I'm starting to understand that I have learned to say
"I'm sorry" when people are cruel to me, and
"Thank you" when they undervalue me.
Don't let your life teach you that.
Eventually you blacken your lungs with it.
Eventually you're jonesing for it when you should be indignant or angry or proud.
Don't learn to survive.
Learn to live.
Cause it's a lot harder to do when you have to start in the middle.
The people who hear the most apologies from me are the ones who are hurting me.
The people who get the most of my gratitude are often the people who give me the least.
It's backward. It's dangerous.
It's what happens when you learn all alone.
You learn the wrong way to get to the right goal.
And eventually it starts to ******* you, and it dawns on you that you need to change, to recover, to quit, and you just don't know how.
Don't let your life teach you to be sorry.
To be grateful when you're underestimated and undervalued.
It will try. People will try.
The world pushes.
I wish someone had ever told me that it's okay not to be contrite,
That I should demand what I deserve,
That when I am cast aside or ignored, it isn't something I could have prevented if I'd simply been
Better, happier,
Easier,
More humble.
Because that thought right there ruins people.
Love yourself.
Do it quick, before someone else gets it.
Learn to thank yourself, to forgive yourself, before you turn around one day and discover
That someone else's eyes hold your galaxy.
Because love is wonderful, but...
I wish I'd had time to learn not to be afraid,
To learn to fight back,
To learn that being quiet is highly overrated,
Before I learned that somebody's smile could fill every empty part of my heart I'd ever cried over.
If you are still young inside, this is your chance.
Love yourself. Don't apologize. Don't lower your eyes. Don't restrain yourself.
Do not let this world teach you to be owned.

Love,
Someone who learned too well.

I don't need the light
To see right under your skin
Down to the heat
Of your soul.
I don't need to be next to you
To touch you like your skin is silk.
I know you can feel it.
I know you're scared.
I know you don't know.

I know.

I know I don't need to be standing
Two inches away
To look at you like I want every breath you've ever taken
And every word you've ever thought.
Every inch of your soft skin
Every tone of your voice,
Murmured or sung.
I see you like you're bathed in candlelight
In my mind,
Your shadows are velvet and your glow is amber
And your pull is strong,
Heady like the perfume of jasmine.

It blooms at night,
You know.

I don't think I wanted you because I couldn't have you.
I wanted you because
I thought I would die
If we weren't next to one another-
Tangled right up, held-
Just at that moment.
I don't need to have you
To always want you.
I don't need to love you
To adore you.
I don't need to know you
To miss you.

I know you feel
That I am not what you've had before.
Undiluted, unrestrained,
Unapologetic.

I know
We could forget
We could forget what's good and bad
What's wrong or right
We could forget to remember why
We
Aren't us.

I know
You know
I could turn your world inside out.

Will I?
No one knows.
But I know
I want to.

It seems hideously unfair-
And how gauche of me to utter it,
Nobody says it,
Even when we all know-
That some people
Are just more important
Than others.
Not for any real superiority
But for the fact that
We may love some
But not the others.

Do you have any idea how it feels
To have someone leave you in order to "protect you"?
And they always think they're the first one ever to do it too
Like there isn't a parade of cowards marching away
With excuses falling from their lips
When really
They're just scared that they could hurt someone so deeply.
I've got news for you all
The ones who leave
The ones who left
For my own good.
You didn't.
You don't.
You left for yours.
You leave
For yours.
You know as well as I do that my pain at being abandoned
Is a thousand times what any cruelty could have been
If only you stuck around to dish it out.
You just didn't
Want
To watch.
I have to watch.
Every time.
I have to watch it decimate the parts of me I've spent time nurturing.
I have to watch and know that you think
You saved me from you.
So let me tell you what being left for your own good feels like.
It feels like being used.
It feels like being patronized.
It feels like being disposable.
It feels like
Being condemned.
I'm brave enough to face the horrors inside of you.
Are you?

I wake up each morning with dirt beneath my fingernails
And wonder what I was digging out of
Entombed in the night, when the balm of sleep failed.

Was I dragged below the way you were,
With your red lips and wild eyes?
Was I silent beside you, newly interred,
And clawed my way back into life?

It would not be the first time.
It would not be the second, either.
That I awoke to find death's grime
Caked upon my trembling hands.

Yet I rest easy, despite all that.
I see the evidence it leaves,
And yet my only thought is that
I should likely be relieved...

I never say what I mean
When I beg you to talk to me:
I don't beg.
I just say hello.
I find things to say,
Silly things.
Anything.
See,
I never say

                                                            ­   "Please, please speak to me.
                                     You are the only thing that makes days like this any better.
                                     I feel a knot in my stomach and my heart won't slow down.
                                                           ­   Please say any old stupid thing
                                                           ­     And make me feel at home."

I don't mention it, I don't ask,

"Please, just a word, just one.
          Any word that isn't one of hate.
                   Anything, any tiny little phrase.
                            Even that you're busy or that your day's been boring.
                                    Please, just a thought in my direction.
                                         I need proof that you are here.
                                                I don't know why.
                                                     I never know why.
                                                          Bu­t the longer I go without
                                                         ­       The more I've lost you in my head.
                         And me as well."

I try not to explain,

                                                       ­                                                "I think there's something in here with me
Something not-quite-right
                                                 ­                          That pulls the strings and makes me crazy
                             When I don't hear your voice for a while.
         I'm really scared that I could be like                                                        the people in the movies
                                                          ­            Who rock on their knees and hum
Whose eyes are hollowed out.
                                                            ­                           You keep me from that person crouched inside me
         Waiting to spring forth and unravel my sanity."

I never tell you these things.
I assume you know.
It embarrasses me to ask for help with my own head.
It shames me that you are so essential.
I spare you knowing it, mostly.
And I just say hello.
But know this:
Whenever I say it,
Whenever I say anything out of the blue,
Any random little conversation I start that seems but meaningless...

Know that underneath my words there's this.
Know that it's likely I've tried already, to leave you alone and not bother you
Until you want to talk to me.
Know that behind every hello,
There is a plea
                                                            ­                    "Save me."
I don't know from what.
I don't know why it's you.
I don't know what makes me shake and frown and my heart
Speeduplikearunawaytrain.
I only know that you fix it.
And that I am not strong enough not to ask you to, if all it costs you
Is just a smile and
                                                             ­                   


                                                              ­                     **"Hello."

Don't waste a second.
Look at her face
Memorize it.
Touch every inch of her
As if she is the most beautiful
Perfect thing ever to grace your presence.
Laugh with her
But always make sure you watch her laugh
So that you can save up those sunny memories
For the rainy days of your life.
Buy her things.
Give her anything and everything she wants
Things she would never ask for
That you know would make her smile
Give her everything you can
Every single day.
Hold her when she's sad.
Wipe her tears away.
Forgive her when she is cruel-
Life has been unkind to her.
Understand when she is petty.
She does not trust easily.
Don't waste a second.
If you fight
And you will fight
Because if you do all of this for her
She will be afraid to love you without hating you
If you fight
Let her win.
Nothing is more important than her kiss
Her arms
Her smile.
No pride is worth losing that.
No argument is worth knowing that someone else will be the cause of her laughter
Because she has turned away from you.
When you sleep next to her,
Put your arm around her.
When you wake up
Look at her for a moment in the morning light
Because it catches the gold in her skin and makes her glow
Like she is dawn itself
And it shadows the little space just under her lips
Making her look young and peaceful.
Don't forget that look.
Don't forget how lovely she is,
How alive,
How inspiring.
Don't let your time with her
Dull your wonder for her.
You
Have something so incredible.
Do
Not
Waste
A
Second.
And if someday she leaves you
And you are hurt
Forgive her.
Treasure her.
Treasure the time you got.
Comfort yourself with the fact that you DID these things,
That you gave of yourself
So utterly and so purely
That a part of you will always be with her.
Love like that
Never really leaves.
If she leaves you,
Try to let her leave.
You won't want to.
You will feel like someone is ripping your heart out
With the veins still attached and stretching.
You will want to hate her
And you will be sick with wishing you didn't.
But if she leaves you,
Try to love her anyway.
She is...
She's like the sun.
You will
Get burned.
There is no way around it.
But without the sun
No life exists.
No beauty.
No warmth.
No pleasure.
No growth.
No us.
She is brutal
And she is beautiful
And she is
The most incredible thing
You will ever touch
So touch her
Touch her as often and as gently as you can.
Make her feel loved.
Let her feel free.
Do whatever it is that you can do
That I can't.
You will never read this
But I hope you hear it somehow.
This
Is your chance.
This is your chance to love the woman of your life.
The person who will change everything.
The girl the universe revolves around.
This is your moment to give her
Whatever you can
And hope it is
Enough.
Don't
Waste it.

-Me.

One of my most treasured talents
Is my ability to at once be passionate
And jaded.
I can write you prose that drips with longing,
Love,
Ardor,
But if tomorrow you walk away from me,
I will have quietly, calmly
Expected it the entire time.

It is not your fault, what happened to me.
But this,
This,
You knowing what IS happening to me,
And knowing you can stop it with almost no effort,
And doing nothing, this...
Is.
And I forgive you.
I give myself no other choice, whenever you hurt me.
The only way is to forgive you, to find a way to love you even if you're
Silent,
Or venomous,
Or cowardly.
I never know if you are. I do not let myself find out.
I do not know your flaws,
Because I tell myself that to assume them would be the death of me, by your hand.
So I unfocus my eyes and look at you only through what you show me.
Perhaps you are a coward, afraid of what I am and what we've seen of one another. I wouldn't know it if you were.
Or perhaps you are angry that somebody pulls emotion from you.
Or perhaps you are just cruel.
Or perhaps you are none of this,
And I could not imagine what you are,
And whatever that is
Is right,
And whatever I am
Is wrong.
That is the end I come to.
That is the conclusion I reach, each time, to save you from me.
To save me from hating you, and to save you from losing me, I make you
Right.
I do not know if you have ever been right.
I refuse to know.
It doesn't matter.
You want to be. No... no I don't even think it's that.
I think you want me to be wrong.
Yes, that is it, you want me to be wrong, because I have reached some part of you that you don't enjoy.
You want it desperately, to pretend nothing bad happens, to pretend that the people in your life are
Easy and
Simple,
Unbreakable,
Unbroken,
Uncomplicated.
You want laughter to be the only thing,
But underneath we both know you are too smart not to see that without pain
Joy
Means nothing.
But you want your way.
You want me wrong, and I must want what you want
If you are to keep me.
And so I want to be wrong.
Want to apologize.
I want you to get your venom out at me, so that I may die of it and satisfy you, and have you back again.
Love me, hate me, but get it done.
**** me with one or the other so that I can rise again and love you.
So that I can be your friend and give you what I can.
It is not your fault, how I suffered before.
You knew nothing of it.
You couldn't have known.
You couldn't have fixed it.
But now you do know.
You have known for a long time, what happens to me when you hate me.
How it poisons me.
You have seen.
And so any punishment you hand me now is given without the shield of ignorance,
With full knowledge and intent.
You have watched me dying.
You have tried to save me,
Or to **** me,
And found that the moment is perpetual-
You can do neither.
You have seen the pain, and chosen to extend it, and
I
Forgive
You,
Whatever your reason.
It doesn't matter. It can't matter.
There is only the forgiveness.
You are a religion to me, because the only way I can stand to love you is to worship you.
If I were to see you as a human being, I would be unable to imagine such
Heartlessness and such
Tenderness
Wrapped up in one soul, given to the same person on the whim of the day.
If you were not a god, you would have to be two people:
One to ****** me and one to mourn me.
One to wound me and one to stitch me up.
One to hate me and one to love me.
You have seen. You know.
You know who I am, in full, even if you do not understand it,
And you have claimed you want to help me.
And I have asked you for what I need,
And you have given it inconsistently.
And I have loved you and hated you,
And you have loved me and hated me.
And I have forgiven you.
But you have never forgiven yourself.
And that is the only thing
I cannot do for you.

I wish your parents would come to watch your shows.
I know it hurts you.
Seeing you sad
Is like every orchestra on earth playing out of key all at once
Pianissimo
So softly that the sound only buzzes against the skin
But casts a dulling shadow on the whole world.
And you wouldn’t be you
If you understood,
But I wish
They did.
I know it hurt you when we were kids-
They didn’t show up then either.
I always noticed,
And I think that it wasn’t enough
To know that we all watched you with awe
Your group
Your people
Your little army of girls
We would probably have followed you into hell
But
I think you felt the empty seats where They should have been
Even as you succeeded over and over,
Even as you wondered why everyone thought you were so great.
I used to try and explain,
And
You wouldn’t be you if you
Understood
But I wish
They did.
And I’m sorry
And I hope you know
It’s their **** loss
Because whenever I saw you perform when we were younger
And whenever I see you sing now
I feel like someone has turned the sun on
Indoors.
Everybody does.
That’s how you make people feel
Without trying,
That’s why they get so stuck on you.
And you wouldn’t be you
If you understood,
But I wish
They did.
I wish your mom and dad
Could see the way you light up the room when you make music
And I wish that they wanted to
Because they have such a gift in you
As a performer, as an artist, as a human being
And you wouldn’t be you
If you understood,
But I wish
They did.
They should understand
They could have watched you change us and inspire us
They could have watched you create
They could have admired your kindness and your talent
And they still could now,
And I think
It’s so sad-
That they waste their chance to enjoy the person you became
While they
Were too busy to look.

I'm reading this book.
It says that little boxer puppies are never taken to their vet
When they get their ears cut.
It says "The point is, whoever cuts your ears off is the one you'll hate for the rest of your life."

Go ahead, watch me.
Watch me go down.
All Knowing One,
With your sage advice and that smirk that means you're righter
Than me.
Go ahead,
TRY
To make me quail
Try to twist the knife and force me to give up on her,
I dare you.
See what happens.
I will go up in flames
With a terrible beauty you've never seen.
I will die like a star,
Smash so completely that
You go blind from the light of my explosion.
I am a nuclear war of a person.
You want to press the red button?
Think it's a decoy?
I don't play games.
I go down
I go down hard
I see it coming miles off
And I never
Ever
Back out of it.
You want to warn me?
You couldn't wait to say it, could you?
The words you knew would rip through me like shrapnel
You couldn't wait to be right
That I will fail.
You want to drive me off,
Hurt me into giving up,
Give me the advice that saves my life?
Oh, *******,
I will burn in hell
Because it is my choice if I do.
Was it satisfying to see the coldness creep into my eyes,
My heart turn to stone in defense?
I tried to cut you off-
I knew any mention of her from your lips would be a knife edge-
But you barreled on, cruel and eager,
And it hit me like you knew it would.
Once I told you
That the mention of her name makes me shake.
Once I showed you
That.
And maybe you're
Just stupid as hell
And you forgot,
But I think you never forget.
I think you knew.
It's not your right to rip my heart out.
It's not your power.
It's hers.
And when you steal it,
You deface me,
You defile me,
How dare you?
And this will pass, I will cool like lava into rock,
But let me tell you
Right now I
Hate you for knowing
And saying it anyhow.

I don't know why I love you so much.
That was never the plan.
It isn't safe, to love someone like this
And I always knew it.
But the way your hair curls down your cheeks when you've fallen asleep and it has escaped its pinnings
The way your eyelashes leave shadows down your cheeks
The way your eyes sparkle when you laugh
You hit something so beautiful and painful in my heart.
The way you are,
Everything about the way you are
Just tears me open with love.
When you cry, I long to wrap you in my arms and protect you from every pain you inflict on yourself.
It pulls me toward you, this need to show you with my skin that I belong to you.
Resisting it carves out a huge crater in my chest
As if more and more of me goes to you by the second
But I can't follow it and make myself whole again.
If I do this, if I succeed in these next few weeks,
If you continue to love me
And relearn how to touch me
It will have been the hardest thing I ever did for someone I loved.
If I smile at you and show you how happy you make me
And manage to hide how broken I am,
If I can survive it when you turn away from me in bed,
And pull away from my touches.
I've always said that not reaching for someone I adore
Is an act of unutterable love
And it has never been more true
Because you used to reach back,
You used to crave me like I crave you
Not ***, but closeness, oneness.
I live alone.
I have always lived alone.
And not for a second have I liked it.
I can count on my hands the number of times in my life I've felt at home and whole.
This
What I am doing for you
Trying to do
By giving you all the choice in this
This is the biggest, most difficult thing I have ever given anyone.
And if at the end I lose you
Make no mistake
I will have nothing. I know it. I fear it.
When I woke up this morning the terror of it took my breath away
Because my body knows.
And it won't be losing you that does it,
It will be these weeks,
These weeks and the strength I don't have, the hang on by your fingernails strength I will have to find
In order to keep my head above water and show you why you love me.
By the end of this
I will have used every failsafe I have,
Every life support, every backup plan
I will be stripped raw and naked inside, armorless and starved,
And if you go I will be more unprepared for the agony of losing you
Than I have ever been for any sort of pain.
It is my life I'm giving you, right now,
And it's impossible for you to understand unless you've felt this looming shadow that I live with
But I'm giving you
Every bit of energy I always save to keep myself alive when I am swallowed by the dark.
And I am... so afraid. So inexpressibly, mesmerizing afraid.
I am facing my absolute worst fear every second for all this time,
And it's important that I say that.
Because I've never done it for anyone.
I've never been able to.
And maybe sometimes I'll crack, and you'll see tears, and I'll reach for you.
But I swear to god I'd be less afraid to jump after you off a bridge than to do what I'm doing now.
In ways I would rather die, because it wouldn't take so long with so much fear.
And I have to say this, I have to, because whichever way this turns out
This tops every act of love I have ever done before
And every risk I have ever taken
And every fear I have ever faced.
You are more important to me than I could ever express,
And I love you enough to give you my life,
In every horrible, beautiful sense of the word.

It's always been like that with you. I think I always knew you'd hate me in the end, but... I touch the things that you have touched. Silly, meaningless things. Those glasses, delicate and mirror-shine gold. A door where you used to linger or a seat you always preferred. I touch them as if they are sacred. Somehow I always knew that was as close to you as I could be, and now I touch the handle you touched every day for so long, and I remember you with such a present stab of longing and hurt and frustration that I pull back as if burned. But a second later, my fingers are back, tracing every dent and ding, every flaw that distinguishes the cold metal, hungry for the memory of who you were when you were kind to me. For a moment, I am frozen, remembering you smile at me, as if we shared a secret, remembering how I could never quite meet your eyes- that startling green, had I betrayed you already by caring so?- I remember and it is glorious and devastating. I never touched you, nor you me, but we left a mark upon each other and it stings with a deliciously permanent pain. I feel love for that wound, just now, as my fingers quest for any evidence of yours, although a thousand hands have separated ours in brushing that handle. And then suddenly I pull back, the illusion shattered, and walk quickly from the hall, chagrin flooding me for loving so deeply someone who can't even stand the sound of my name.

Do you have a boyfriend?
No way to defend
From an ignorant question like that
And it sort of offends
Want the moment to end.
Hiding it's not something that I work at
But then again
I expect in the end
It's easier just to pretend
And say, "Oh... Right now I'm not ready for that."
Try to change the subject again.

"You'll find a good man,
All the pretty girls can."
I smile, nauseous, and look down, demur,
Know she won't understand
And I'm wringing my hands
Trying to have the right answer for her.
Don't feel like taking a stand
So I just say offhand,
"Oh, thank you. Yeah, that is the plan."
And quell the resentment that stirs.

You'll meet a sweet guy
You'll surely catch his eye.
Those words start a fire in my mind.
I just want to say,
"Actually, that's not the way-
I'd much rather call a girl mine."
But instead I keep all of my
Anger locked up inside,
And say, "That's what I'm looking to find."

Their questions and comments march on without end,
No matter what happens, the talk always tends
To turn toward finding a good man for me.
I do my best to be quiet and blend,
And sometimes when they speak I like to pretend
They say "her" and "she"
And not "him" and "he"
It makes it easier then.
I can try to pretend
They'd accept a girlfriend
And with her just how happy I'd be.
I can try to pretend
They'd respect a life without men.
But what I really wish they respected is
Me.

I met her in the springtime by the river, under the willows.
Their limbs fell long and swayed in the breeze,
And her gold hair reached out to twine in their poison-green leaves.
Under the willows, under the blue sky, by the babble of the water,
We knew each other.
We sat many days in the sunlight and talked,
And some nights beneath the soft moon we did not speak at all.
Sometimes I looked at her pale eyes full of depth and her light hair splayed out in the grass.
Set against the greenery she looked like winter come to summer’s land.
Sometimes she looked back at me.
But as the autumn seeped in and the brook grew still and the leaves turned, her pale eyes were shamed with tears like ice.
How could she last, how could we last, in a frozen world?
And one day I found her, under the swaying willows that clinked glassy with ice,
And her gold hair was splayed out in the water, and her blue eyes were still.
I followed her, but now I don’t know how to find her.
I thought she’d be here when I went to join her, but where is she?
It is very dark, and very cold without her here.
I followed her, and now I am alone, and neither winter nor summer may reach me again.

Another weary December's coming
And I hate the cold
I really thought you'd remember, darling
But it seems you've left me alone.

In the morning my heart's aching
For a gentle soul
I remember your blue eyes
They always made me feel whole.

You left me cold
You left me cold
You left me cold
You left me-

Run away, run and leave me cold
Run away, run and leave me old
Run away, darling, run to yesterday
Run away, pretend I had a say

The nighttime bruises black and blue and
The light is bleak at sunrise
And the roses I named for you have
Withered on their vines.

I leave you flowers on the sidewalk
I speak your name to the stars
Can't seem to tether up my wild heart
Even when it leaves scars.

You left me cold
You left me cold
You left me cold
You left me-

Run away, run and leave me cold
Run away, run and leave me sold
Run away, run there's no escape
Run away, for the hearts you break
Run
Run
Run and leave me cold
Run
Run
Run, keep your control
Run
Run
Run, there's nothing left
Run
Run
Run, I should have guessed...

You'd leave me cold
You left me cold
You left me cold
You left me
Cold.

It makes you think.
Or maybe it only makes me think.
But regardless,
I think maybe we are all the other face of
Madness.
I think maybe the line is much thinner, the edge much closer
Than we let ourselves understand.
I think maybe the difference between
Me
And Sylvia
Might have been a day at the park,
Or a kind word from a dear friend,
Or a movie I saw as a child.
I think maybe it could always have gone that way, for me,
But it just didn't.
I think maybe it could always have been different, for her,
But it just wasn't.
The way somehow Earth evolved to hold life, and Mars, so close by,
Is dusty and dead-
I too, am inhabited by a cry, and I do not intend to let it swallow me.

I used to say thay if there was a god, he must be an *******. But...
This isn't the work of an *******.
This is the work of something much more dangerous.
This is the work of something with good intentions,
That thinks it can mold things for the best.
The people who destroy the most in this world aren't the evil, or the *******,
They are the idealists who grow too faithful in their ideas
And start doing things "for the greater good".
God isn't an *******.
God is a child.
And he never learns.
And we pay.

One morning I awoke, and the world was different.
It was too bright, too loud, too clear.
I wanted my soft lines back, my cocoon of muffled drowsiness,
But it was gone and I was exposed like a newborn kitten,
Mewling and weak and tender,
And it never faded after that.
Always I felt fragile, as if I were made of glass.
Inside I felt no strength against a fast, cold, hard world.
I reached for people, and they recoiled as I recoiled from them,
For each of us was repulsed by the other.
And so one day, I woke up, and I found my answer.
I took a bath in a swirl of red, and now I am here
In the muffled warm darkness,
And finally my head no longer whirs.
Do not weep for me, for I am finally able to feel safe again.

Every time my heart beats, it loves you more, and that is part of why I crave to live.
It doesn't matter who you turn into,
If you become a stranger- harsh and cold and ordinary.
I love you as I knew you.
I love you as you are meant to be- alive and passionate and thoughtful,
Kind beyond measure,
Hot headed but so joyful.
My heart beats for that girl.
And no stranger with your face can ever take that from me.

You don't know it
But we share the armor I built
Against this pain.
We are
Inches away
Separated by paper thin steel
Mirror-plated.
You don't know it
But I defend you
More doggedly than I defend myself.
Because if this thick black mist of anguish
Cuts through to my heart
It's been there
And there is a space for it.
I can mimic the bright world until I am like it again,
With my looking glass skin and eyes,
And nobody will be the wiser.
You don't know it
But I fight for you
So you'll not feel the sting of the shrapnel
Spinning off from my implosions
Daily.
You don't know it
But you've been getting better than my best
Since the day you told me it hurt.
You don't know it
But this IS
The most I can do.
I repair the cracks
Quick and quiet
But sometimes the image remains a little
Warped.
You don't know it
But this is
The smoothest course there is.

Is this another renaissance, or am I just pretending?
Sometimes it takes calamity to force me to expand.
I don't know if I'm ready for a looming final ending,
But this time it feels like it's been such a very long time planned.
If I lose this, if I step away, what will I lean on when the nights are cold?
But could I really stand to love a ghost until I'm old?
Dearest sylph, darling demon,
How much longer can I lay upon an alter,
A willing sacrifice waiting for bitter love to falter?
But you don't, above me waiting for the day when my heartbeat has ceased.
I can't keep feeding you forever. Oh alas for my fool love, the beast.

Laughing with you is better than kissing anyone else.

Quite honestly, I never thought I'd make it this far.
And I finally know, it's not down to luck:
When you are thrown into the fire, either you are incinerated
Or you are forged.
When people ask me how I've gone on
I try to tell them something soft
Something gentle
But the truth is,
I wasn't nurtured
I wasn't coaxed from the ground like a sapling,
No
For good or ill,
Like a fine silver ring
Like an iron gate
Like a
Blade,
I have been forged
And I am dangerous.

sometimes when i am home alone
and it's all quiet
even though the tv is droning
and outside the birds are singing

in that silence i sit down
leave it unbroken by words i could say
to lift from me a smile or distraction
that would mask your mark on me

i sit there and accept it
all

i pick up your old shirt
the one with minnie mouse on it
and i sit down on my floor
and i curl up and hold it

and i don't pretend
for a few moments
that anything
is okay.

I don't go to church
Nor do I want to.
I don't believe
In anything in particular.
And yet the word god
Shows up in my poetry like it's put there intentionally.
It isn't.
Perhaps it is just that god
Is a perfect metaphor for how I love
And in trying to explain it,
The zeal of religion is the best comparison I can think of.
In fact
It makes me wonder,
If we are in god's image,
Is god
Like us?
Maybe that is why our prayers are seldom answered-
Maybe whatever god there is
FEARS us, for loving it so devotedly.
Maybe god is not dead.
Maybe god has fled.

You are born alone, and you will die alone.
What determines your level of suffering
Is whether or not you feel that.

I love you
And when I say that
I mean that I will always forgive you,
And that I will always see the best in you
And that I can never stand to be angry at you.
I love you,
And I will prove it every day
Whether or not you even notice.
I love you
In a way that scares me
And should scare you too
Because if I had the power to destroy the world for your sake
I might just do it
And have no regrets,
And all that said, I want you to know
That when I say I love you
The faith in my words comes from a place of knowledge,
Not foolishness,
From a place that has been ransacked and raided and razed,
From a city that has been burnt and rebuilt so many times that
The ash in the soil could grow a forest in a day.
This love comes from a wise place,
Not a naive one.
And yeah,
It's still here.

Curse your unconscious beauty, always damning,
Curse your cheekbones and your full dark lips,
Your little ways of speaking and of standing,
Your lashes, the inch of skin above your hips.
Curse your laugh, and your glittering eyes,
Curse your long legs and soft smooth skin,
Curse your velvet sunlight in disguise.
You're a war I'll never win.

What do I need?
I need someone
To bring roses to.
Someone who will call me a dork
And say I'm sweet
And try to hide how much it means.
Someone who plays it cool
But won't set that rose down on the counter
For fear of breaking it,
As if affection is so fragile.
I need someone to tacitly agree with me
That something's there
And never talk about it-
Just enjoy it with me.
I need someone
Unafraid to break skin
And unashamed of scars
Whether they're mine or hers.
I need someone I'd name a storm after...

I need someone
To bring roses to.

I didn't want to take the Waterloo train.
I had gone everywhere we went, but it was done, and somehow I just couldn't do it
I had to diverge.
Had to go somewhere else.
So I started walking. Over the bridge.
The other bridge.
That one was closer but I didn't want to walk where we had walked anymore.
I think I knew I had just said goodbye to Waterloo.
I didn't want to say goodbye to anywhere else
Not tonight.
So I walked back through everything you'd shown me
Looking down.
I wanted to listen to a sad song
But I knew I wouldn't make it if I did.
So I put on my book.
A deep sonorous voice to tell me a story that didn't exist,
So that maybe I could stop existing
For a moment.
I really thought
It'd be like usual when I am sad in public.
It's part of why I walk.
I don't cry in front of people.
Especially not strangers.
Don't trust them--
Why would I?
And so I thought
If I were to take the long way home
Maybe it'd seep out of me into the cobblestones
And mingle with the stale water and bits of forgotten litter
And leave me
Be.
As I crossed the bridge, the water beckoned coldly.
I looked away
Cringed
Away.
A man pulled a woman into a kiss.
They were framed by the lights of the buildings across the water.
The intimacy of it
Cut
Me
And I began to stare at the ground again.
But the feeling
Didn't leave.
And I thought
Just get home so you can cry.
Just get back
Just hold off until you're alone.
But I thought of it-
Me
Like usual
On a bathroom floor beneath harsh lights
Muffling sobs and clutching the empty part of my chest
The one that never complains
Until it is comforted
And then
Never seems to get over such
Novel kindness.
I pictured it and I remembered
When I cried in the stall of the price chopper bathroom
In February
Sliding down the grimy wall
Trying so hard to be silent
Because there was a woman fixing her hair in the mirror.
I remembered her breathing
Listening to it and trying
To disappear into the tiles
Trying to keep quiet.
I remembered
Kneeling in my shower in the dark
Back home
I remembered letting the hot water smother my mouth and nose and I remembered
The moment I realized that I was all I had
The moment I whispered to myself- so viciously!-
Get up.
Get up or die here.
Nobody is coming.
NOBODY
IS
COMING.
I remembered and
All that grief
Swelled inside of me
And an idea started.
Small, but insidious.
An idea an echo
What if
What if I just let them all see?
And of course my first reaction was an inner derisive snort,
A quick dismissal.
Ridiculous.
But the idea wouldn't leave.
Tears had been clawing at my throat all night.
All day, really.
Two days, if I was to be honest.
I'd probably known before she'd even decided.
I kept walking, fast,
Head down
Don't look at me
But that idea
Something about the sincerity of it
The freedom
Tugged at me.
There was a moment when I decided to let it happen.
A few times, waiting at the stoplight, seeing nothing, walking when the crowd did, trusting them to keep me alive by accident,
Tears had welled.
A few times before I decided.
And my first thought then was
If you start you won't stop.
What will stop you if not shame?
How many years of tears do you have within you?
Do you
Really
Want to
Know?
I cowered from that question but then
Then there it was again
Show them
Show them all
In a world of people who refuse to feel
Feel.
Be real.
Be the only one.
Be brave enough to accept your pain
And to show it
Or it will boil you alive.
I fought it.
I fought but suddenly I thought why?
A flash of a memory, TOO fresh, slid across my vision and this time
I let my tears fall.
I was in the middle of a split street
With people on either side of me
Waiting for the light to tell us
We could flee
And I felt them slip hot and silent down my cheeks.
I didn't look to see if people noticed.
I didn't want to know.
Their gazes weren't
My problem
Not tonight.
I notched my chin a bit higher
And walked tall
Tears
Pouring down my face and trickling cold into the collar of my coat.
I walked and I thought I'd let go.
I could hear, though...
I could hear a man under the eaves of the building ahead.
He was playing guitar.
I couldn't hear what he was playing over my book.
I was glad.
I didn't want to.
I ignored him.
But as I walked by, I glanced at him, iresistably.
He was smiling
And through the din I'd tried to cocoon myself in
I heard him sing "every little thing, is gonna be alright"
And I felt for no apparent reason
My face
Just crumble.
My steps faltered and I tried to breathe
But this was real
And this was happening
And I realized quickly and gave myself to it
Resigned.
I sobbed
Silently
As I kept walking.
He saw me.
He is the only person I saw see me.
His smile
Froze
And his eyes widened just a little.
I fled
But not before I'd seen him see.
Now I am walking still
And it is cold
And the storm passed moments ago with a death rattle and a shudder,
And now I am slowly congealing,
Slowly the tears in me
Are becoming sludge.
I wonder if they will be stone
Or ice
Or maybe
Just dirt
The better to shrivel and blow away.
Right now I am walking
And I don't know what to think of what I've done tonight
I just know
That when I wake up inside again
I will want the art that came of it to have been preserved.
I will want proof,
Any proof
That this excruciating
Aching suffering
Was FOR something.
So I wrote this.
So you could know
So maybe you could make it mean something
So that when I have healed from this wound
I will have even the barest reason
To believe I should try again.

When you get there
I wonder, will it be sunny
Or cloudy?
Will the streets breathe mist
The way I've always heard they do?
When you get there,
Will that strange light kiss your face
As tenderly as the sun does here?
It better love you right, London air.
When you get there
I wonder
Will there ever be a moment or two
As you wander down unfamiliar roads and lanes,
When you can feel me missing you?
I think all cities, all across the world,
Have some sort of connection,
Like a spiderweb of light
Netted over a cerulean marble.
I hope London will love you
Like I know my city loves you
(because I do and we love alike, New York and I)
Maybe I'll try my hand at a transmission overseas,
Like a telegram
But with feelings.
Maybe I'll go to my city
When you get to London- the very day-
And stand beneath the clock tower down at Astor Place
(where I first saw the city sky)
And wonder, like my five year old self did, if it looks anything at all
Like Big Ben.
Maybe I'll stand there and say hello to you,
As if my city will send a whisper
Halfway around the world
On the wind
To yours.
And if I do that
Who knows-
Maybe it really will
Get there.

I'm too nice. It makes you feel bad. It makes you feel mean. It makes you uncomfortable, being silent when I reach out.
Reasons to leave.
I'm too attentive. You can always be sure I'll try my hardest for you. Buy you little things. Bring flowers. It's boring. You know it shouldn't be but somehow it's just too predictable. Somehow you wish you wondered if I'd stay, and every day I reassure you that I will.
Reasons to leave.
I'm too in love. My love for you makes you feel guilty, as if you can never match it. My sensitivity to your desires makes me sensitive to your dissatisfactions, and although you know it shouldn't, it irritates you that you can hurt me. It makes you feel uncomfortably inadequate again. You remind yourself that love is not a contest between lovers to be the most devoted, nor to be the least injured, and so you've neither lost nor won, but still you have a sense of both, an unsettling sense of both.
Reasons to leave.
Your discomfort leads you to anger. You lash out, ashamed even as you do, and my forgiveness enrages you. You want me to hate you. Want me to react as you would if you were abused. Wish you weren't the abuser. Wonder how you became so. Hate me for bringing it out in you, for before you met my soft, pliant love, my understanding heart, my forgiving mind, you never wanted to strike anything lovely with the flat of your hand to watch the welt rise, a satisfying flaw.
Reasons to leave.
Who are you becoming? Who have you become? It can't be you who is wrong, not when you've only been reacting. I've laid myself down. That must be it. I have goaded and invited you. I've tricked you into hurting me and then shed tears as if I didn't know it'd sting, and yet I refuse to fight you. It must be because I can't. If I could, it would mean that you were attacking someone who meant you no harm, only love, only LOVE! No, no it must be that I have no fangs of my own, only guises. It must be that the only way I can hurt you is to lower you, to make you hurt me and then feel the guilt of it, to turn you against yourself. I have engineered this. You won't be tricked by me! You will keep on until I admit I planned to control you.
Reasons to leave.
It has been too long. Something is amiss. By your estimations, I should have folded by now- confessed that I was never nice, only weak. Repented. Explained that I tempted your cruelty in order to make you loathe yourself. Apologized. Begged. But it has been too long, and I am still forgiving, I am still hurt but not vicious. You decide I need to understand I've done wrong. Apologize, you say.
Reasons to leave.
I do. I am sorry. And you find that the sorrier I am, the angrier you are. The more I tell you you are right, the more you want me to tell you you're wrong. To fight. To be cruel. Untoward. Wrong. You want me to fight so that I will prove I am like you, show my colors. After all, I made you this way. I must be as you are to have brought such venom out in you with such skill. I apologize again. I beg. And you find that the begging makes you want to hurt me, sink a knife between my ribs to watch me squirm the way you're squirming, spitted on the notion that perhaps, just maybe, I was never cunning or sneaky, never manipulative, never trying to take you down... The growing, sickening feeling that maybe I was telling the truth, maybe I loved you, love you. Maybe I really just wanted to bring you flowers.
Reasons to leave.
And now you can't look at me. You wish beyond anything you have ever wished before that you still believed me underhanded. But the part of you that respects me is growing, that understands me, and with it grows a horror that you have acted on a false certainty. And now even as you realize that, you realize that if you apologize, I will forgive you. And if I forgive you, you will hate me for it. And if you hate me for it, you will no longer have any excuse outside the boundaries of yourself. If you hate me for it this time, it will be from a dark, ugly thing inside you. Something you will have to be responsible for.
Reasons to leave.
Because if you never acknowledge it, never apologize, I can never forgive you truly, right? And if I can't, then you can't hate me, and you can't have been so wrong. And so you don't. And for a while it seems to work. But then you realize that somehow, I am not holding you responsible for your cruelties. Nobody is. You've not acknowledged them, and I've found some infuriating way to ignore them and love you past them. And you realize it's not fair. You need it to be fair. It's maddening. It makes no sense.
Reasons to leave.
And now you understand that there is only one way to escape the torture of being forgiven for something awful that you never even apologized for, having sidestepped so many imaginary snares that you've tangled yourself up in your own assumptions and insecurities.
And so
You leave.

I envy those who
Know the timbre of your voice
Just by memory.

Your photo still comes up on my phone sometimes-- do I want to talk to you?
Well of course I do.
But I'm not sure the person I used to talk to so candidly even exists anymore.

I've had a lot of people vanish behind their own eyes,
Victims, lost causes, lost and never found-
Send out the search lights and dredge the lakes:
They aren't coming back home.
I've known a lot of vanished, lonely souls
People who give up the good fight and jump from the bridges of their ribcages
And fall.

And Fall.

They hollow out, shallow and craven,
Just the skin and bones of something that used to be
A universe
But was too afraid.

You don't have to be God's favorite
To dive from heaven.
Not when you carry it within your kindness
Not when your words are light
And your fingers make piano keys ache for them.
You can fall
With your feet on the ground, my friend.
You can cast off grace because
It's just too hard to be
Loved.
You fall
Every time you are cruel
Because
Cruelty doesn't live in you
If you don't give it a home-
I've said it before, you are of the earth,
And the earth is never cruel.
It is brutal, it is wild, it is tumultuous
But it
Is never
Cruel.

When your photo comes up,
I look close,
Although it hurts.
I search your eyes for cowardice.
And maybe I just love you
But I never find any.
I find certainty.
And maybe that is worse.
Maybe the certainty that alone is better
Is more despicable than weakness of character, more damaging than fear.
Maybe fangs, when used to fend off every touch,
Are more foolish
Than tears ever could be.

It is cold today.
The snow comes down in white clouds
Heavy and wet
And I bend beneath it
Like the tree branches that brush the ground in fatigue.
There is no passion in a snowstorm
No lightning
Only weight.

I sat up last night
Waiting.
It was very late
When I finally laid down to sleep
And I had spent so much anguish
That I had run clean out
And slept well.
I awoke this morning
Less afraid than I thought I would be
Somehow embalmed in the night,
Coated in my own version of silent frost,
Even as the world went white and grey outside my windowpane.
Now I am waiting again
And I do not feel sick
Only very tired
And I think the secret must be either to stay awake all night
Or sleep all day.
I love sleep. It's the waking that gets me.
Cold like falling through black ice.
Hot like the metallic tang of blood when you've slipped in the snow and gone down,
Down.

The escape, though
Is worth the return
And for the first time I wonder
If when I am asleep I am as barren and lifeless as the world is
When it hibernates for the winter.
Maybe I hate the cold
But maybe the land needs to burrow beneath itself
And hide under its blankets
And find numbness for a few months
In order to bloom again without crumbling to ashes.
Maybe all this time
I thought winter was my punishment
When it was only
The earth's rest.

I am waiting
On the sun to tell me
Whether I am rising or setting.
Whether I should sleep all day
Or wait up
All night.

What about me do I want you to know?
I could say
I'm a lonely person
Who looks upon the world with a hunger
She doesn't understand.
Sometimes
I pass through the streets like a shadow
Gazing at the warm, rosy souls around me
And when people touch each other
Even in conversation, without noticing,
I ache with separateness
But not
With envy.

I could say
I'm a bit different
A bit dark,
I could say I've seen enough pain
To make me cruel
And that the only thing I'm truly proud of
Is that I am kind anyway.

I could tell you
That I've fallen in love with half a dozen strangers
Just for their eyes
And stayed there for years.
That although I rarely reach for anything,
I yearn in silence
Quietly smoldering, burning for a world full of rawness and contact,
But kept from it by a strangely thick skin
And brittle chinadoll bones.

I could tell you that when I choose to look into your eyes
And let you see the chaos in me
It is a gift which very few receive from me
And even fewer
Appreciate.

I could tell you that if you are gentle with me
I will mend every part of you that ever felt shattered
And meekly walk away when I am finished

I confess
I find it so much easier to be tender
To people who will forget me in the morning.
So much safer to run my fingers along the cheek of someone
Lost
To their need- whatever it may be-
Who won't
Or can't
Notice the hearth of my heart catching my ribs and sending cinders through my veins.
It is not love that makes me tender,
Although love blooms easily from my tenderness.
It is a fascination with other people's vulnerability
Their fragility
Their raw, honest desires and fears.
It draws me in and I spend all my days
Just tirelessly holding back arms that ache to comfort
And eyes that burn to see every dark corner of these intricate creatures I live near day after day
To see and understand and become,

Because I suppose the thing I'd most like to tell you
About me
Is that good and evil
Right and wrong
Mean very little to me, in the end:

I want to be.
I want to be
All.

I want to be every human thing there is
Touch it
Feel it
Taste it
Worship it.
I want to feel every wretched and exquisite thing I am capable of holding without shattering,
And I want to press them all with my palms
Into someone else's skin and watch them rise like ink.
It doesn't matter to me what you are, what you do,
Because whether it harms or mends I will look at you like a stained glass window
Like a statue of marble
Like a painting, all lit and framed and bursting with color.
I want
Every detail of this world
To touch every part of me
And that
Is what I should tell you now
Because that
Is what you will fear later.

I can't make you anything beautiful enough.
Don't you understand?
I can't make something
Say something
Think something
That will speak of beauty the way you echo in my head.
That is what pushes me to the edge of madness late at night
And forces me to sit in stillness
Frozen by the idea that

No movement that could leave my bones in tact would possibly suffice,

No song that could escape without taking my lungs with it could match the tones that rip through my soul,

No art, painted with blood or dragged from the silver tangles of my mind, could glow with the pain and passion I feel
In reflection of you.

Don't you know that to see you, even glimpses,
Even fractures images,
Is a terrible, exquisite privilege
So present, so unbearably alkce, so vast that
It cannot be contained within a single, passionate soul like mine?
It is too enormous to be intimate
And far to close to be
Simply divine.
And I shake with it,
With the power of it and the helplessness it creates within me-
A craving, never sated,
To show you what you are.