My dear, cowardly friend...
This is me saying
You're not truly a god

Until you are cruel.

Take my offering;
I kneel
In defiance.

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.

The last time it rained
I stepped outside into the grey air
And I caught some lightning in a jar
Like a violent firefly.
And I held it up against the sky
With its cold light and its diamond rain
And I felt the hum through the pads of my fingers
And thumping in my chest
And I realized that I am alive
For good or ill,
For better or worse,
I am electric.
I am the thrum of a storm in the air like music.
For all that I have lost,
For all my pointless love,
I am vividly alive.

So I pried up the lid.

You disappoint me.
You light me up.
You freeze my bones,
And you set my soul on fire.
I want you
Just as much as I fear you
And both consume me every night
Through the haze of dreams
In which your face becomes vaguer every moment.
You hurt me,
Because you can heal everything
And you just don't.
You are my faith
Because you love me even when I fail
And you came back.
But I hate you
Because you deny me.
But I love you
Because it is in my blood.
I am in awe of you
Of us
Of how impossible it is that we mean so much
To both of us.
I scorn you, as well,
In the sad moments when my heart screams for your words
And is crushed by your silence.
This love,
It consumes me.
You consume me.
No matter how much I lose
There is always further to fall.
No matter how happy I am
It's never as ecstatic as I could be
(As I was)
In your arms.

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.

A mind is a glorious thing to have.
Mine is a weapon and a tool.
My problem is
I love to think.
I think impossible things, I dream in paradox and theory.
This mind
Can work like a machine,
Gears and motors whirring,
Excitement firing on all pistons,
Ideas flying like sparks,
Inspiration billowing like steam.
But.
If left unused, if not oiled and polished
And constantly working
It turns in on itself
With a sawblade whine
And a merciless drive.
If not always occupied
This mind is a steal trap
Snapping shut on my neck,
Snagging every worry and fear
But letting all the comfort slide right through the grate like
Powdery ash.
Precision and cruelty
Go hand in hand in here
And the other face of awe
Is always chaos.

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.

New world, new life.
This one should be
Colder.
Inside I've stopped
But stopped like a machine with something jammed in the gears
The idea of motion presses on
Grating against itself
Mechanisms I don't understand have stalled
But growl low with their metal fury,
Growing hot.
I am paused, inside,
A picture on a screen, shifting between one second and the next,
Parts of me pixelated and blurry with interrupted action.
It feels, too, like my chest is being filled up with cotton
Packed tight
To keep the gears from grinding in their desperation to restart.
It feels thick.
I am slowly becoming less hollow
And more... muffled.
This feeling
It's wrong
It's dangerous
But I watch it continue and make no move to stop it.
The mechanisms must be protected
Even at the expense of the work to be done.
Until I know if there will be damage
Nothing will move inside of me.

Erase it.
If anybody can, you can.
I have no right to wish you would. But I think you could.
I think if I were to lay in your arms, I would forget everyone who tore me up after you.
I think if I let myself see your face the way I used to, if I memorized your eyes again,
I think maybe I could lose all this.
What I felt when I knew you was pure.
And now
Now I feel like a river or a sea that's been churned black with oil,
Polluted,
Tainted.
I loved how complete my love was then, how clear.
Whether I was in pain or in joy, it had this... sacredness to it.
A clarity. A divinity.
Since then it feels like all anyone's done is graffiti the walls of the church of my soul,
Carve names and cross them out, tip over the pews and shatter the stained glass windows into little harsh rainbow shards on the ground.
There are scorch marks on the doors.
There are vines growing through the floorboards.
Erase it. Erase it all.
Make me new.
You are no angel, and I am no ******, but I don't want to be
Saved.
I want to be new.
I want you to make me remember how to believe.
I want to have faith in someone who actually deserves it.
The girl who knelt at your feet was so innocent, so awed.
She is dead, angel.
She died pure. But I remember her.
I remember her enough to wonder if she could haunt me a little, maybe touch my soul and wash it clean.
I want to be a blank slate, a clean page.
I want to be what I was when you were the first person I ever wanted to be close to.
And I am not naive-
I know that you are no angel, angel.
I know that I am no awestruck little girl.
But I think that if anyone could bring out the purity in me, it'd be you,
And if anyone could bring out the light in you, it'd be me.
I have no right to be wishing you'd erase these years,
All this dust that's gotten caked upon my heart.
But..
I've got to hope for something, don't you see?
I just want to forget.
I just want to be free.
I just want to be
New.

I find that it's the little things that let you show you love someone.
It's rarely a huge light show- fireworks and crescendoing orchestras.
It's usually subtle as a birdsong,
And as constant.
Just something little, just something thoughtful.
Loving is an art, and you can always be more attentive, more tender, more detailed
About it.
I love that about love.
Love is never finished, just like art.
Never finished, only abandoned.
You can add the little flourishes all day long, down to the tiniest things,
And still it will have room to be even sweeter, even better.
If you really want someone to feel loved,
You can work and think and make every second another chance
To show it.
That's what I love about love.
There is always more to give, more to say.
I love to find the little throw-away things, things that are so subtle that the world doesn't even notice,
So small that they could easily be omitted and never be missed,
Those moments of "I just want to give you something, anything."
Because so many people let those things pass-
The thousands of chances they get each day to show love,
Things so simple and easy that they don't even seem to matter,
But oh, they do.
There is no better way to say I Love You
Than to notice when someone is sad and lend a comforting touch to the shoulder,
To take the time to know them well enough to know just what they need to hear and when,
Or to remember their favorite chocolate and buy it for them as a surprise,
Or to know, even, when to bow out and take the crowd with you.
I'll give you my hands,
I'll give you my time,
I'll give you my attention,
My affection,
My passions,
My secrets,
My absence and my constancy,
My humor and my understanding,
I'll give you my body and my mind,
I'll give you security,
Comfort,
Acceptance.
I will give you
As much or as little of me as you want.
And it is my art to know which.
It is my art to invest a bit of all of it
Into every silly little thing I do for you
So that you will feel loved always
But never know quite where it comes from.
It hides, see,
In the little bits of art I do for you,
In the way I might fold your clothes if they're on the bed, just so you won't have to.
In my eyes as I watch you play piano,
In the tips of my fingers whenever I touch you.
All of that is there, and more.
All of that is for you,
So that you can live with that kind of cushion between you and a cold hard world,
If you want it.
And all of that, also, is just hidden enough
So that you may leave it if you don't need it.
This is for you.
This and anything else you could ask of me.

East of the sun and west of the moon, there are no people. No sidewalks, no cities, no cars or trucks or malice.
East of the sun and west of the moon, the sky is a perpetual sunset, a fan of rich golds, sultry reds, blushing pinks, and misty purples. A rosy glow paints the grass and hangs about the trees in a slow dreamy way. Here the rain pours down from the stars, made of shadows cast off.
It melts the roses.
The green and red and pink all swirl like cotton candy. From the ground rise the lives we've denied, delicate and ethereal, on stained glass wings.
Here is a culmination of every dream ever put to paper or whispered into the softness of twilight.
Here is every private wish and secret longing captured.
Here, they live.
East of the sun. West of the moon.

I have learned
Disturbingly
To settle into fear, like an old house settles on its foundation
Sinking by the year.
It used to rise me-
It used to pick me up and batter me
Like the surf batters stones on the ocean floor
Tossing them and beating them upon the rocks.
Now, like an anchor or a shipwreck I...
Settle.
I stay, hard and heavy and dark
Pinned in place and dully aware
Dully waiting--
For a storm to send down debris,
Or the sun to lance through the waves and touch my cold face.
I settle.
I am here, in fear,
I am here
And I am tired
And I refuse to use my strength to struggle in my nets.
Instead, I sleep. I wait. I
Settle.

In the time of courts and ladies and royalty
There was a disorder that plagued the very rich.
Every so often
A king or a duke would become
Convinced
That he was made of glass
And would break
At the slightest flick of a finger
And so let no one touch him.

I wonder at the fragility of the fortunate
And the sturdiness of the downtrodden,
For not a soul who was not of the ilk of a King
Has ever believed such a perilous thing.

I have a scar on the bottom of my left thumb.
I got it
The day after you broke my heart the second time.
I was trying to open something with a knife
And it slipped.
It went straight in
Point first
Right at the joint between my thumb and the pad of my hand
That fleshy spot that is always stretching and wrinkling.
I was shocked at first- it went in deep
Almost two inches.
I suppose, maybe, I should have gotten stitches.
But what I did instead was pull the point out
pop
It made a small sound
Like I was unstopping a tiny bottle of wine.
In fact the hole in my hand
Remained clean and white and surprised
For a moment
Startled, I think, by its own existence.
And then it caught up to itself all at once
And bubbled up thick red blood
Faster than I expected it to.
Beads of it slid down my fingers.
Soon my hand was slick with it
Shaking
And I was still fascinated, transfixed,
Slow.
When the first drop hit the carpet
I figured I should go into the bathroom and let the tiles take the stains.
On the way there the world tilted a little
Since now I held in my cupped hand a small pool of red.
I resented my body's need for its own blood.
Its fragility.
It is so needy and so frail
And I have no patience for it.
On my knees on the smooth cold white floor
And then with my cheek pressed against it
To calm the fever of "shock"
I hated that my shell could steal my will.
I stood again in a moment
Having left a smudge on the floor
And my hand dripped
pat pat pat
Onto the tiles.
The smoothness of my own blood surprised me-
Its tendency to slip away and stand in pools.
Again I looked for a moment
And then ran my hand beneath the faucet
And marveled at the way the water was instantly crimson.
It kept running and running down the drain
And after a while I realized that it was unlikely to stop.
Lifting my now white hand
I peered at it
And there was the hole in it-
A perfect slit, deep and clean and filling up with dark sticky red fluid.
It overflowed again and I did my best to wrap it in bandages.
The bathroom looked like a ****** scene.
Who knew my hands
Held so much?
Who knew we were so easily punctured and drained?
It took a long time to heal.
I kept ripping it open by accident over and over
Because of its prime location in the crease of my hand.
It was weeks, really, before it actually did close.
And weeks more
Before it finally became less of an angry red
And more of a thick, shiny pinkish white.
It is raised.
It still hurts sometimes, even though it has been months healed.
I rather like it.
I like the gory proof of what I went through when you walked away.
It's just a small reminder,
A little white ridge and a tightness on my skin
But
Well
They say you don't know anything
Quite so well as the look of your own hands
And
I think it is appropriate that the landscape of mine
Was forever changed
When you left.

I move through the world
And I want to give
Like a soft rain.
Quiet and gentle,
Never demanding, never harsh, never desperate.
Like breathing
I want to give
And it falls over everything like a shimmering veil.
It is unhurried and strangely detached,
A love that floats lazily down to alight wherever it may.
Most of the time
My need to give is like that.
I have made it so.
But
Every so often I turn and see someone.
I trip and fall and quite by accident I SEE.
And suddenly it courses through me like lightning.
Suddenly the earth cannot accept the light that roots me to it,
Reaching its crackling fingers outward for ANYTHING that will survive its touch.
Unsatisfied and violent with motion, it doubles back and sears through me
Filling my veins with molten silver.
Do you know what it is to love something so completely
That if you were to ever touch it it would powder to ash in seconds
And everything you saw to love
Would catch the wind like cinders?
When I read as a child
That at the smallest level we never TRULY touch-
Our atoms repelling one another by magnetism-
I wept.
And I could still weep
For I have always known the excruciating sensation of "so close",
I was born of it
And the sobering understanding that to touch
Destroys.
Oil paintings, butterfly wings, tearstained cheeks-
My fingertips are weapons.
I have been kissed and thought,
"Unmake me."
I have loved so hard that,
Desperate,
I held my smoldering hands against my stomach,
Willing to burn to keep my arms from seeking purchase.
Oh, all hands are weapons!
And I have held them,
Felt the heat.
I have kissed palms,
Clutched them to my chest and tried to burn away the space
The maddening space
Between my skin and theirs.
If I had my way
If I knew I wouldn't leave equal scars
I would cover myself with the handprints of people I love,
Let them change me.
Let them make me.
I am gentle
Because inside I am chaos.
I am soft
Because inside I burn.
And every time I
Don't
Brush my fingers along the cheek of someone I worship,
I count it as an act
Of unutterable love,
To hold back such tender violence.

I want to make art for you.
I want to make art for you because you are beautiful.
Because you're simple, not in a coarse way, but in a wholesome way.
In a way like the sky or the rain.
You just are, and I wish I just was.
I want to make art for you to thank you for that.
I want to make art for you because I think maybe not enough people have.
Because you ever wanted to die,
And because I'm so glad you didn't.
Because you like storms the way I do
And you make me think new thoughts when I don't think I'll ever find any more
And because you hold a thousand people inside of you, ready to leap onto a page or seep out through your skin,
All of them beautiful and clear
(Like the sky and the rain)
I want to make art for you because
There should be art out there because of you.
Not just created by you
But created because of you.
I want to make art for you because you are another way to love someone
That I didn't know existed.

I wonder what you thought
The night we met
When I pressed your palm to my cheek
And held it there as if it could keep me
From ever crying again.

I wonder what you thought when I woke up and kissed your wrist
In the middle of the night
That time I got to sleep in your arms
And held your gaze as if
Your heartbeat could keep me from ever hurting
Again.

I wonder what you think
Whenever you have to walk away from me
About how I stand there and watch you go
Until I can't possibly see you anymore.
I just stand there
Still.
Paused.
Trying to keep every last second of being near you
Until there are no more left.

I wonder what you'd think if you knew
That there have been times when I've stood like that
Long after you were far gone
Unable to quit the spot where I last saw your smile
As if somehow staying there would help me remember it.

I wonder what you think
Those times when you lean close to me
And I can feel the warmth of your cheek inches from mine
Or your hair brushes my neck
And it undoes me completely
I wonder what you think that I shudder when you're close,
Because I've seen you see me.
I've seen you know.

I wonder what you think
That I write you poems
When I can't sleep.

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.

One day I woke up
And there was green grass outside
And tiny flowers pushing through the tree bark
And I knew
You were coming home.

What a terrible shame that I have such specific taste in people.
There are so many great ones.
So many attentive ones.
So many who would admire me, touch me, listen to me.
And yet at the end of the night I am lonely, not because they leave me behind,
But because I leave them behind, to wait for the few people I know I can learn from in the ways I need to.
The problem is, I seem to spend most of my time just...
Waiting.
I could be that person laughing in the bar,
I could be one of a crowd, talking,
Unhindered,
Unburdened, for the moment, by solitude.
But I am so horribly magnetized. I am so horribly aware.
And I go where I am pulled by whatever sleeps inside my bones, that stirs for certain voices but not for others.
I follow their echoes down alleyways, and at the end of the night,
I have walked alone for miles, and told not a soul my thoughts.
Because in truth, my taste for people is not only specific.
It is venomous.
It is bitter.
It is what tears taste like, or rain, when you've been bowed beneath either in silence and the drops roll down to kiss your lips.
And perhaps the sadness, I could handle. Perhaps I could accept these moments of clarity as transient, as all encompassing in their brevity.
But,
See,
The worst thing isn't to follow and be left behind.

The worst thing is choosing not to follow.

To turn and quietly take my leave, and stay silent, and ask no questions,
Even when they crawl up my throat like smoke, raw and urgent.
The worst is to feel a sudden spark of connection in a liquid world, that slides over my skin like water,
And then to watch it fizzle out-
Puzzled, always puzzled, and always, like a child,
Surprised.

I remember you like you remember me-
Like a dream we both had together,
So hazy that the painful parts have fled
And left only wistful wisps of a closeness
Neither will ever find again.
And oddly it touches me to see
That we're still mirrors of each other's tenderness.

The streetlight is shaped like a lantern
And its golden light spills out in a clear, spoked pattern of darkness and illumination
Its shadows stretch long
And reach their fingers into your empty windows.
If I stand at its base, I stand at the center of a great perfect wheel of light that sprays in all directions.
I speak to you
Because you speak to me.
I wonder
If you recognize the surgical mask swinging from my arm
Soft and white.
They tell me your walls breathe poison
They tell me
That I shouldn't.
I stand and whisper to you
Who I am
Who I have been.
Perhaps the shade of a girl like me
Peers out your yawning windows
Through the spaces where the glass has been punched out
Past the ragged, yellowed curtains that sag limply from above
Out
From between the leafless ivy that twists its gnarled strands up your crumbling skin and digs into all your weaknesses.
Perhaps if I had shown myself a bit earlier
If my life had begun before it did
Perhaps we would have met in a different way.
It makes me sad that I fear you.
Your stone steps, carpeted with dead leaves, black metal railings leaning drunkenly to either side.
Your unnatural stillness.
But I do not fear to walk your halls
Not like the others.
No,
I do not fear you
I fear to become you.
That still
And that lifeless
Like a tree which has long since died and the core rotted
But the husk remains standing
As if it contains something alive.
Are you lonely?
Are you still afraid?
What does it feel like every night
When this streetlight above me blinks on
And peeks inside your high windows?
Do you rush to shut the drapes
Soggy and transparent as they are
Try to pull some tattered protection over the garish
Harsh emptiness you hold?
I stand here
And I feel you looking back at me
And I am sorry that nothing lives in you
And I am afraid that nothing lives
In me.
And if I were to go upstairs and peer out your top windows
I am afraid I would become see through
Like a strip of film
Illuminated.
I fear that I would be a projection on a solid world
And I fear
That somebody
Would turn out
The light.

Sometimes I miss you.
The way you would try not to kiss me and fail,
Spectacularly.
Hold me like I was necessary.
Like you were starving and what you were starving for was my soul.
I loved how hard your hands were, pulling me closer,
How unafraid you were to want me once you finally admitted you did.
I really miss that, I really do.
But I think you were horrible for me.
And now that I have proof that you touched me,
I can find the strength to search for someone whose love
Won't bruise.

Whatever happens, you will sing from every piece of art I do for the rest of my life.
It is my subtle worship and my quiet revenge, both.
You will never fade from me
Because you are gone.

I like to leave my mark on my books.
I've gotten into the habit, as of late, that when my books are tangible
With pages and dog-ears and tears,
And little coffee stains and broken bindings,
That they also hold something else of me.
When I stopped writing my story,
I started scrawling responses to theirs
Everyone else's
In my books
Novels and poetry
Are scribbled with underlines and little comments,
Agreeing or acquiescing,
Rebutting or rebuking
Some author or character to whom I feel a particular connection.
I like to leave a bit of myself in my books
So that they might be no one else's
Not ever.
Compelled by feeling,
I scrawl my heart on the pages of my books
And make us the same.

Sit. Lie down. Heel.
Now stay.
Your puppydog boy does whatever you say.
And he’s always around if you’d like to play.
I knife in my heart when you look his way.
But aren’t I allowed to be happy? you say.
O happy dagger, I’ll play dead today.
Does he *** on the floor if you don’t take him out?
If you don’t rub his belly, does he puppydog pout?
Does he sleep all curled up at the foot of your bed?
Do you ever wish he understood what you said?
Does he lick your face? I bet he begs at the table.
Do you give him a ‘treat’ if he always obeys? Well,
As nice as slobbering mutts can be,
All of that nonsense just isn’t for me.
Me? I like graceful, quick-witted, refined-
The persuasion I lean towards is rather…
Feline.
I might not roll over whenever you say,
And perhaps I don’t melt when you look my way-
No tenderness do I let myself betray,
For I know what it takes to make you run away-
Maybe you cannot control our affair,
But there is a freedom in feelings laid bare.
You think you have everything you want right here,
But you don’t fool me- I know what you fear.
You couldn’t have made it the least bit more clear:
It’s feeling that scares you; you let no one near.
Because once you do, what if they disappear?
Ah, but that is the price of real happiness, dear.
But find a nice leash to hold onto your beau,
And pretend you are satisfied with what you know.
Where I am concerned, you’re so full of doubt:
Although I seem tame, that’s what you’re worried about.
For puppydogs follow wherever you go,
But where a cat travels, no one may know…

There is only love waiting for you here.
No bitterness,
No accusations.
If you leave,
If you sail away like an intrepid ship
On a vast blue sea,
If you forget that I ever breathed your name like a prayer
And touched your lovely face like you were made of glass,
No matter how long it takes
When-
If-
You come back,
There is only love
Waiting for you here.

Must you always cause a fuss?
Isn’t having her enough?
Perhaps I just don’t get this stuff.
I mean, it certainly seems simple enough.
But you will always make it tough.
Careless boy, don’t you know how to treat a girl?
While I look on, you win the day,
And then you throw it all away.
Why do you bother, if you don’t intend to stay?
As if she’s just a game to play.
Silly boy, don’t you know how to treat a girl?
Kiss her, love her, hold her close,
Don’t you know that when she’s far away that’s when you love her the most?
Stupid boy, don’t you know how to treat a girl?
Keep her near you in your dreams
It’s really not as hard as it seems.
For someone who’s been given such a chance,
You leave without a second glance,
I really just don’t understand,
But you’re just a boy and not a man.
Still, I’ve seen bigger men than you
Throw away somebody who
I saw as perfect, and still I watch
All alone with just my thoughts-
That I could be a bigger “man”, a kinder love, a better plan,
That I could be much better than
A careless boy who’ll be a careless man.
Silly boy, don’t you know how to treat a girl?
Careless boy, don’t you know how to treat a girl?
Lucky boy, don’t you know how to treat a girl?
I do.

It always makes me smile
To see them fawn over you.
I know it is a joke to them
But it's an even richer joke to me
Because I know their poetic words to be truer than they imagine
And their exaggerated awe more appropriate than parody.
Maybe it's gauche, but that doesn't make it false, and
That fills me with laughter, quietly.
They don't know the truth
And you don't know the truth
And yet it is being told to hundreds, unabridged and unexaggerated-
How delicious!
How thrilling, when reality is revealed
In such a way that all but the most observant may think it a lie.
It makes the knowing of it somehow more special, I think--

They kiss your hands and compare your eyes to stars
And I wonder if it ever occurs to them
That they should.

I wonder what's under your skin.
Sometimes
I see the glitter in your eyes
Of hidden things
Like the shine of silver minows in deep water
But then the sun comes out and blinds me
And I've lost the trail
Of that starlight that I know drags its soft fingers through the dark corners of your heart.
I want the long shadows it casts.
I want the  complicated, messy figures it throws up on the cave walls of your soul,
I want their unabashed wildness,
I want the savage way they will never keep still in one form.
I want the way they scare you and the way they thrill you.
We hide
So much in this life.
We hide from the world.
I will show you every edge of me
And I will map your edges
With tender hands and gentle words,
And awe.
I want in
To whatever makes you be.

"Oh I know her, she's pretty." Yes, isn't she? Someone else giving you a passing compliment lights my heart up and snuffs it out in the same second. I see your eyes, your smile, and I miss you excruciatingly.
Yes, isn't she?

The most tragic losses aren't the ones that come with fanfare, with reason and justification to grieve, to seek retribution, to go mad and reject the truth.
No, the most tragic losses are the ordinary ones.
Painfully ordinary, they are.
No death, or suffering, or clear cut blame to lay.
Just the rending of a heart, in silence, in stillness, in slow motion.
The most tragic losses don't burst upon you, no, they step, carefully, meekly, into the room, and steal all the oxygen and light from it utterly, and excruciatingly slowly.
They eat away at their subjects.
They ****, but leave no trail, no evidence to pile up and charge against...anyone.
One day, they have simply taken over, become everything, choked all else of its life and beauty.
One day they are just all that is there anymore.

Ever catch a glimpse of an old man's eyes, and see something hollow there?
That is the most tragic loss.
It sits and stares into him, and he sees not your looking, nor anything else.
He sees nothing beyond what has settled before him, that bores into his soul, that clutches cold clawed fingers around his heart
Not suddenly, not shockingly, but tighter by an infinitesimal amount each day over rolling years like waves.
It doesn't have a face,
Doesn't have a name list or a deposition of grievances.
It is beyond definition. We only see its reflection, there, in his eyes, as it holds him.
It exists so completely that it doesn't, except in its image mirrored in a human heart.
That is loss, of the worst kind.
The kind that is forgotten, unmentioned, unimportant.
The kind that consumes lives and evinces hollowness.
It gives no permission to be destroyed, no right to fall apart,
And yet we crumble before it, day by day, into our morning cereal.
And bite by bite,
Our ashes taste like living.

A choir of wolves
Dwells within my heart.
Can you hear them sing?
They're singing
To you.
Whatever your thoughts on the matter
Whatever your hesitations and limitations
Something in me is for you
And I know you know it
And I know you need it
And I hope
You listen
Because I don't care what you give me or don't, but...
This? This song?
This is yours.
Please take it.
Listen.
Listen, and grow.

It's okay if you forget me for an hour, or even a day,
So long as each night when you fall asleep I am there in your head and your heart
As you are there in mine.