Light spills from doorways and streetlamps
Reaching for you but always falling short.
You are alone in a pool of darkness
Windows yawning and empty.
Shards of glass glitter faintly,
Strewn in the dirt around you like stars orbiting a black hole.
Vines twist among the bricks
Digging into the intimate parts of you,
The cracks and weaknesses,
Prying back doors and invading your drainpipes and fire escapes.
Long since collapsed,
The roof hangs in shreds
Letting the night pour into you
Cool and unsettling
Like black water.
You are not empty
You are filled.
You hold what I hold.
Something different.
Something ancient.
Something cold.
Life creeps into you
Around you
Crawling, unseen, through the basements and shuttered rooms
Crumbling ancient paint so that it falls from the walls and ceilings
In sheets like heavy rain.
You are filled with deathly life
You are filled with
What cannot die,
What endures.
You are not a ruin, not to me.
You are a shrine to things lost
To moments of silence and suffering
You are an echo of the dark power that seeps up from the dirt and coils in my stomach
Whenever I step outside at night.
I press my palms to you:
Nourish me.
Feed me darkness
And I will feed you
Secrets.
Give me silence.
Give me peace.
Give me
Solidity.
Make me stone.

There are ways
To be ready for a death of the soul.
The way you'd write a will
Or take medication to ease the pain.
People to say goodbye to,
Loose ends to tie...
Granted,
It's a little trickier when you know your body will still go on
After you die.
When you know you'll have to leave it and then
Slam back inside
And handle all the damage done in your absence.
But
There are ways.
Silently I tie back my hair.
Pour myself a frosty glass of milk.
I hate milk.
Always have.
I drink the whole thing.
Milk makes it less painful when you get sick.
Whatever I hear from you tonight,
I know I have been terrified long enough,
And there is just no way
I'm gonna keep this food.
Too bad,
I muse,
Rinsing out my glass.
I did love my dinner.
I had hoped we wouldn't meet again.
In the mirror a girl with my face
Raises a debonair eyebrow.
I wish I was as good at brushing this off
As she is.
I remove my earrings.
I put on some comfortable clothes.
It is rather like hearing the warning on the radio
That a hurricane or tsunami is headed your way
And there's not enough time to leave,
Only to prepare.
I am piling sandbags.
I am sealing my windows and doors,
Retreating to the cellar of my soul.
I am
Mechanically,
Numbly
Doing everything I can to minimize the damage,
And prepare to pick up the pieces.
I wonder
What will be salvageable
This time
From the ruins.
I hope the advance notice
Has made a difference
Because the tension of
Waiting for the storm to hit
Just might stop my heart.

If I've only learned one thing from this life it's this.
If you love someone, say it, say it all the time. Say it twice.
Say it before every car ride, every plane trip, every night when you go to sleep.
If you love someone, make sure they know it.
Say it when you feel like you hate them and you're fighting and you're sad and hurt and you're about to part angry,
Say it,
Turn and yell it like an insult, "I LOVE YOU!"
And then storm out.
"I love you."
Because that's what matters.
Say it every rainy day doing puzzles in the living room,
Every ordinary moment in the grocery store buying bread,
Every chance you get. Say you love them.
If you love someone, say it.
You can never say it too much.
And whatever else I may have failed to learn
I do know that.

Nobody but me has told me that I have no right to grieve the living. I think, in a way, death is easier to accept. You don't run into your dead loved ones on the street, and look away as if you never knew each other. Death carries its own pain, its own terrible hair tearing madness of grief, but I think perhaps it is born in us to know it. It is a natural grief, an unavoidable thing, that leaves no blame upon the one who left. That is one thing I value highly, that when people I love leave me for silence, it is not personal. Death is part of life, it is our final act. Everyone will see it, everyone will endure its mark, it is a natural pain. It has an excuse, a millennium of excuses, for there has never been a person who has not died. I can forgive that. Succumbing to something that no one before you or after you has or ever will resist successfully. That is understandable, it is forgivable, it doesn't even bear forgiving. When somebody dies, your love of them remains pure. However weighted by their absence it might be, it is not tainted or marred. It remains, perhaps sweeter and more present than before. You never have to try and forget it. I feel as if I have no right to grieve the living, when the dead are so much further gone. And yet somehow the living are harder to lose, for when you reach for them, they do not sit still in silence, they push away and turn their heads. How could it be that you would survive it when you asked in grief for one more moment with the one you loved, and from the grave, he said he'd rather not? I think perhaps it is a cruel blessing that death is so final of a loss. For there are other losses, with the same finality, made not of nature but of choices, of pride and fear and foolishness, losses that never make sense. Dying makes sense. And how cruel of me to say it, but it is what I believe and what I feel, that death is somehow more acceptable because it happens to everyone. Each death leaves a huge hole in your heart, in your life, and the grief is like nothing else there is, but the reason you can survive it is that you have the comfort of knowing that the person you lost does not make the choice each day to be gone from you. If you knew that, if you knew that somehow they could return and be what you needed from them, how could you ever heal? But these are past feelings. Passive feelings. I used to think on this far more often. I used to wonder why I felt as if someone had died. I used to feel very stupid for feeling such a deep grief over something so shallow. But as it settled in my being, I realized that for all the differences, death and loss are not so different in their presentation. They settle in the heart, they leave their scars and holes and little triggers of sadness that will never heal. I suppose I should thank god that I never started crying in the grocery store, like my mother did when her sister died. Or in school or on the street. I wanted to, though. That's the thing about death. It's so pure of a loss that nothing can hold back your tears. No pride quells them, no anger or resentment or self righteousness rears in you at their sudden appearance. Pure loss is a beautiful heart rending thing. Those tears in the store or on the sidewalk or home in bed each night, they have no guilt, no "should", no blame. They are simply an expression of love. To express love that way was, to me, forbidden. And so I never burst out in grief after it was done. I cannot say whether that made it harder. People say it probably did. But that is the whole thing- you cannot cry for the living. There is no pity, no proper loss, no excuse to be sad. You cannot grieve the living who have chosen to be dead to you. I respect the purity of true grief and loss. I could not respect my grief over this. It never got a proper expression. Never after it took over and I fought it off. So unnatural, so abhorrent was it to me, that I simply crushed it and went on. I don't know what that choice has done to me, or what it will do in the future. I know only that it was the only honorable thing to do. For you did not deserve my grief, and I did not deserve to grieve beside those who had truly lost someone. It would be wrong, it would be unfair, it would be a defacing of the purity of love that only death can reveal. You cannot mourn the living.

They say that music uses your whole brain,
Lights it up like phosphorescence.
For a moment you're either brilliant or insane,
Distilled from all your pain right to the essence.

Ever felt the cut of a cold winter day?
So frigid that it's crystal clear like a frozen pond.
Ever wish your every feeling far away
And all your thoughts and longings dead and gone?

I woke up on a day like that, naive,
And felt the frozen sun reach through my window,
Ready in my ignorance to believe
That only changing seasons abruptly go.

As the sun had set in rings of red
And bled across the silent snow to darkness,
As the bruising blues of brutal nighttime spread
And shimmered shadows over all the rest,

The burning soul behind sad eyes, it choked and guttered,
Flickering like a candle in the rain.
And battered and abused, a heartbeat stuttered,
Shuttered in a mind unwilling to explain.

A scalding form among the frost blooming like flowers,
Silent and arrayed in lacy snow,
Passed away the last of all her hours,
Numb, full of surrender and alone.

As I'd layed me down that night to rest,
I had a sudden painful urge to pray.
Didn't know quite how- I had to guess.
But I knelt, puzzled, to do it anyway.

They say that when you watch a ballerina dance
Your body tenses like you're dancing too.
I pity those who never spare a glance,
For it fades quickly as all other beauties do.

I marveled tears upon my pale cheeks as I spoke,
And we both shut our eyes at once to dreams.
But in the cold sun only one of us awoke,
And shook off death in wispy silver beams.

You never know what you have done by living here
Until you stumble into the void of what you've been.
On an ice cold silent night with Christmas near,
She closed her eyes forever and I never lived again.

I think I need a revolution.
Everybody hates running.
I want to live in a little apartment in New York, overlooking a cobblestone street. And when it rains I want to sit by the window with a cup of sweet, hot tea, and watch the glow of the streetlights paint those stones and glance off the bricks of all the walls, and shimmer in the drops. I want to see neon streaks along the cars that slip by, sleek. I want a cat on my lap. I want somebody's warm arms around me, and a soft husky feminine voice asking me why don't I come back to bed, honey? I want to linger for a second, soak up the beauty of my world, because I finally can, because I can finally afford to linger alone somewhere instead of constantly fleeing thoughts and memories that bite like flung razors at my back. I want to pause and admire my entire existence, unhindered by melancholy, because finally my life is not unendurable. I want that chance, for that night. For that moment in the quiet hours of the morning, sitting apart from the world, warm and happy and finally safe, looking at its exquisite presence.
But to get that chance, I must keep running. If I stop, if I let it get me, I will never see that day. And that is why I fill my life with distractions and flee my deepest thoughts when they come upon me. It's why the journals stopped for now, and why I hardly draw anymore, and why I am extremely careful which songs make it to my ears. I'm in a race. And if I win, I will win my safety, my security, my life. But if I lose... I lose even more than that. I lose every moment I spent hoping for any of those things. I have to keep
running.

The places I feel it when you're gone.
I didn't know you could.
It's like vertigo,
Like that sensation when your chair tips,
Only in the oddest places.
In my hands, and they go a bit limp,
Unable to hold things like they should
As if they've forgotten how.
Sometimes my teeth ache, like I've just eaten something sweet and cold, and it spreads down my jaw and makes my head spin.
Things that shouldn't have vertigo- my bones,
My feet,
My lungs.
It's disorienting. It's a little scary.
But at the same time I hold onto it,
Proof that you mean something,
Proof that you have changed me inside
So drastically
That nothing knows how to work quite right anymore.
I have rarely ever needed comforting like I need it now
But how to ask...
And so I sit within my strange new body
That seems to be rediscovering the entire world
At a pace a bit too slow
To seem normal
And I wait for you
And I know that the second I see you
I will be on solid ground again.

Sometimes when I am home alone
In the hazy heat of the afternoon
And the house is quiet
With its little creaks and groans
And my mind is stripped
Of all the other noise that might help it forget,
I smile instead,
And I turn on some soft music that echoes through the emptiness
With tender chords
And I take a walk around my empty house
And say hello to your ghosts.

The time you stood in your black skirt by my counter
And leaned on the chair.
I say hello to each of you,
Smile my love into your eyes
That aren't there.
If someone were to see me
Sitting on the couch
Holding hands that aren't there
Smiling sadly
Saying
"It's okay."
They'd probably think I was mad.

But sometimes
When no one's around
I like to say hello to all the times
I never could have loved you more.
I like to let my flashbacks,
The little slices of you that settled here
When my love of you shattered your memory and scattered you all about my life
In little sharp shards,
I like to let them exist completely
Like one film strip laid over another
So that two people
Who never met
Could seem to stand
Close together.

You are my permanent wound,
My favorite scar.
My love,
You live in my life with me.
And sometimes I stop,
And say hello to you.
Lay on my rose patterned rug
Up in my room
Right where we laid the first time you put your arms around me
And laughed at me for crying at Rent.
Look in the mirror where you fixed my hair
And let myself see you behind me
Instead of pretending you're not always there
Anyway.

Darling,
That's just the way things are.
You live in my life with me.
Sometimes I wonder if you feel a little tickle in your mind
When I do this,
When I say hello and look at you like you're my world
Because really
Why pretend
That you're not all over it
All in it
All around it
All the time?
When there you are
At my kitchen counter in your black skirt,
Leaning on my old chair,
Sitting on my couch about to give me a gift,
Dancing in my pointe shoes trying not to fall,
Laying on my bedroom floor,
Or in the mirror right behind me.
How can I always pretend that I am alone
When you don't leave?

I never want you to.
I am grateful for your little ghosts,
Film reels that play mere seconds on repeat,
Faded and scratched,
A little pale compared to the world around them.
They are my home.
After all this, they are finally home to me.

So sometimes when I'm all alone,
I like to thank them,
And say hello to the girl I loved
As she was when I first loved her.
Seeing you is like falling into bed after a long day of doing good-
Comforting, perfect...peaceful.
The little twinge of loss is there, but it just makes it sweeter,
Because those moments
Permanently painted over the little spots in my house
That I used to avoid,
And then rush through brazenly,
Angry that they still felt rough and sore,
That I finally stopped to look at
Had a good cry over,
And said hello to
And felt at home...
Those moments wouldn't mean as much
If they weren't gone forever.

I guess in the end
None of us really have that much time
Do we?

I crawled away from you
The way a dog deserts its pack to die
And you all
Watched me make my slow progress across the floor
Inch
By
Inch
And you did nothing.
You saw, and I saw you see
And you saw me see you pretend to know nothing.
And now I am alive again
Awake and able.
The shadows of my suffering still follow at my heels, trying to trip me as I walk, and scurry behind doorjambs and under tablecloths when I turn to catch them but,
I no longer crawl.
I no longer struggle.
And as I have woken and made my weary way back to humanity
I have found that my complete transformation
My journey into hell and through the fires-
The torment that forged me into something utterly new,
I find that you look past it
Let your eyes slide over me like you used to
Unwilling to ask,
Unwilling to know and yet your false knowing sets off bombs
The ones I walk so lightly over
Grenades buried beneath the tender green new grass
Which covers the battlefield where I fought for my life, for my status as a human being, for my place in this world,
And you say "We all fight."
"Everyone struggles."
Of course
To hurt is to be human. Everybody does-
But not everyone
Sits back and watches another crumble to dust,
Not everyone says
Well
It isn't my problem if they can't cope,
Not everyone looks with eyes
So cold
Upon a bleeding, broken thing
And concludes that because it bleeds when beaten it invites its wounds.
And as you look past me
As you name me by a word I no longer recognize
All I can think is that
I fought
I won
At a cost
And I am still not fully healed,
And yet I am the same to you
Either way
You who are supposed to see
You who are supposed to be
Observers
Of the human condition-
Observers, not bystanders!
Nowhere is it written that you must take notes--
'Oh yes, see how her lip trembles as she cries
See how she fights for breath.'
Nowhere is it set down in stone that you can't
Get up and at least pretend to be like they are
These people you look at
And study
And pin to your pages like butterflies catalogued.
Can you feel? Did you
Feel?
Did you look into my eyes and see me
Decimated
And blame me? And never ask me the truth? And create your own?
Did you really think I could forget being
In the center of a circle
Of lies I had to agree with to survive
Shredding my pride for the sake of my place?
My place, indeed,
In a place where emotions are bought and sold
But never owned or treasured.
You watched me fight
Life or death
You, whose arms I've fallen into when I could have hit the floor,
You who I am supposed to trust with my soul and its dark wounded parts
You who I am supposed to grow with.
You watched me and
You let me
Fight
Alone.

I am afraid.
Today I woke up
Scared.
Scared of many things.
Scared like I would be anyway
That tick tick tick
In a few days
You will be gone altogether.
Scared more because
I feel myself reaching for you
And I can't stop.
Scared
Just because I haven't heard your voice in days
And something happened inside me
That needs that comfort to heal.
At breakfast
I was scared of my pancakes.
They were a challenge.
It has been days since food has made me anything but nauseous.
They steamed on my plate
Hot and sweet and doused in thick syrup.
I stared them down.
I tried hard to lift my fork.
Set it down.
Moved on to my coffee.
Its sweetness, too, sickened me.
I was afraid of that coffee.
As if it would suddenly strike
Like a cobra.
I was afraid
Of every person in that room.
I was afraid
Of my hands.
I was afraid
Of my heartbeat.
I was afraid
Of you
And your silence.
I laughed with my friends
And I was afraid
Of my laugh.
Afraid of how they didn't know
How scared I was.
Afraid that I would just slip and tell them
And they would support me
And it wouldn't help.
I excused myself,
Went to the small private little bathroom
Just outside.
I locked the door and tried to cry.
Nothing.
I felt sick
But nothing there, either.
Finally I looked myself in the eyes in the mirror
(You called them beautiful the other day)
(That thought flashed through my mind
And I saw it strike a spark of longing inside them
But it quickly died.)
I said,
"I don't want to be mean.
But if I'm not mean, you don't listen.
People say never to put yourself down
But if I am not harsh it doesn't get through.
You are being stupid. Grow up. Live. Eat something
Go on.
Nothing bad has happened.
And if you do not see her again for six months
You have lost much, much more before.
You stand up tall like you've earned.
Come on, just stop this."
I stared back, hollow looking.
I pulled up the bottom of my shirt
Let my stomach out as far as it would go.
It made no difference to my waistline at all.
I was afraid
Of that.
I pulled it down and grabbed the edges of the sink,
"You are DYING. You are starving inside,
Don't do it outside.
Let me eat.
Please.
Now you're going to go out there
And you're going to smile
Like nothing has ever scared you.
And none of those people will know you thought any of this
And none of those people will see your terror in your eyes
And that
Will be your strength.
If you refuse to feel better
I'll be ****** if anybody will see it."
I took a deep breath
And in the mirror
I complied.
My face settled into a calm mask
The face of a girl who had just had pancakes for breakfast
Who had a final to study for
Who had friends to laugh with
Whose day was ordinary.
A hint of a smile on my lips
A lift to my eyes.
I know just how
To rearrange my face.
(The goal is
People's eyes will slide right over it
And not take in any traitorous details.
Feng Shui, and all that.)
And the satisfaction settled over me
That at least there was that.
At least
All of a sudden
The girl in the mirror wasn't afraid
Even if I
Still was.
I walked back out
And smiled
And laughed with my friends
And ate my breakfast
Feeling sicker
With every bite.

We need to talk about how we treat one another like trash in this generation. Because it's toxic.
There's this pattern, and I've talked about it before. We treat one another like objects. Like people are disposible. It's absolutely revolting, and the thing is, ALMOST EVERYBODY DOES IT. Even people who are kind, even people with decent intentions. Why? Because it's easy. We grow up in a society of instant gratification and endless options. And we've begun to SHOP for people. It's sickening. The other side of this is that our generation has romanticized being emotionless SO much that we've forgotten how to forge real connections.
Put simply, we are cowardly.
I see it time and again. I try never to imitate it. It BAFFLES me that we can see each other the way we do- we search for a partner, but we dehumanize them before we even truly connect with them. Because it's easy. I don't understand how you can look at someone and not remember they're a person, but people do it. Behind that text you didn't answer because you are bored, is A WHOLE PERSON. Behind the screens, THERE ARE PEOPLE. How did we get to a point where we could look into another person's eyes and FORGET that they are a miracle? If you feel something for someone, here's a revolutionary concept: why don't you try recalling that there has never been and will never be another being like them. Ever. Try counting how many different events had to spontaneously align just for them to even exist, never mind for you to have met and spoken to and started to connect with them. Try looking at their messages and understanding, for once, that behind that screen of generic emojis there are eyes full of fear and doubt and joy and humanity, and that behind those eyes there is a soul, putting itself on the line to try and reach you. How have we gotten to a point where we just use each other and then let the connection we both worked on slip through our fingers like a bottle into a trashcan? I've been treated like this a hundred times, and I've never gotten used to it. It became hard, at the worst of times, to avoid treating MYSELF like this. But the thing is, whether or not you take this nauseatingly pragmatic and sterilized view of other people, someday you will all be deeply hurting, and deeply alone, and you will reach for someone and pray to find a connection. And it's up to you whether you create a world in which those connections are even possible, whether they're valued, whether at that moment you will be able to expect to find comfort, or expect to be ignored like the annoying text tone they have unwittingly replaced your name with in their heads. ******* shape up. I'm serious. I refuse to live and love in a world where Instagram is more important than me, where showing the world you're doing great outweighs finding happiness, where relationships are played like candy crush games with Russian roulette stakes. I'm not doing it. And you shouldn't either. You exist. You're a human being. You deserve to be acknowledged, not put back on a shelf like a defective box of coffee filters. And so does every other ******* person you know. I don't even mean just the people you love. I mean people. Because they're PEOPLE. If you can't handle the pressure of having someone care about you and talk to you, then grow some ******* ***** and tell them. Make it clear that you will not be giving them your full attention, or any, if that's your choice. Make it clear that you are incapable of connecting on a deep level, so that people who are not yet damaged beyond the point of no return won't have you to thank for their suffering. Nowadays we end relationships over text. And that's if they MATTER. If they don't, we just fall off the face of the earth and leave the other person, whose name we have replaced with an annoying text tone and a flashing light on our phone, to stew in their uncertainty. Sometimes for years. I'll tell you right now, if you think that's somehow "kinder" you are as stupid as you are cruel. Our generation has cultivated, between this attitude of blasé apathy and the idea that people are just products, a kind of casual cruelty. And I don't know about anyone else, but I believe that casually cruel is about the worst thing someone can be. It gives no responsibility, you never have to look at what you've done, and you walk around in a sociopathic haze, leaving the broken hearts of the people you have destroyed inside in your wake. Let me tell you, **** our attitude, **** our casual dismissal of other human beings. I swear to god, scream at me, make me cry, be ******* honest about who you are and what you want, but strap me to a chair and peel off my fingernails before you ignore my humanity like that.

We hadn't seen each other for a year.
Before you kissed me
You smiled at me
With those sparkling blue eyes
(My heart
Stopped.)
And you said
"When I met you you said
It's okay, I'll probably be in love with you for like three years and then get over it.
It's been almost three years, maybe this is the end."
And I said,
"I was mistaken."
And kissed you.
But you're gone again
And I've decided.
I've decided
I wasn't mistaken.
I've decided
You were right.
This
Is
The
End.

I'm going to create for you
A hundred thousand stars
Stuck here on earth like pinned butterflies.
I'm going tear them free of their frames
And leave, in their absence, white spaces stamped on the age-yellowed wall
That's been just waiting for someone to break
All that prison glass.
I'm going to uncrucify those pure silver shimmering constellations
And send them shooting through the sky
And they will shatter everyone's heart who dares to glance up,
And even they will not express the exquisite joy of being unmade-
The ecstatic, mad exhilaration of the thought of you.
I am going to make you a constellation.
I am going to make you an angel.
No,
I am going to make you God
And Satan too.
I am going to make you everyone I've ever met
And everyone I've ever wished I could meet but didn't have the words
To pray for.

I am going to search for you
In every face I ever see
And anything I find there of you will strike a spark so dazzling it blinds.
And everywhere those people walk they will set fires
And all the tourist maps in their flimsy metal racks will burn with avenues and crossplaces of light
And the world over will be stretched across with searing cords that cut the paths you've touched
And everybody will know that their city streets are threaded through with hot silver because you
Looked at me.

I'm going to make you the exact moment
When the lightning hits the tree,
The only moment of its life that it truly feels,
And the last.

That devastating
And that perfect.

I am going to make you the white hot slow burn of desert sand in the bleaching sun
That purifying
And I am going to make you the sweet relief of rain seeping into the earth,
That vital.

I know what you are.
I know your limitations.

I strip you of them.

You've nowhere to hide.
I am going to make the thought of you into a living flame.
I am going to think of every second you have ever taken a breath-
Every
Single
One-
As a revolution
As a rising sun
As art.

I am going to love you with the same level of desire that every living thing has ever felt
For its continued existence.
And there is not
A **** thing you can do to stop me.

My love,
I'm not sure I ever said this to you.
I thought you just knew.
I really thought you knew:
I will love you if you change.
However you change.
It will fill me with joy
As long as you let me stay near you.
I will love you if you pack your bags and cut off your hair and go to a country where nobody speaks your language
Just take me with you.
I will love you if you're sick
If you're sad
If you're angry and lost and you lash out.
(I will even love you if you stop loving me.)
When I say there is nothing you could ever do to lose my love
I mean it.
If I can touch you,
If I can't,
If you go out every night,
If you stay in,
If you need to talk,
Or to be silent,
I will love you for the rest of your life and mine.
I thought you knew
That there is nothing I won't try for you
Nowhere I won't go for you
Nothing I won't do for you.
Nothing makes me happier than you.
I would follow you into hell if you'd have me
And you would make it heaven by looking upon it.
I would give up my life, my sanity, my every plan
For a few moments with you,
And you can take these words
And carve them on every sidewalk and
Paint them on every passing car
And even if they last until we are dust
Until nobody even knows what they mean
I will still mean them.
You're my dream. You're why.
For everything. You're what I want at the cost of anything else,
And in case you wonder if I know what I'm saying when I write that, I do
I know
Intimately
Exactly
What that means
And I mean it
More than I've ever meant anything.
This is no love poem.
This is a life poem, an existence poem,
An outpouring of the desire that hums within me for you on every scale
Every level
Every plane.
I choose you, for the rest of time,
Until you send me away, or until we are no more.

I never knew a face could be so dear
Until I looked on yours.
The moment I met you I saw cruelty in the perfect lines of it and I knew
That you would turn on me
And you did,
Oh, you did.
And yet I look at you with love.
I look long
As long as I can
And thank you that you chose the stage
To make your life with.
I look at you
And search those glittering eyes for moments of truth,
Truth that only comes when someone else's words lend you the shield of a lie.
Your face, framed by light...
Oh, I loved you like a prayer.
I loved you for your harshness,
Your ugliness,
Your
Exquisite
Rage.
People like you are the reason temples were thought of,
And like the old gods you are sudden and cruel
But your face... that face and the soul beneath it
Which lights it from within with a cold, mesmerizing glow...

When I look at you
I finally understand how men would chisel marble
Until their hands bled
Just to capture the smoothness of a woman's cheek.

The night I met her,
She gave me a necklace.
It's silver. A pentagram. A simple little charm.
Two years later, I wear it still.
That necklace became the symbol of her.
People ask me if it's a religious thing,
And I answer no
But wonder privately if it almost is.
I hold it when I am sad, or afraid, or in need of guidance.
I've taken to...
It's silly, really,
I've taken to photographing it wherever I go-
A little silver chain on a park bench in the sun
Or the velvet cushion of a broadway show seat-
A sort of diary of my life, the places I've been,
In relation to her.
The places I've been
And still thought of her.
That necklace has rested on New York coffee counters,
Hung upon branches,
Floated in sandy shallows and caught the light.
I have held it tight during important auditions,
Felt its cold weight upon my chest during funerals,
Rubbed it between my fingers for luck on wide stages,
And pressed its mark into my wrist on lonely silent nights
(To be sure her impression was still indented in my skin.)
I have quietly kept her with me
Through every important moment of my life
And every unimportant one
As well.
People ask, still, sometimes,
Why do I wear that necklace every single day?
I tell them somebody I love gave it to me,
But that simple little explanation seems to fall so pathetically short.
I wear it because even though I hardly see her face anymore
I want to feel her fingers the way I did the night she hung it around my neck,
I wear it because its thump against my chest as I walk
Is a rhythmic reminder never to let her slip from my thoughts
No matter how far I may wander,
I wear it because there is a space in my heart
Just beneath it, under my skin,
That is that perfect, precise shape- a pentagram cutout-
And when I take it off
The hole echoes emptiness
Like the bell tower of a cathedral.

"And as for the after death thing, I don't know what to think of it other than it must be like the silence after a song ends."
My god, you are beautiful.
What a mind, what a soul-
You say it has weight,
I say it has
A gravitational pull.
I have never met anybody
Who knows that it is a thing like death
Right after a choir sings its last note
And silence descends in full for a moment.
That moment, that exquisite realization of brevity,
Ringing with remembered sweetness
But achingly empty in a way so intense it touches your skin...
When you said that to me,
You became that to me.
That precious, that mesmerizing, that fleeting.
And for the first time, I realized completely
That when death steals the lightning from your astonishing eyes
The rocks, the trees, the sky,
The very heart of this world
Will weep with misery.

I'd rather torch my soul, and burn like a falling star, than forget to miss you for even a moment.
It's a dancing flame that tells stories on the walls.
It's a forest fire that razes a thousand miles to ash.
I't s a cozy hearth in the middle of a snowy winter night.
It's a funeral pyre, a last goodbye scattered on the wind.
Oh, and I am alive, I am full of joy,
And I will BURN until I can't hold it,
Spin into fire like a supernova.
I won't be quenched by any tears.
They feed me and I grow.
I am the sun, and it has hurt me to be so bright.
I will consume everything I touch-
All the knowledge and wonder I can reach, I will have,
Oh love, I am hungry to live!
You've made me so vast, so white hot like an ember.
Down in the core of me, I am the kind of heat that is unendurable.
I am a hot day in the desert, destruction and beauty,
A mirage out of shimmering mist, out of light itself.
I am the smallest candle floating lonely on the coldest sea,
And I am the rising sun scorching the world awake.
I am the kind of blaze that cleanses, like a burning needle.
I am the boiling beneath the sea where the earth reaches for us from the inside.
I am light, glancing off every molecule, painting the world beautiful and agonizing.
Molten gold, liquid and scintillating, I am so full of fire.
I will never be cold again for having known you, my darling.

Oh, listen to that thunder.

My bones crave a sound like that

To fill them with rainwater

And make me glow with lightning.

My heartbeat finds the rhythm of the drops.

The tinny sound as they strike the roof,

The deep twang as they hit the puddles

So hard they churn.

It is a tactile experience, like a well said poem,

It touches.

It touches me, and I want it.

I hunger for the rain on a level I don’t understand.

I need it in a way that there’s no word for

Because the senses so often steal the feeling.

But beyond sense,

I love the rain like it’s a part of my mind, my soul,

Like my veins are the little rivers of water

That run down the pavement

Like my eyes are storm clouds

And my lips tender as new grass buffeted by a downpour.

I want to be the storm,

Not to have it, not to own it,

Not even only to experience it,

But to be the same as it

And feel the kind of freedom

That a humming growl of distant thunder must.

It is early, early morning
And all around me shadows bloom black and brown,
Soft like velvet,
Quiet and smooth and comforting.
I don't believe I am here,
Right now.
In my mind the world changes
And it is a summer night
Just cooled from a warm day,
Balmy,
And the sky is sighing rain.
The heartbreak of a beautiful summer night consumes me.
Those are my favorite nights to really hurt on.
I have always been one for running away,
For midnight.
My sadness tonight is even warmer than that,
And I remember the islands,
The thunderstorms that rolled in every night from the sea,
The way they made the air thick and comforting.

We have our appointments,
Our daylight lives.
We have our laundry and our homework and our cups of coffee.
But that is not the reason for us.
We are not because of our days.
We are because of our nights-
The early hours we spend sitting up in bed,
Engulfed in shades of sepia darkness.
We are because of the things that keep us up nights,
And the tears we worship.
It doesn't come around very often, does it,
A wound you cherish?
But oh, when the world has gone to sleep
And that is all there is.

I am at temple, tonight,
Remembering your touch,
Your voice.
And in my head it is summertime,
And I am alone,
And the rain comes down in amber sheets,
Warm and cleansing,
And the thunder is so deep and low it grabs my heartbeat,
And the lightning doesn't flash so much as glow.
Tonight is a firefly night,
In my head.
They used to take refuge under the weeping cherry tree
In my back yard,
And I would too, on those rainy summer nights,
When sleep would not do,
Nor would the silent enclosure of bedroom walls.
Tonight I am out in a storm,
Wishing I was the same as it.
I have always craved the rain, I have always wanted to be just like it-
If only I could fall so free
And cry so easily
And sing so low and sweet,
And touch so gently that I seep inside.

I am trying to remember everywhere you ever touched me,
I am trying to hold in my mind the softness of you.
My skin is so much more beautiful since you have run your hands along it,
The change sinks down into me, to the core of me, and...
Have you ever longed for something so deeply
That you wept?
That
Is this.
That is you.

This is my gift to myself, this night, this moment,
This time in the dark
To remember every single detail of being close to you,
Every breath I felt you take,
Every heartbeat I loved the rhythm of.
This is my spirituality, this night,
This is the time that I allow that light you left in me
To swell and grow
Until it is running in my veins like rainwater runs down the treebranches
Until it drips, luminous, through my heart
And seeps out along my skin
And glows behind my eyelids and under my fingernails,
Painting golden rays along the walls.

It is a slow thing, and I sit long in the blackness
Just feeling.
The immensity of what you do to me
Spreads at my feet like a sea.
I see no horizon,
And just for now I give up my pretenses and drown myself in it all,
Take my urgent breaths of pure illumination,
And forget that I ever could panic without my head above the surface.
I will sink through the layers of myself
To find you tonight.

It is too warm a feeling for November.
Tonight is a firefly night,
A thunderstorm soft rain night.
Tonight is one of those nights
When the joy locked in my heart
Expands and crushes me like a lover's weight
And I love the way it presses my lungs.
Tonight, I breathe the air of another place,
Full of moonlight and rain.
Tonight I let you have me, in full, fearlessly,
Because you are not here to know that you do
Or to see the tears wash my cheeks with reflected light
And my eyes, full of a love I can't contain, close in reverence.

It amazes me how people just...lose each other.
Every day.
Carelessly, as if it's...
Doing the laundry or making lunch.
It absolutely stuns me how people can just adjust to suddenly being cut off from somebody else.
Breakups, the ends of friendships,
They...happen.
To everyone.
To everyone on earth, and I don't understand how people just keep going.
Just live their lives as if they haven't lived them in tandem with another person for...years.
As if they haven't laughed, cried,
Shared secrets and dreams,
Spent countless hours with
This whole incredible other being, who is suddenly just...
Gone.
There's not a word for how I feel, thinking that people just go on, knowing that this person they loved and treasured,
Kissed and connected with,
That this person will grow old and die someday.
How do you face that thought every day?
That they will finish their days somewhere far away, somewhere completely different,
With a family or children that you'll never meet.
With lines on their face that you'll never see touch it gradually.
With stories and joys and traumas that you
Will never hear about.
With memories that you aren't a part of.
And they'll be lost to you. And you just...
You just throw that away, as if it's ordinary.
As if it's... easy.
People just cut their ties so **** carelessly.
Watching them... Mystified doesn't cover it.
Confused. Befuddled. Dismayed. Bewildered...
Betrayed.
There isn't a word. None of these come even close.
Thinking of it, I feel the way I feel when I pass the corpse of an animal on the highway
When I hear about a dear friend whose father has just died,
When I remember how many people on earth starve to death every day.
Me, the sculptor of words,
Always with a way to try and bridge the gap of empathy,
I have no word for it.
For how utterly I do not understand the human ability to
Write off someone you love.
I've tried every single one I know
And none rings as hollow as the feeling of remembering
That people lose each other without dying.
I've turned it over in my mind
Buffeted it with adjectives
Prodded it with metaphors
Trying to find a word that approaches how it feels to realize this
But the only one
I ever end up at is
*"Why?"

I am a keeper of secrets.
Having none of my own, I have been given them.
Perhaps the empty space inside my mind
Where they'd reside did they exist
Calls to be filled,
Sends out beams like a lonely lighthouse on cold tumbling grey waves.
Perhaps its siren song draws people closer,
Clustering like gauzy moths around a flame.

That girl there, she is going to die soon.
She smiles and her friends envy her.
They know not that her sun is almost set.
Not a one suspects.
But I know.
Our eyes meet
And for a moment we share a light,
Private and white hot
Like a thread of burning silver stretched between us,
Searing,
Thin as spidersilk but strong.
And then just as quickly it is broken and there's nothing once again.

That one there thinks she's already dead, inside.
She smiles and the circle of people that hover about her like a halo
Ripples with laughter.
They do not suspect.
But I know.
I catch her eye and see the hopelessness,
Smile at her and she smiles back.
But even I cannot tell if it is real.

I am a keeper of terrible secrets.

It is my vicious flaw
That I cannot stand people
Who cannot stand the truth.
I remind myself that not everyone has
Titanium bones,
Not everyone knows
That they all could.
Not everyone has decided that
They hate being the victims of a sadistic world.
Not everyone
Will understand that words of objection from a friend
Are not shrapnel
Not everyone will know
That they can only be forgiven if they are
Held
Responsible.

Forgiveness lives in your own heart
And when you deny your sins
You condemn yourself.
Once she (her, Her, HER.) whispered to me
That she thought hell was in the mind,
And heaven too.
And that in the last moment of life
The brain created a sort of eternal second,
A breath for everyone else
But an infinity for the dying,
And provided
Whatever reward or punishment they themselves thought they deserved.
I don't aim to please.
Sometimes I aim
To save...
But

I suppose not everyone
Needs to be enlightened.

Still,
I just cannot stand
People who cannot stand the truth,
And perhaps it makes me wretched
That I do not try to change this,
But part of me is
Unashamed.

Don't look at me.
Don't see that I am raw with something like loss
Like the loss of something that
I haven't ever had.
Don't look over here
And see tears in my eyes
Because I don't know why they are here
And I want them gone.
Rarely
Do people show me a flipped image
Of how empty I feel.
Mostly I can forget.
I know you are like me.
To the very core of you
You light up when you love somebody.
And from the shadows I
Have caught some sunlight on the way by
And it is charring my skin.
It bubbles and blisters
Red and white
And I feel so ugly I hold my breath.
Did I lose that?
Did I have that?
It's not envy,
Not of either of you.
It's too pure for that.
Has too much surrender,
Too much grief.
It is simply that
Right now
I want to shrink into this wall
Like a smudge.
Maybe if I could just be so insubstantial,
Maybe I could be the smoke you exhale,
Pretty against the stars,
Vitriolic in your lungs,
And that
Temporary.
I wish you all
Could forget me like a sigh,
Like a sigh on a frigid night that shows white
For a moment
And then dissipates.
I wish I could forget me like that.
I don't understand
The tears in me tonight.
They've been rising for a while,
All quiet and cold.
Now they're everywhere,
In my veins and in my fingertips
Making them heavy on the keys.
They are slowing me down,
Weighted and cold as
Hell
And I know I can't be the one
To turn to you and let them flood your moonlit heart.
I am freezing them, bit by bit,
To keep them here.
What kind of person would I be
If I were to cut through your haze of happy
And tell you I need you now?
And moreover
That I am drowning
Because I saw somebody who got saved.
No,
No I am not terrible that way.
I am terrible
This
Way.
I would sink to the floor
But it takes more energy
Than I want to expend
And there is a sort of smugness in restraint.
I learned it last year,
That if you try for long enough not to cry
The crushing pressure becomes almost a relaxation,
A thick, noxious mist that you can rest your weight upon and succumb to.
My grief tastes like giving up.
And I always say to the world
That I do it out of spite,
That I do it so that I hurt me before it does.
But it's just not true.
Giving up is a disease,
And it's killing me.
I have borne my wrists to the bloodthirsty,
Unsurprised at their zeal
When they bit down hard.
Something about a passive face
Makes me feel like I've kept something
Of myself
Even as I lost everything else.
What kind of awful would I be
If I asked for comfort now?
No,
I have weathered many silent storms
And frozen many tears
Calm- a sick calm that feels like pitch in your lungs- and clear as glass,
So thick you can't see through it anymore.
There's nothing to see to.
That is the secret.
When you break the ice,
There is only blackness.
The only thing you find beyond the tears
Is the place that births them,
And its only purpose is to be
Achingly empty.

I've learned over the years that if you are hurt often, like I am,
Either you become the consummate victim-
Pitiful, cowering, sweet to fault, shamefully spineless-
Or you become wiser, a sharper version of yourself,
A bit meaner, a bit tougher.
You turn from white to gray- not sooty yet, but perhaps a bit charred around the edges,
Maybe even slightly carnivorous, like a flower deprived so long of sunlight that it begins to crave
Other things.
You're not entirely wrong, you know.
There is something in me that stalks the world, it's true.
But not you particularly, darling.
Don't flatter yourself.
I'm for bigger game;

I'm after the devil himself--
I'd like a word.

The train is bright and empty
And it should be lonely, sitting here, hurtling through darkness, but I
Am in no state for people.
I am too far away.
Something is new in me.
Something is starting.
I move through the world every day
And I love it all, I do,
Love it to distraction, love it painfully, even
But
Distantly.
There is always something thin but impenetrable
Between me and all that I want to touch
To hold
To let crawl inside me and expand
So that maybe I'd be vast enough to hold this soul.
But tonight
That veil has peeled away-
No, it has fallen away
Like a sheet of fine silk, and I am
Raw
And new
And blinking in the light and everything
Is so saturated with color
And music
Thrums beneath the grinding of the rails.
It has been so long since everything could touch me.
I sit here and soak it in, a lover who has found everything to love
All of a sudden
And can do nothing but gaze.
All this
All this from someone,
And this is why
I just can't quit love.
This is why I try over and over,
Why I stay up nights wandering the darkened streets,
Why the hunger in my chest is something I treasure so excruciatingly.
Because the world is waiting
For you to find a reason to touch it,
And tonight I want my fingers to find every sidewalk crack and blade of grass,
Seek them like the skin of a lover in the dark- that gentle and that urgent-
And fill them all with silver light
And watch the world catch fire with what lives beneath my skin-
What lives here and has been sleeping
But is now suddenly, terrifyingly, gloriously
Awake.

I wonder if you threw away
That giant Mickey Mouse doll I bought you in Times Square,
Or the art I made for you-
That little wooden chair that I burned designs into, describing you
As a goddess.
I wonder if you sifted through your colorful room
And exorcised my presence, gathered every piece of jewelry and thoughtful little gift
I ever gave you.
I wonder if you tore up my poems.
But the thing is
If you did, it means that I mean something
And if you didn't
It means that I mean something.
If you erased me, I know that, just like you will never find and destroy EVERY gift I gave you over 3 years
You will never erase me from your soul.
And if you didn't, I know that part of you can't let go
Of being loved so deeply and so purely.
I planned for this, my lost love.
I planned for years.
I never really thought you'd stay.
I only thought to make myself
Unforgettable
And
I know I did.

I am experienced in empathy.
Not comfort,
For I can easily feel when hugs and tender words will do no good.
They hurt the broken people, don't they?
Make them only more aware of how they should be.
Not sympathy, or pity,
Those burn their victims like acid
Spoon-fed in the guise of tonic
In the semblance of medication.
No, what I am good at is empathy.
I feel
What they feel.
Touch it with my fingertips and learn it like braille.
Like I am blind, reaching out to them.
No matter how close I get, it never impales me like it does them.
I am the watcher without eyes.
But I feel it, understand it, read it,
And so I know
Not what to do or say, really.
Just what not to.
It is a skill that people seem to fly towards and huddle around.
I think not a lot of people must take the time to understand
Pain
When they see it's there.
They barge in with their little toy tools
Plastic hammers and screws,
Elmers glue,
And fix it all with sloppy gobs of paste.
And at the end, looking at their handiwork,
Sagging to one side,
Simply propped up like it will stay stable,
Smile,
Sigh with the satisfaction
Of a job done,
If not well,
And brush their palms together
As if to say,
"Well, that takes care of that."
And whistle merrily on their way,
Even as the poor person they fixed
Must now wash the gaudy decor
From their jagged edges
And start again from the bottom up.
The real truth is that you can't glue a person back together.
You can only tell them that
They are still art
Even though they are no longer
As they once were.
Empathy takes restraint.
Takes patience.
Takes practice.
It is the art of feeling what another feels,
And still acknowledging that you do not fully understand.
It is the subtlety of looking at another person
And never telling but always showing
That they are themselves strong enough
To heal.

There is a wire
Stretched taut
Between me
And Home.
Below me there is darkness
Dizzying.
It is copper-shiny
And whisper-thin.
This is no trust test-
There is no test.
(There is no trust)
There is no grade,
This one
Is pass/fail.
There is a wire
Just the one
Bridging the gap
Between me and where
I need to go.
And it is hot
And it is sharp
And down it little shocks of white light pulse,
And they arc away
To bite my fingertips
And nip the ends of my hair.
And my feet
Are bare
And I
Am bare
And I cannot stay here
Because the cold
Will **** me-
Bruised blue and purple
The air, the ground, the light, it's all cold.
It's all frozen with little razorblade crystals of ice
And
I'd tightrope walk right over hell
To get away from the knowledge that that
Cold light
Is touching me
And making me different.
And I suppose that's lucky
Because
When I set out along my live wire of tension
It slices into the soles of my tender feet
Like they're made of softened butter,
And warm blood trickles down and
Drips
Into the void below,
And I wonder if whatever's down there
Likes sacrifices
And if a few drops
Can sign a contract
And if I care
Who owns me
As long as it's not
You.

To love a woman is perhaps one of the most exquisite, uncertain, complicated, excruciating, maddening things you can experience in this life.
To truly love a woman, and appreciate it fully,
I think maybe you do have to be a little bit mad.
And... I am addicted to it.
And the women I love are punishingly extraordinary.
And if this love brings me to an end someday, well...
There are worse ways to go.

I thought being back here would make me hurt
Missing you.
Instead when I closed my eyes last night
I saw you clearer than I had in weeks.
My dreams were wild and vivid
And for the first time in a very long time
I wanted to stay asleep not because the real world was too painful
But because the dream world was better.
You and I were walking on a quiet street at night.
It was cool, and flowers bloomed in secret gardens between brick buildings
And I could see the ocean down the lane.
You held my hand.
I was so happy to be with you.
I remember you turning away, looking up at the stars,
And I could see your back framed against the brightness
And you said,
"Isn't it beautiful?"
And I looked at you,
Back turned black coat silhouette,
And my eyes filled with tears and I said
"Yes, it is."
And only then did I glance up
And see the most breathtaking night sky I could have imagined.
It was the sky I always see when I am lucky enough to dream of you.

The stars in that sky are indescribable.
They are not the stars
They are your stars.
They happen because of you.
They somehow hold every color in every spectrum
They move without moving
They explode all at once like fireworks
But somehow they remain completely still at the same time.
They are the special kind of beauty that artists chase-
The kind that only exists in dreams and can't be described or captured in any way.

They were a blur of sheer perfection, and to look at them was to remember you completely.
I thanked them, in my head,
Full of joy and hope and love.
I thanked them like I used to thank the stars in our world
Every night walking back to my place
The cold making your name a swirl of grey against the darkness.
I still thank them today
And I say hello to you every night when I see the very first one,
Because I figure that if you and I can see anything at the same time
5 hours
And 3,000 miles apart
It must be the sky, and that moon, and those stars.

I thought being back here would be like
Walking through a field of ghosts,
Things I can't have because they're memories and you're far away.
But it's amazing what hope can do
And yes, those moments live-
Every detail. On the benches by the lake,
Running down the center line of the street laughing,
In the hallways here,
And at my door.
Everywhere I saw you, I see you,
But I find that I am hungry for those moments.
I love them.
Now that I am back here...
Yes, I miss you.
And yes, I love every moment of it.

Sometimes I make myself angry at you.
Hurt
That you aren't around.
Not because I enjoy being angry and hurt,
Not because you deserve it,
Not because anything at all has gone wrong,
But simply because
Missing you as much as I miss you on some nights
[most nights]
Has no reason,
No cause,
No cure,
No trigger or relief.
And if I'm going to feel it
My mind wants something to blame.
It is too much,
Too much love,
To simply miss you
And feel the exquisitely fragmenting pain of that.
It is much easier to handle feeling something I've felt before,
Something that can be fought,
Something that can be dealt with,
Something that has a start,
And hence,
An end.
My hurt, my anger...all of it...
Even my fear is a lie.
Because the truth is
Missing you
Has no end,
No edge,
No closure,
No border.
No creation
And no ultimatum.
If I bog myself down in petty fear and pain and enmity
If I fog up my mind and heart with those silly distractions
The love
Cannot leak through and terrify me
With its immeasurable, ceaseless enormity.
If I just stay on the surface,
I can't drown in what is really happening:
My love deepens by the second,
And I am at sea
With no land in sight.
I miss you with my skin and the marrow of my bones,
With my fingertips and in my veins.

I miss you more every moment.

It's been increasing since the day you left.
When you came back,
It only picked up.
I miss you in a way that absolutely stuns me with fear
And with awe.

I am not ready to be the vessel for that kind of feeling
That kind of love.

And so sometimes, when you're not around and I wish you were,
I make myself angry with you,
Hurt,
Afraid to lose you.
I engineer insecurities in my head.
Because the sheer truth of knowing that you love me
And missing you this much anyway
Is too immense
And too agonizing
To face.

All I've ever gotten in love
Is can't.
"I can't be your lover."
"You can't just say that."
"You can't
Be like this."
"You can't
Love me."

Be my yes.
Be my of COURSE.

I have a dream
A very dear dream.
I've written of it for years
Over and over.
My dream
Is that someday
I will be sitting by a dim window
Looking down
On a city street in the rain
Cupping a mug of hot, sweet tea in my palms
And thinking how perfect everything is.
And someone
Someone lovely
Someone warm and safe and beautiful
She will rise from our sheets- ours,
And put her arms around me,
Say
"Come back to bed, love."
And I will lean into her and she will smile and life
Will finally be the way I always wished it could.
I dream
That someday
I will be making breakfast at the stove with a soft cat winding between my ankles
And from behind she will hug my waist, kiss my neck, steal a bite of food and make me forget
To take the kettle off the heat
And it will sing shrilly while we kiss
Good morning.
I want her voice to be what I fall asleep to,
Velvety in my mind and soft in my ear,
Her fingers tracing my collarbones and my arms draped around her hips.
I want
To get lost with her
In every foreign city
And laugh because nowhere is lost
And everywhere is home
Because we are each other's port in every storm
And each other's lighthouse to find our way back to safe waters.
My dream is to smile my life away
And spend my seconds not like hard earned dollars but like pennies tossed into fountains- every one a wish, a promise, a celebration.
Be my yes.
Be my home.
Be the first person
To tell me I am allowed to dream
To wish
To be
Everything I am.
Be the first
To want it,
And I will give you the entire world.
I will write your name on every napkin corner poem I leave in every cozy cafe,
I will carve it into every park bench I read on in the summer sun,
I will whisper it
To every star I see in the night sky.
Please,
I'm inviting you-
Be my home. Be my hope.
Be
My
Dream.

I often wonder
Why I can't write a nice little poem.
You know the kind-
A nice, little poem
About the woods,
Or maybe a field.
Perhaps about a butterfly or a cat.
Maybe about hope, or sunshine.
I often wonder
Why no matter how hard I try
To write
Nice
Little
Poems
They grow fangs
And spit the truth like venom.
I can never seem to write to somebody
Without saying precisely how I see them
No matter how unfavorable the view may be.
What I think just....
Spills out, all over the page-
Every theory, every wicked little judgement
(All the more wicked because many of them are accurate.)
Every criticism that I haven't the gall,
The courage,
Or the tactlessness
To say aloud.
Why, tell me,
Can I not quit this nasty business
Of hashing out and knowing in flowing language
Just what I think of the people I love?
And just write a
Nice
Little
Poem.

I used to be a dried up riverbed.
Desert sand ran in my veins.
I was the wasteland, the dust bowl of my sadness.
And somewhere inside for all those years, the waters rose, the storm brewed.
I never really noticed.
Until one day I cracked down the middle like a clay ***,
And everyone got to see the rainstorm of my tears.
They fell with all the force of a roll of thunder,
And all the searing heat of a lightning strike,
And all the hopeless endless downpour of a monsoon.
They fell and woke me up, and in my anguish little cracks spidered out until I was a web of fissures,
And of a sudden I fell away.
It feels odd to have no shell anymore,
It feels strange to cry in front of strangers when they pry into my heart.
I was never that girl.
I was a desert, dry as bone bleached by the sun, and as hard, and as abused.
And now I am a river, fed by the rain of my troubles drumming on my back, and my feelings show on my face not because I cannot stop them but because I no longer have the will to.
For months I was tired, and when I stopped drowning I realized that there was no going back.
I cannot drag myself to dry land, and so I must learn to swim the waters of myself, however deep, however dark, however painful.
I must learn to hold my breath, and let the tears fall when they will.
I am a river.
Stopping the tears never stops the pain.
This I have learned.

Alone is a peculiar thing.
Sometimes on mornings like this, when I am sitting
At a lonely table,
Coffee in one hand to banish the cold,
Book in the other to banish the solitude,
I set them both down for a moment and
Ponder, stirring.
My spoon makes loud little clink-clinks,
And frothy pictures in the sweet steaming drink,
And I wonder:
How many separate mornings will I spend this way,
Having spoken to no one but woken at dawn?
Not a soul has heard my voice today, and it
Is nearly noon.
How many mornings of my life will be
Just like this?
A cup of coffee, a book,
And nobody looking about for me?
And am I lonely about it
Or just
Unsettled?

The thing you are searching for
No longer
Exists.

"Be careful she doesn't get bored with you next
It's a long way to   * f
                                       a
                                              l
               ­                                        l
                                                             ­ ."
That line popped into my head
The other day
&* it's been rattling around inside
Ever since.
It's from one of my favorite books.
A book that says many true things.
I

Don't know.
It just crept inside my thoughts
& grabbed on tight.
"It's a long way to fall."

Sometimes I wonder if I am a replacement.
Maybe it's because
You aren't-
Most people are,
See.
Paper dolls
Placeholders
For the people I can't have close.
I've kissed glass lips before
Gazed through see-through collarbones
& seen only my reflection
Distorted in translucent eyes.
Sometimes they fall & break
In shards on the floor
& I see my tears
In all the little pieces.

But you
Are
Flesh.
Sometimes I ask myself
If I resent it.
I don't think I do.
(& I resent
That.-
"IT'S A LONG WAY TO FALL.")
Because I wonder,
Every so often,
If I am a paper doll to your porcelain.
If I am a poor [wo]man's lover,
Good enough                            .                        .   ­                     .                          .
             ­                                                                 ­                                                                 [For now.]
I don't like those thoughts.
Maybe they are where jealousy starts,
But I feel none.
(I am glad of that-
It is the ugliest feeling I know of.)
But I do wonder, all the same,
If I am only the best
You can do
Just now.
I hate wondering that.
I hate it because I shouldn't care to wonder,
("it'salongwaytofall!")
& I hate it because I should think it's more ridiculous
Than I do.
I looked by accident
In[T]o puppydog eyes the other d[A]y
Begging for attention
At the dinner table
& I heard it li[K]e b[E]lls
"[IT]'s a long way to f[ALL]."

& mostly I do dismiss it,
The possibility that sometimes seems
Very real,
That I am a passing fad-
"It's a long way to fall."
The nagging inkling that ma[Y]be
I'm n[O]t special-
Just
New.
& that I will pass
Like aut[U]mn,
& my leaves fall
& the pretty colors gone
[W]ill leave me bare & ugly
& l[I]feless al[L] over again.
The passing thought that perhaps
The universe is speaking to me & not you,
That maybe the message is
"It's a


                                                            ­          [L]ong



                                                      Way


­                                                                 ­                    
                                            ­                                                   To





                                                        ­                    [ F      A     L     L." ]

Perhaps this time I'll love a book
Or a certain streetlight on the way home
Or a painting
Or a dried flower stuck in a dreamcatcher
Or
A white sweatshirt-
(I can sleep with its empty arms around me.)
Perhaps this time
I'll choose well.
I am tired of loving people.
Perhaps this time
I'll love something that cannot
Breathe
Love
Die
Or leave.
Perhaps that is all
I can endure anymore.

I read the poem I wrote about you on the radio yesterday.
I wonder if the waves hit you, wherever you were.
If somewhere under your skin you felt my words
About you.
I'm sure you didn't hear them.
I'd have heard if you had.
Or maybe you did,
And you listened with disgust
Or with that feeling when your heart sinks but it's with fearful hope.
I don't know what you'd think if you heard my voice on the radio,
Saying I cried the night you kissed me.
Maybe you'd be ashamed,
Or maybe you'd call me a goon, like you do when you don't know what to say.
Amanda used to call me silly,
Or kiddo,
The same way-
To make it clear (to herself) that I was not threateningly in love with her
And that she was not perilously fascinated with me.
I really honestly have no idea what you'd do
If you heard
But I think I'd know about it, whatever it was.
I think you didn't hear.
Maybe a friend of yours did,
Maybe one that thought for a moment on the description
And was startled to think of you,
And then dismissed it as ridiculous.
Maybe nobody heard it, who knew you.
But I know people heard it.
And they heard how I loved you that moment when I first truly met you,
And they heard how it broke me to see you walk away
Even though back then you were promising to come back.
They heard what I think you want to forget happened.
And that's why
I read the poem I wrote about you on the radio yesterday.

This is my body.
I am
Skin and bones.
Flesh and sin.
I am doing my best.
And I am finally learning that
If I am not good enough for you
Or you
Or you
It is not my problem to become good.
I am what I am.
I am this story and its pale slipcover
Covered with words that my skin drinks in.
Ink is toxic
But love burns more,
And I am starting to know the unsettling truth that has been hiding
In my marrow for years:
I am no addict.
I am afraid,
But I am not dependent.
I need nothing but these feet to kiss the ground
And this heart to love the world.
The faces I've chosen to worship
Are starting to blend and meld.
The universe is beginning to have its own visage
In every person I meet,
And suddenly they can all mean anything
And none of them
Can mean everything.
And that is a loss, yes, it's a loss of faith
Of a stubborn longing I have served for years
That one set of eyes may outshine the others.
But the truth is that anything holy that I have ever touched
I have made so with my fingertips.
Anyone lovely I have ever adored
I have painted with my heart.
We are alone again,
Me and my bone-white sheath,
And we look forward.
Today somebody told me that no love is worth it
If it ever hurts you.
What a concept, what a dream- it stopped me dead.
A person whose touch brought no pain?
And I thought on the possibility for a moment,
And realized that the only people who could ever hope to give and get no pain in love
Are those who dwell beneath gravestones in the silent fields
And never touch at all.
Bravery is stepping forward into a brutal world
Knowing that it WILL change you
That it will mar you
That it will
Eventually
Claim you
And stepping forward anyhow.
Here I am in my moonlight skin, soft and delicate and easily punched through
Like a paper lantern
But what have I to fear
When the only thing I know about this world
Is that it will **** me someday?
The only thing I can be certain of is that I will lose all of this,
And so I am free to enjoy it as I please,
Knowing that I suffer no punishment
Only inevitability
Only
Nature.
I step on.
I surge on.
I have learned in these weeks
How to stand before the world
My naked soul
Shining in the sun
And be unashamed of my fragility.
I have learned and it has seeped inside of me
And I have cast off a veil I have clung to like death
A shroud I've hidden beneath
And for the first time in a long time
I stand, unconcealed.
This is my body.
And I am
Undaunted.

Every man
I have ever
Loved
Admired
Or even
Respected
Has in some way degraded me
Unforgivably.
This is why I prefer to meet them in passing,
As shadows with hard fingers and
Leers
Or as ghosts with an extra tip
For the pretty waitress.
I cannot love
Admire
Or even
Respect them
If I really see their faces.
So I don't
Look.