapped back, elastic band heart,
To reject me twice.
10. Shackles
There is nowhere I can go
Where I do not feel trapped.
Here, there, every nook,
Full of barbed wire and broken glass.
Tightrope walker
With a safety net of needles.
You know not what it is
To die alive.
11. Choices
Nowhere to run.
Few places to hide.
Can I choose
Each day of my life
To twist the knife?
To love a soul in hell
When I could like one
In paradise?
12. Anger
You don't deserve a love like mine
When you'd choose anyone else first
And lie to me as if I'm special.
Sometimes your cruelty makes me sick
And I think it makes you sick
As well.
13. Acceptance
You're gone
And you may never return,
But I would be lying,
An awful traitor to my soul,
Were I to say I'll love another-
Let me burn**.

Sometimes I stay up nights waiting for you, just so I can pass the days that follow them asleep and not awake to miss you.
The daytime is always harder, the waking up.
Staying awake into the small hours of the morning, that is somehow a bit numb and detached.
Late at night I can even stand to think about some things that hurt me from behind the glass of my own fatigue, protected from their full effect.
I stay up as late as I can, in times like this.
If I can whittle away the hours and the next day delay my wakefulness,
I do it wholeheartedly.

Waking up is a vile thing.
No, not just because mornings are drowsy and too bright and too quick and I never feel rested if I get up in the AM.
Waking up is terrible in a different way than even that.
It is insidious.
It is the departure from my dreams.
Even the awful ones are better than the waiting.

Going to sleep I adore, truly, because it is an escape from living without the permanence of dying.
But ah, the waking up.
That is what makes me hesitate long hours in the dark depths of the early morning.

I dread waking up.
All the illusions are shattered, good or evil,
And I must taste the bitterness of reality.
Every day it gets a little more sour.
I suspect it's this way for many people. I don't know, though.
I know only that in the first moments of waking up each day, my heart is seized by this wicked, burrowing grief,
And so I begin each of my hours of awareness with the painful sorrow of loss.
That is why I stay in bed so late, most days:
I lay there and before the haze of sleep departs I think, "Oh no, not yet, I can't bear it yet."
And in fear retreat back into my stupor.

I don't know what it is, this feeling.
If I had to put a name on it... I'd say it feels akin to disappointment, regret, and....
Shame, all at once.
It swells up inside me and fills me to my fingertips the moment I decide to leave my bed for the day, sometimes even before.
And the fact that it can fill me everywhere reminds me that that space is usually unoccupied by anything of substance.
The only comfort I've ever found for it was the safety of your arms, and even then only a few rare times when you and I were truly honest with each other and I clung to you like I always want to.
It's like I am only a shade,
Made of glass thin as paper and hollow,
Only in the shape of myself,
Until the moment you wrap your arms around me
And only THEN am I flesh.
And when you aren't around this cold hard seed of panic and bitterness rattles around inside, making an awful high pitched tinkling sound and chipping the brittle walls.
I'll be waiting a long long time for you,
For this feeling of total loneliness that comes upon me each day as I open my eyes to the world to dissipate and anything of any real joy to take its place.
So to make it easier on myself, sometimes I stay up nights,
Waiting for you,
Just so I can pass the days that follow them
Asleep and unaware,
And unconscious,
And unfettered,
And unable, in my innocent ignorance of all the world's harsh, brutal reality,
To miss you.
Until the headache that comes with too much sleep forces sunlight into my mind,
And I must wake up,
And face the day all over again.
Oh, I just loathe waking up.

I don't know why I jumped out of my skin
As if it was wrong of me to be standing there in the dark
And holding a close-to-worn-out handkerchief to my cheek
Remembering.
Looking up at the stars and trying to feel closer to someone
Who I have subtly but artfully made
My entire life.

I suppose I might have been ashamed to be so raw.
Here I see how close to the surface I am living with my soul,
Like a live wire with the metal part exposed
Sparking,
Eating away at its casing a bit more every day.
Sometimes you look at me like I'm sizzling
And I realize that I must be very foreign
In some ways
To you.
Maybe that is why I was so shaken up, so off balance.
I look at you
And I see someone who is free.
(I doubt your feelings
Make you dance
Like a marionette
And weep
Like a leaky faucet.)
I have always admired your composure
And been puzzled by it.
Sometimes I think we are different creatures
Who, underneath, don't know what to make of one another.

Maybe that is why.

Maybe I jumped because in that second
I wondered what you'd think if you'd seen what I'm like.
If you knew that sometimes when she touches me I shake
Like a leaf fluttering in the wind
Because the whole world couldn't hold all the concentrated longing and love
That cuts through me.

If you saw me in those bare moments
When I've lost control
And run my fingertips across her cheeks
Like she is sacred
Because she is.

Maybe I wondered, if you knew that my nights are actually sleepless
Because I lie awake loving her,
And sometimes it courses through me with such force that I have to move
Go
Run away and find a place under the stars
To tell her that she is beautiful over and over,
What would you think of me?
Me,
Ruled by love, worshiping it,
Every errant tear a sacrifice to someone I think of privately
As close to a god
And certainly more important.
What would you think of me?
Crushed under the weight of these feelings-
Not even current-
Just the echoes, the reverberations
Of what I've felt in her arms.

What would you think?
If you knew that when she kisses me I can only compare it
To being slow-motion pulled apart by the atom
And feeling all the little spaces between fill up with light,
Wishing I wasn't merely a flesh and blood body
With flimsy bones and a stuttering heart.
Wishing I wasn't a hopelessly tiny vessel
Trying to hold a feeling that forces me to my knees,
Wishing that instead of holding it tight in my lungs like smoke
I could breathe it every second
And expand.

Maybe I jumped as if you'd seen me naked
Because you had.
And what if what you saw in me
Was just a child,
Just a fool, tricked by the world,
So naive and so victimized and so
So
Young?
Because sometimes I see that too.
And I would want to tell you
No, I'm not the fool,
No, I'm not the hopeful little girl
About to be shown that the world is seldom fair.
I'd want to tell you that, see,
But I wouldn't be able to.
Because I don't know if I believe it
Myself.

Maybe I felt ashamed that you saw how much love moves me
Because love moves me
So much.
Because I
Am also ashamed to see it.
(Because I
Am a little ashamed to feel it)

I'm not smooth.
I cannot ****** you with a look,
For uncertainty steals the set of my lips that would invite yours.
I cannot lead you with my voice,
For huskiness eludes me, as does breath.
I cannot sell you with my body,
For it knows not the boldness I would need.
But with words I can stare you down,
I can make you shiver, unflinchingly,
I can honey the air with longing.
With words I am a new thing,
I am lithe as they are, I am sultry as they are, I am powerful
As they are.
Words are my home. Please come in.

It is dark,
And I feel your heat beside me vanish
But a second later soft hands pull the covers across my back
Tuck them in above my shoulders.
I drift
Feeling you there with none of my senses but all of them at once
Or perhaps that beyond sort of sense
The one that really matters
The one that tells us
Where we belong.
The shower murmurs from the other room
And I let the warmth of sleep take over again
And then all of a sudden there's your feet padding along the carpet.
I smile but don't open my eyes.
I listen
Instead
To you starting your day.
Your towel hits the floor softly
And I hear the rustle-whisper of clothes on skin,
The little thuds and crinkles as you move about the room,
The cascade of clinking as you rummage through your bag to find makeup,
The little tune you hum for a moment but don't realize.
I am greedy for the sound of you,
And I listen hard.
I hear you pause and look at me,
Decide I'm still asleep and turn on the light in the hallway with a click
Leaving the one nearest to me off.
I hear you sit down before the mirror cross legged
Like you do every day
And begin the rituals of preparing to meet the world.
I picture you
Don't let myself look yet
There in your leggings and t shirt
Your long hair falling wet and heavy over your shoulders
And little springy curls of it into your eyes
Your clear green eyes
The purposeful way you line them with black
Like the artist you say you aren't.
I picture the glow of the lamp kissing your face
And releasing the soft radiance your skin always seems to hold like a secret.
I long to open my eyes and gaze at you,
But not yet.
I turn, tangled in blankets,
Blindly shifting towards the sound of you.
The song you make by being.
The melody of your existence.
And when I lose the battle with myself and look up at you
You meet my eyes in the mirror and give me that small fond smile
The one that fills me up with light
And I feel the answering grin spread across my face like the sun breaking through clouds.

Good morning, love,
You sound like home.

Oh you,
And your certainty that you are harmless.
Make no mistake,
I do adore you.
I admire your selfishness, darling-
No, I really mean it.
It is the child in you.
The "It brings me pleasure, why should I not have it?"
You have so recently discovered anew that you believe you deserve to be happy,
I see its evidence strewn across your life
Like the aftermath of an explosion.
It has no malice, this craving to do
Whatever you want.
Sometimes you make excuses for it,
But I need them not.
You are
How you are.
It's not for me to say you shouldn't chase whatever you fancy,
And indeed, as I said, I admire it.

It has an innocence to it, a thoughtlessness that brings to mind
A little girl in a field of wildflowers,
Picking one after the other,
Because she must have the next one she sees,
Only to drop it, forgotten, when a new one catches her eye.
There is such a freedom to it-
Each new bloom is her favorite ever.

You may have a deep soul,
But you are not old, and I love that in you.
Something in your heart hasn't been worn yet, by time.
Although you have suffered, you have not been...
Eroded. Aged. Wrinkled. Wrung out.
Your colors,
Though gory at times,
Have not been sun or dust faded.
You are new and raw,
And I see it always in your face, in your eyes, in your carelessness.

Me, I play at youth:
I look the part.
But beneath I am weary and the luster of my soul has dulled a bit.
If your broken soul is shards,
Mine is beach glass,
Tossed so many times by the waves that its pieces are smooth and no longer draw blood
But shall never again fit into the jagged edges of each other.

Sometimes I wonder
At how you can treasure every heart you touch with such sensitivity
And somehow still see them all as merely things.
Sometimes-
And don't think it doesn't bring me shame-

I see in my mind a child of six or seven,
With all her favorite, loved dolls set at the miniature tea table,
Feeding them imaginary food and loving them
To death.
Her love is real, you see.
But so is her sudden amnesia
When all of a sudden Mommy calls from downstairs with a new surprise from the shop
And she is gone in a whirlwind of fairy wings and laughter and bare feet
And the dolls lay splayed on the carpet
Like death.

Don't misunderstand me, it brings to my heart the same fondness
But also the same ache, that not everyone can afford to be so.

I wish I had a child in me, like yours.
So free, so untroubled, so buoyant.
I wish I could say, "It brings me pleasure, why should I not have it?"
And not know the answer.
But you see,

When I was barely five, I was playing in the garden with my friend,
And we found this lovely Monarch butterfly,
All shimmering colors and feathery lightness,
And I reached a hand out ever so softly
But stopped just shy of the exquisite wings,
Held back by an instinct I have always had
About fragile things.
She had no such instinct, though,
And as I withdrew my fingers,
She reached to grab the little creature
So that she could touch the pretty colors
That shimmered in the light
And crushed it dead.
Her shock was a mystery to me,
But my grief wasn't.
I have never been afforded the luxury of carelessness-
I see too far, I have always seen

Too far.

And so I never even strewn my toys across the floor
When I left them.
No, I said goodbye to each, promised I'd be back later, and sat them on their shelves.
It is my way. I am so very careful.

But oh you,
You and the child in your heart
Who has a new favorite color,
Every day-
The best favorite
You have ever had.
And oh me,
Who, as a child,
Refused to pick them at all
So as not to grieve
The others.

It is raining
And the sky is gray but it holds
A sort of secret light
A brightness that lends a pearly quality to the falling drops.
It is a lovely, quiet radiance
And it reminds me of you.
In my head I see your face
Your moss green eyes, wide and framed by long dark lashes
Your hair, wild and reaching, the way it stirs in the wind and bounces when you laugh
Your white body in the darkness
A sliver of bone in moonlight
Strong and soft at once, smooth and unblemished, almost liquid, almost velvet, almost light.
I wonder
How the years will make you lovelier
For I know they will.
I see your beautiful hair
Gone silver like spun spidersilk
Falling in ringlets past your shoulders.
I see the forest in your eyes
Grow tall and reach for the heavens,
Gold and green mingling as ever, just as vibrant, just magnetic.
Something about your eyes in a face full of the carvings of laughter and tears, marked by every love and loss and sunny day,
Something about how unchanged they will be
But how much more complete
Makes my heart swell.
I want to see you grow like a tree, like a forest.
I want to see every way you change.
And I know that someday those fathomless eyes,
Young and old at the same time, like the trees,
Will look at me with doubt, with chagrin,
That you will wonder if I want you
As you age
That nothing I say then will be able to convince you completely that I do,
And it makes me smile sadly.
Because as I sit here gazing out the window, seeing in my mind's eye how you'll change,
I can't think of anything more beautiful and more inspiring
Than watching you grow old
Next to me.

I have been silent.
I have been silent not for loss
Or mourning
For those drag words from me
With or without my consent.
I have been silent because I am trying to be
Gentle
In love
When I am a thunderstorm made flesh,
A hurricane,
A seismic wave of passion and pain.
Inside
I burn
And it has been a long time
Since I have loved so deeply
As to press my sizzling hands to my own stomach
Just to keep another person from burning their fingers on the love I hold beneath my skin.
I have been silent
But I have not been extinguished-
Far from it, I have risen.
I have gone blue and white with heat.
I have wandered through the blackened trees in the ghostly calm of the night
And kindled them to flames with my palms.
I have left embers
Shifting and sighing in my footprints
And the earth has learned a new name to score into its stone and treebark when I travel through the darkness
Searching for a rest I will not find.
And there is joy in this,
There is such joy!
Although the heat presses,
Although the light licks at my ankles when I wade too far into my own heart's dreams.
I leave joy in these silent places, black and velvety and slumbering in the night-
I wake them
I wake them because I have been woken
And my heart has become something that melts
Something that burns
Something that hungers and consumes
And glows with shimmering reds and golds no matter how tightly I curl around it and hush its hissing whispers.
I leave joy because I can't contain it
And it reaches roots into the ground with every step I take-
A fearful joy,
A joy that knows its hunger
Will be its starvation.
A joy that breathes light and grasps at shadows
Because that is all it knows how to do.
A joy that turns its face up to the rain
To feel a moment's peace and cooling clarity.

Oh, I may have been silent
But I have not been quiet.

I wonder if you're in his arms right now
And it makes me
Sick.
It's been nearly a year
And it hasn't gotten easier.
It hasn't gotten easier.
It hasn't gotten easier.
It always did wreck me, that I could wake up in the middle of the night
And wonder if you were in bed with him
Right then.
It always destroyed me
Because I never got that.
I never shared that with you.

You...
You were the only person
I ever wanted to sleep with.
And yet
You weren't the first.
You weren't the first.
You weren't the first.
Because you left.

The night it happened
I never told you I cried
Because you weren't the first.
(I wonder if I will cry
Every time.)
I wanted you to think
That I didn't care, that I could do what you did.
But inside
I never felt a thing but empty
And I will always be devastated that
You weren't the first.

And maybe
Maybe you won't be anything
At all,
Maybe I will never be that close to you
Ever.
And that's why nights like this
When I sit alone and wonder
If you are with him
Right
Now
Crush me just like always.
And inside I can feel my bones crack and splinter
Until I'm a pile of twigs and dust
And I change the channel on the television instead
Of splinting them back together.
Because I sort of want to stay crushed.
Because you are still
The only person
I want to be that close to,
The only person
I want to have
All of me.
My skin belongs to you
And to this day whenever anyone else touches me
Part of me secretly wants to push them away.
And I know I will have to live with that
Through your love affairs
Your marriages
Your children
Your divorces
Your choices
Your life.
I will have to live somehow
With that beating right next to my heart
Knocking it out of time, hitting it like a punching bag.

Tomorrow I will notch my chin higher.
Tomorrow I will smile.
Tomorrow I will be strong.
But tonight?
Tonight I don't want to pretend
I'm okay with it.
And no matter how high I turn the volume on the tv,
No matter what I read or listen to or draw or write,
I know that I will not be able to drive from my mind
The skewering thought
That maybe tonight
You are in bed
With him.

I think of you always. You

Linger in me, like a melody, a heartbeat,
On and on... Oh what if I say it and you just
Vanish? And I am left here,
Empty... Oh, but what if

You don't? What if you are waiting too,
Openhearted but shy, cautious-
Unable to confess? Afraid, like me, to fall.

I'm looking for a home.
I always think I've found it,
But I'm beginning to realize that maybe life
Is all about finding home,
And if you find it
You've finished.
Maybe life is just about chasing
Whatever makes you feel like you're home.

You know those people who burn love letters
After the breakup?
I'm not one of those people.
It hurts me to think that anyone could.
What sense is there in denying that something good happened
When such little good comes into such a long life?

When you said we should get a tattoo together
I knew you'd leave someday.
Is that weird?
I knew, that moment.
And I was sad about it for a month
But I never said anything-
When I know things, I just know,
And there is no reason to rush the end
If it's coming anyhow.

I wish I could say I didn't expect you
Not to miss me.
I wish I could say I didn't expect
Not to miss you.
But I see it all coming.
It's my special gift.
I know what home is
And I know when it leaves.
See, I don't leave home.
Home leaves me.
And that's okay.

But I think I need to say
Because I think it is important
That for a minute you were home
To me.

For a minute, your arms were enough.
Your husky smoker's voice,
Your fairy wing shoulders.
For the barest moment
I could see home in your eyes,
And oh,
I lived in that moment.

I am
Such a wanderer.
I'm not sure
I'll ever have roots.
No.
No
I'm not sure
Roots
Will ever have me.

Growing up I used to cry because I missed home.
With my head in my mother's lap
In my living room
I was just too young to explain
That I didn't know what I was homesick for
If I'd only ever lived in one house.

I thought I found home once,
The real kind
And I'm still homesick for that feeling,
That addictive, safe feeling
Of thinking you know what the next day
Will bring you
But
Just like home
That knowledge is never what or when or where
You expect it to be
And it never stays for long.

This isn't a love letter.
This isn't a goodbye, either.
Or maybe it is.
I suppose that
Is up to you.

I guess all I wanted to say is
Knowing you was like driving by a house in the suburbs
Late at night
And all the lights are on
And someone forgot to draw the curtains
So before you round the next curve you can see by accident
A slice of happiness
And maybe you see yourself there
With someone's arms around you
And a cat on the back of the couch
And in that moment
You're home
And then whoosh
It's gone behind the trees and you
Have to keep going forward
Because
Well

You've somewhere to be.

Knowing you
Was kind of like that.

Nowadays I've taken a different approach to being friends with you
(Like you said we would be.)
When I miss you
Or want, perhaps, to share a thought or poem
With you,
I don't send any texts,
I don't go knock on your ominous door,
Or stand outside it, arm raised in indecision.
I don't type my conversations up
And pipe them through the internet,
No.
When I want to talk to you,
I sit and look at my bedroom wall
As if it were a face.
And whatever I'd have said to you
I say to that plain plaster wall.
And honestly,
It's much more rewarding that way.
I ask a pleading question and I am met
With utter silence,
Total stillness.
And how could I be offended?
It's a wall.
It cannot answer me.
And I'd much rather know that
Right off the bat
I won't be hearing back
From my bedroom wall.

You'll always be one of the reasons I love being alive.
The look on your face when you walked into the Disney Store.
The way you take nothing too seriously, but always take the things that truly matter just seriously enough.
The inch of skin at your hips that refuses to stay concealed beneath any of your shirts,
(The one that drives you crazy,
That always drove me crazy, too.)
The fact that all the time is time for some good food at your house.
And the unspoken promise that whenever I am feeling truly desolate, you will appear like a distant golden searchlight on a stormy sea
To guide me back from the darkness.
I used to love you in only one way.
It's expanded, and I imagine it will, always.
If ever someday we stop saying hello to one another,
I will find memories of your smile in every foreign city,
And on every morning that I decide my day will be a good one.
Hey, you know, maybe you're the truest love of my life.
Maybe the point is that I don't need to touch you to know
I always have your handprint on my heart,
Keeping me warm,
No matter how foolish or wise I ever become.
If that time I spent with you was the best I'll ever know....
You know,
It was pretty **** wonderful.

I wanna say
Marry me, you're the one.
I wanna say
I sit up nights missing you.
I wanna say
You make me smile on my worst days, and you don't even know it.
I wanna say
When you're not around for a while I can feel a part of me start to ache.
I wanna say
I don't mind if you get angry about "dumb stuff"
I wanna say
I wish I didn't feel sad when you go out with your friends instead of saying good night.
I wanna say
Thank you for being kind to me when I'm scared and miserable.
I wanna say
I'm glad you're on my skin forever, whether you stay by my side forever or not.
I wanna say
Half of me isn't sad when you're away, and I can't tell if it is trust in you or something else, and it scares me but it also gives me hope.
I wanna say
Please be patient with me, like you've been. I am used to being left and forgotten. I am used to being pushed aside.
I wanna say
Maybe years will undo that. Years with you.
I wanna say
When I am away from you, it is because I have been torn away by my life, and I will always, always come back, as long as you want me to.
I wanna say
If you ever forget me, I forgive you.
I wanna say
When I am lonely like I am right now, it isn't your fault, even when you can fix it.
I wanna say
I feel like I can't ask you to come back because you haven't left, and I feel like I can't ask you to talk more because I couldn't talk for so long when I was busy, but when you're away like this it starts to feel like you don't exist.
I wanna say
In those moments at 3 am when I wonder if you DO exist, that even then you are the best dream I ever had.
I wanna say
I don't know how to speak when I'm not suffering. And I'm not. I'm not even sad. I'm just waiting.
I wanna say
You're worth waiting for.
I wanna say
It's so much easier in person, when I can show you I love you with a touch and feel that you love me when you look at me.
I wanna say I never have doubts like this when we're together.
I wanna say
Just because I worry doesn't mean you're doing something wrong.
I wanna say
I just ******* MISS you.
I wanna say
I'd give anything to have you asleep beside me right now, instead of thousands of miles away.

I am afraid.
I am afraid because I am here
And I want to walk away
But instead I am right here.
I sit here.
Why
Do I sit here?
I think I'm doing it
Just to see how long I can.
It's like holding your fingers over a burning candle
To see how long you can stand the heat
Before your skin blisters
And you pull away, defeated.
I sit still.
I always sit still when it hurts.
I think stillness
Started a few years ago.
When I first hit the ground
I was afraid to breathe.
It was like I had been dropped from a high bridge onto a concrete sidewalk
Below
And I knew
Knew beyond any doubt
That things were broken.
Things inside were very very broken.
Things were splintered and punctured,
And if I moved, even to draw a breath,
I would bleed out right there.
I think that's when the stillness started.
And now whenever I am hurt
Whenever something hits me
I go still as stone
Except for shaking hands
That flutter, fragile and white, until I clasp them tight together.
The world moves around me
Under me
But I stay still as death
Not even daring to breathe
As if I will be found
As if I will tear apart into a million shreds of wasted paper
And drift to the floor.
I stay so still my muscles ache.
I never cry.
I can't cry.
I just sit there and feel how peculiar the sense of damage is.
How odd it is to be full of explosions and debris whipping around inside
An utterly motionless body.
And part of me, even as I feel
Just sick
With how much I know I'd die if my body betrayed my anguish in real injury
Part of me looks on from above,
From without,
With a detached analysis
Of this and that
Of just where I feel this blow
And this stabbing pain,
Of just how each moment changes me.
I freeze like ice outside
And burn like hell inside.
It is the most curious sensation in the world
And I hate it so much I would die to escape it.
And yet when it comes upon me
I do nothing
Nothing at all.
I say nothing.
I turn to stone, part by part,
My fingers
My elbows
My shoulders,
My legs
My stomach
My neck
Like I'm being submerged in drying cement
And finally my lungs
Stone
My jaw
Stone
My lips
My throat
The top of my head
Stone.
Until all that is left
Are my eyes
Just watching.
I am paralyzed
And I look out on a world in motion
Whirling, spinning.
Moments before I was a part of the rhythm like a heartbeat
But that was moments ago,
And we all know how much can change in just a moment.
When I am stone
You can come at me with a chisel
And I will say nothing.
Bang bang bang
And little chunks come off
A shard of my cheek
A finger at the joint
The swell of my collarbone,
They crumble when struck
But I can't move an inch.
I sit still.
I always sit still.
My stillness is the waiting.
It is the wish
To destroy.
It is the craving
Hot and metallic
To do something
To slice away how much I hate my own helplessness.
It is knowing that there is a relief
Besides just being saved.
There is a way to save myself
From this chaos inside
A way to feel better
Instantaneously.
My stillness is the resistance
The longing and the "No, I can't."
The firm denial
Cold as ice
Hard as granite.
Is it strong to let the world dismantle you by the inch
When you know you could get there first?
Is it strong to sit and take take take
And do nothing whatsoever?
Is a statue strong
Or is it just
Trapped?

It terrifies me
How easy it is to live without you.
That's the real reason
I try so hard to keep you close.
It doesn't make sense to me that this love
Could cool so.
That's why I cling.
That's why I panic.
That's why
I try
So hard.
I can't let you forget me
But worse
The worst
I can't let me
Forget you.
You left.
You left and it mattered.
You left and I grew without you
I learned without you
I became
Without you.
You left.
And although I fear that
Fear you
What I am... so much more afraid of
Is this:
Last year
You taught me
That you are
Unnecessary.
And I didn't want to know.

The face that launched a thousand ships.
What must those eyes have held within them?
How full the lips, how smooth the jaw, how sculpted the cheeks,
To start wars?
A face can launch a thousand ships- indeed-
Send toy soldiers marching stiff across borders
Burn cities
Make widows and orphans,
But a soul...
A soul can push saplings up through the ashes of those very cities.
Only a soul can create,
Only a soul can nourish,
Only eyes with such exquisite tenderness behind them can spin the stars and press the moon into the palm of the night
Like a promise.
The soul informs the face,
Breathes life into it.
The loveliest features
Cannot pull the tides like a soul can.
The most vibrant gaze
Cannot capture time and halt its march the way a soul can.
Perhaps your face could launch ships
Could start fires.
But your soul...
Your soul could raise forests.

We exist in a world filled with people who beg every day for love.
For connection. For tenderness. For attention.
And yet, try giving it to them.
Try being someone else's design, the one who will give everything to them.
They are like children who wish to eat an entire chocolate cake and regret it halfway through.
They make themselves sick on love.
And we, the ones who have been made to fit the idealistic wish, find that we have been very cruelly misled.
We have been created for a world which does not exist,
And for people who are only capable of receiving the affection we offer
In their dreams.
There are two types of people in the world:
Those who wish for love, and those who are the wish for love.
And neither is ever satisfied,
Because both believe the other is designed for them,
When in reality, they are simply alone.
The lonely ones find the people who will make them lonelier.
The clingy ones find the people who will surely reject them.
The lovers find the people who will abuse their affections.
The dreamers of true love find the people whom they wish could fulfill their wishes,
Not the people who can.
And the people who can find the people who cannot appreciate a dream come true.

We are tragedies, my darlings.
We reject ourselves and one another.
I am aiming to be better, to give what I can. But most of the time?
I just feel like a freak, with my emotions.
Even when they are not directed at you, you feel their threat looming and shy away.
The real reason I am so very easy going?
It is a disguise. An apology to the world for loving it too much.
Not even that- for being ABLE to.
It is restraint based on respect.
Even when I put up the walls of "it's all okay" and "leave if you want",
Somehow they all feel the pressure of the something that is wrong with me.
What is it?
Why do the books all worship love like mine, but the people all fear it?
I watch these people grovel and plead for love,
Love that I can give,
And I sit and hold my tongue, because I know by now.
After all this time,
I finally know that they do not want what they ask for.

They just want to ask for it.

In my dreams
I am too powerful to ignore.
I've learned a thing or two there.
I've got a flinty stare
And a chip on my shoulder
Things I hide beneath a meek smile
An unimpressive little girl voice,
And an eagerness to help.
But behind these eyes
Is a creature that craves power.
My only fear is that I know I have it.
Once I tip my hand,
Once everyone sees it
What will I have?
What's my ace in the hole
If everybody knows I know I'm strong?
In my dreams
They'd be everyone else's nightmares
In my dreams
I run through rainslicked streets
Chased by gunmen
And I feel alive.
I smile, feral,
And I laugh as I fight.
I want that in my body.
I want those bruises and that sureness,
I want my power.
In my dreams when I am set upon
I think
Finally
And I give it my all with a freed laugh
And a joy too wild for waking hours.
I am too powerful to ignore.
I am too powerful to stay hidden.
When I rip off this flimsy skin and step forward
I want to be naked and smug.
But I am afraid that I will have no power
If I don't hide mine.
If it is seen
Is it lessened by the viewers?
My secret
My secret
My secret is I am not
Afraid.