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.

And forgive me for staring but I've never seen/eyes like yours, take my breath, and I guess what I mean is/I'd follow you down into hell and back home if you'd let me.
If you'd let me I'd give you the rain, and that moment at night when the sun has just set, and the stars/and I'd give you my heart and the air in my lungs and I'd walk out to meet you/it's never too far if I hear your voice at the end.
If you'd let me.
If you'd let me I'd draw you a city and when it was done it would rise off the page, and surround you/and I'd bring you flowers at 4 in the morning/because I can't sleep when I know you're upset...
And I know that I'm young/and I know that you're busy/I know that I'm not what you planned and it doesn't make sense/but the problem is when I'm around you my heart is a tympany drum and my mind is a mess/and the only thing in this whole world that I want is to see/you/smile.
So if you'd let me I'd like to be someone who stays up till 5:15 in the blue morning and watches the sunrise with you from a rooftop/and looks at you like you're a dream.
And I love when you stutter and trip like a brook on your words, little pebbles that tumble out jumbled/I love how you laugh and the way the world fades when you look in my eyes and take/my breath/away.
I'd like to be someone whose voice makes you smile, whose bad jokes cheer you up on your cloudiest days/whose eyes in the dark tell you "You're the whole world, and there's nothing so wonderful as your next phrase."
I love that you hug me for longer than I have expected whenever you leave me behind/and I love that sad moment when I linger watching you go cause I can't walk away when I know you're still there...
And I love all your scars and the way you've endured and I want to be all that you're missing.
And if you'd let me I'd love you through all of your faults and your petty mistakes and your failings/and I'd be the steadying arms every bad day and the voice that cuts through your self doubt to say you are amazing/and I'd be a love of your life because I'd be so sure that you'd always be just what I wanted/and I'd bring you flowers at 4 in the morning/because I can't sleep when I love you so much...
If you'll let me I'll be your adoring companion/here, quiet and sure that you're brighter than all of the stars/if you let me I'll love you with all of the parts of me I have held back and I'll give you the world/and the only thing in this whole life that I'll want is to see/you/smile...
If you'll let me.

"Please listen to me, don't go to art school. You'll be depressed when you can't get a job.

Please listen to me, don't live in a city. You'll be depressed when it's expensive.

Please listen to me, don't get tattoos. It'll ruin your job prospects, and they never come off, you know.

Please listen to me, don't date that girl. She'll break your heart and then you'll be more depressed than you are now, and I'd rather not deal with you being even more depressed, it's so unsettling.

Please listen to me, why don't you live at home for a while? You could save up and then start your life in a few years.

Please listen to me, I don't want you to have a Hard Life(™).

Please listen to me... you have to get out of bed...

Please listen to me, you look like a plant that's been kept in the dark. I'm scared.

Please listen to me,
I know what's best for you.

...Please say something.
Hello?"

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.

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.

You need to go.
And I don't know how to do it.
I don't want to forget you, to cut you off. I don't want to shatter my love for you.
There has to be another way.
But... you need to go.
I can't keep waking up sore every morning. Raw.
I can't keep talking myself out of tears.
I can't keep wondering why the hell you matter to me, and abusing myself for caring about you.
But I don't know how to do it. It's not in me to extinguish a love.
I have sacrificed every part of myself at least once to avoid it.
It has been the single thing I am unwilling to do.
The one unwavering line in the sand.
And I know where this leads- this trying to erase it.
I know because I've tried,
In pain,
In desperation, to destroy a love before. And I couldn't do it.
I threw more and more at it, unleashed every weapon I had.
And by the end...
I had caught the rest of me in the crossfire, and the only thing that remained untouched was that love.
You need to go.
But that will happen again if I try to uproot you from my soul.
It is a humbling lot. A prideless realization. That I must wait.
That I must serve the part of me that holds me captive, the only part of me I know as indestructible,
The part that reigns because nothing can dethrone it.
I must bow to it, because I like what else I am.
I know that even if I tried with every ounce of courage and hatred I have built up over my years to demolish my love for you, the dust would clear,
And it would be the only thing about me left.
And I don't want it to be.
I don't respect it enough to let it be my defining factor.
And so I sit and stew and wait, for it to loosen its stranglehold, or for you to come back.
It is a prideless thing. And I am a proud person.
And it chafes every single day.
And I swallow it, and go on.

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 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...

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

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.

I can feel it.
You'll be the person I wake up about
At 2 am.
The feeling that forces me out and onto the darkened streets
To wander in search of something I can't define.
I will know this city by your name.
I will find its joy and its melancholy because those feelings in me will bay like wolves until I let them lead me home.
Home...
Home is not inside of me, where it should be.
It is someone's eyes, someone's arms,
It could be
Yours
And THAT is the thought that will pull me along the shadowy paths that line the Thames
And through the forgotten alleyways that twist and tangle in the heart of this place.
I will love this city by your name, I know it.
Already I cannot sit still for it.
Already I can feel the mad urge to go, to search, to scour the night for reminders of you
For answers to impossible questions.
It is not an unpleasant darkness that tickles the edges of my mind
But it is
An insistent one.
I know I will not sleep when I am home
But rather follow this craving to some new, lonely place
And fill it with the expansion of my soul that comes with passion.
I need these empty places when I feel the echoes of love swell within me
Because I no longer seem to fit into the world
There no longer seems to be enough space for me.
Questing inside as I am
For evidences of love
Of safety
Of home,
The ache in me soon and easily becomes
Just too vast to sit with
Too full of motion to remain still around.

Lead me somewhere tonight.

Lead me to a temporary home
And let me breathe in cold, dark air as I try to sate my need for comfort
For contact
Help me find the roughness of stone beneath my fingers
And the kisses of the wind on my cheeks--
I want to touch the whole world.

There will be
No sleeping with this feeling tonight
And I couldn't
Even tell you why.
I couldn't even give you a reason
Except perhaps
That you have eyes
I could love.

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."

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

I wandered late, but I was not alone:
The Night walked with me
Like a black hound
With eyes of rainwater-starlight,
And breath in misty plumes.

The church loomed, hulking, in the dark,
For in my fragility I sought some solace there-
To be alone in a place where faith rang like music,
Perhaps the echoes of believers would seep into me
And slow my pulse
And lend me a scrap of comfort that I didn't own...
There is something sacred about a silent place
In which hundreds of people have sat and allowed themselves
To feel,
And I believe in that, if not in God.

Halfway to tears, I tried the door
But it was locked.
And the belated certainty that it always had been
Settled over me like a lead blanket,
And I sat, shivering, on the steps.
And my companion-
Now a hot, solid form of shifting bones and sinew-
Whined his sympathies,
Curled around me
And laid his massive head
Upon my knee.

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.

I swear that I'm alive,
My spirit, stretching, strives.
When I recall
The wretched fall
My pulse pounces and dives.

I feel the bitten lips,
The wanton fingertips,
Before my eyes
The lovers' lies
Lie soft around my hips.

Until I'm dead and gone
My spirit hungers on
For tender touch,
A love too much.
To never feel alone.

I tell you, my heart beats.
My ribcage parts and meets.
Sometimes I hate
The living state,
But love the living heat.

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?

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I feel as though I'm always under someone's thumb
These days.
I suppose it's not that I ever didn't,
Just that I always thought it would go away
Someday.
You know?
But everywhere I go
There always seems to be a man waiting
To tell me how best to exist
To explain to me
Something I already know
To give me- in the well meaning sort of way that makes my teeth itch-
Advice
On how best to conduct my life.

I'm sure you know the feeling.
I'm sure you've felt it too
And done what I always find myself doing--

Taking criticism you wonder if you'd get
If you weren't a woman.

Nodding through patronizing explanations
Of things you learned years ago.

Smiling meekly at detailed (and unsolicited) evaluations of your character,
Of all the minute things you do and don't do
And how you should do them or not do them
Differently.

"Oh really? Thank you, I'll be sure to do better next time."
I'll be sure to
Be
Better next time.

You say it out of instinct. Out of weariness.
Because you don't really fancy a fight, do you?
Not with someone so much
Bigger and stronger than you
In every classroom
In every workplace
In every system
In life.

If a man were to take a swing at me
Literally
I'm sure I'd be more apt to swing back
And better prepared
Than if he swung with the weight of his privilege
A mean
Right hook.
It's why they so seldom (relative to the alternative, at least)
Swing in the physical world:
Usually the blow lands just fine
As a criticism
Or a joke
Or even a look-
An assertion of
Dominance.
A reminder
Of who is really
In charge here.

And you find yourself
-I find myself-
Acquiescing
Oh I'm so sorry I'm not what you wished I was,
I'll
Change
So that you can be more comfortable.
Oh yes
Right away

Sir.

Everything you don't know
Is a weapon they've got to use against you.

Everything you say and do,
Ammunition.

Places you linger too long
And places you vacate too quickly,

They are marks against your name

Proof that you could always be more
Like them

Be better
Like them

(But not too much "better", or you're
Bossy
Rude
Abrasive.
Just "better" enough to assure them that
They're still the standard.)

But the thing is,
All this surrender,
It builds up.
You don't dissolve when you swallow yourself like a pill for them
Paint a sugary smile on your face
For them
And make sure they know you just aren't smart enough
Just aren't tough enough
To live without their guidance.
When you lie to survive
Those moments STAY.
They stick in your throat as you walk away.
They come back to you
Acidic and harsh
As you try to fall asleep.

That feeling
The feeling of acquiescence
It festers inside you
And it
NEVER really stops
Does it?

I don't know...
I just thought it would stop.
I thought
It would stop
After middle school.
And I thought
It would stop
After high school.
And I thought
It would stop
After college.

And it hasn't.

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.

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 want to lay down in a green field, with rain falling in a light mist on my cheeks,
And I want to let myself grow roots,
Let my heart take hold of the soil and feel the damp imperfection of it.
The roughness and the cool, dark flavor of it that seeps inside you and won't leave.
I want to breathe.
I was so sure that everything was over.
I was so sure that I had to fight. To survive. To put my head down and trudge on.
I was so sure I would never have the chance to lay in the grass and think again.
I wish I could explain this complex joy.
It's so pure that it feels like grief.
It's what you see in the tears of people who thought their children died in a school shooting when they finally hug them and feel their small, warm heartbeats, safe and sound.
A relief so complete that it destroys you.
A love so powerful that it ruins you.
A happiness so intense that it breaks you down in sobs.
I was so sure I would never be home again. I didn't know how sure. I refused to know it.
But here I am, and I am lost to this feeling.
This impossible reprieve.
I don't believe in god. I don't worship in temples or churches.
But I have known rapture. Rebirth. Total salvation, so perfect that it breaks my heart.
It doesn't come from god, from heaven or hell-
For I hold both of them in the pit of my stomach,
And sometimes they war,
And sometimes they burn,
And sometimes
They reach out and touch each other's faces with such love and tenderness that the light they throw off
Shatters my skin like it's a shell made of sugar,
And washes the entire world white.
I want to surrender to how afraid I was that I would never feel truly at home again,
And how utterly grateful I am that I have another second to believe that I might.
I want to spread myself on the cool ground and let my body sink inside it,
Thank it for touching my shoulder blades and my hair and the backs of my ankles with its comforting solidity.
It feels as if my lungs have grown, as if they'd been locked in bronze for months,
And only now have they remembered how vast they used to be, and how hungry to live
And learned their art again.
This joy comes from something greater than god.
Greater than punishment or salvation.
Greater than wrong or right or good or evil.
This is the spark that jump starts every soul
That begins us
At the very start
The first breath,
And it has begun me again
And I don't know why it did,
But I feel so lucky
I feel so
Saved.
I don't know who or what to cry to,
To thank,
To repay.
I only know that I can breathe.
And that I have never had such moving gratitude
For anything in my entire life.

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 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.

I want to die in your arms.
Long nights, full of the smoke of darkness,
I have thought it in secret, in longing.
Who thinks such things? But I do.
I dream of it, like it's a salvation.
All my anger, all my fear and sadness, all my wretchedness,
I am proud.
And I want it gone.
I want it taken by your breathless touch on my cheek,
Your tears.
I want to die in your arms.
When I leave this world, I want you next to me.
I want you holding me.
I want your words the last I hear,
And I want my last breath to be your name.
I've tried so hard not to want it, my love,
Told myself it was wrong.
But blood and tears are much the same,
Sliced from you they both fall free.
I want to die in your arms.
I want to see your face last.
I want anything from you, in the end.
If you hate me for dying,
If you hate me for taking too long to die,
If you love me for loving you,
If you love me in apology
I want to hear it when I'm dying, in my last moments.
I want your voice, your words, your sighs, your eyes meeting mine.
I don't want to die, darling.
But I want to die in your arms.

Laughing with you is better than kissing anyone else.

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.

People are okay with sunsets, and rainstorms, and oceans.
People are not okay with "you are the type of person who first gave people the idea to build temples."
That is how I see you.

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.

Little moments,
Soft and dizzy.
The touch of your arm round my shoulders.
The perfume of being close to you.
The memory of your hand on the small of my back,
Hot handprint pulling me closer.
The smug smile on full lips,
"I know you want me."
But you can't look away when I dance with her, can you?
Think of me as yours and you will fall to me.
Not so smug, darling:
I am stronger than you.

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.

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.

Lean close to me
Brush your fingers along my knee
And
I will whisper in your ear
With my hot breath
All the things I know you'll say someday.
I say
Run
I say
This is no joke
I say
I will be too much for you
I say
You will want me
Gone.
And you lean close to me
Brush your fingers along my knee
And say don't be silly, tell me I'm wrong
But I say
Wait
I say
Give it some time
Someday you will say "You don't see it."
And I will say "No, I saw it first."
I say
Believe me or you will be in far too deep
And you say
You're special
And I say
*You're doomed.