I feel crumpled and lost like the embarrassing memories you pushed to the back of your mind. And I wonder if it's possible to win at life when the world really isn't conspiring in your favor. Alas, I've given my chances to the broken-hearted people, let the seeds that I plant take the time I have here, and walked in the lines that all others seem to follow. But I am not the lady staring at her toes. I am the elephant in the room whom no one, not even myself, wishes to acknowledge.

And in that one blackberry were all the tastes of summer. All the flowers, wildfires, ****, and ice cream bars. In one small fruit was an entire season: from the moment you stepped off campus to the last stitch you knit before you fell asleep. The day you found your first tiger lily and your heart melted like it did the first time you kissed her lips. And the first night you danced like no one was watching. It was also heartbreak, longing, tears, and resent. Every time you cried remembering complete bliss that slipped away. Every time you looked at his face hoping and longing to kiss his lips. They danced like his hands did when he scaled that redwood by the ocean. And the moment he looked down at you to smile your throat caught and your blood started rushing faster. But you drove him down that windy road by the river and that was the last time you saw him. Now it's every time you curled up on your bed at 4pm crippled simply by reality. And after that season was gone, taken by all the leaves that withered in the record heat, after you still couldn't believe you lost everything that you ever loved. You took another berry from the vine and withered in the memory of all the days that vanished while we were climbing trees and getting lost.

I have seen death. I’ve flirted with it ever since the day your lips wrapped around that triangle you called your favorite place. Millions of drops flung themselves against your glass, and I wondered if rain was water committing suicide. That sounded so poetic. You came closer, but I ran farther into realizing that if I killed myself, poetic would not describe it. “Expected” is what they would have said. “So tragic” said the kids who never bothered to learn my name. They all told me how you were something that destroyed life. You were a ghost barely visible, but when you passed by everyone’s blood turned cold, giving the whole room stuttered breaths. All those days that you held my waist I thought that I knew what I was doing, but, ****, I was only 15. You were almost done as I dug my nails into my arm hoping no one would notice the scars. After your body collapsed onto my back you turned me over. My whole face was wet, because my tears soaked your pillow that I buried my face into. It felt how the river does in April: not refreshing, but an awful biting; burning pain. I was trembling the way you do when you hear someone has died. Shivering in a cold sweat I vaguely saw you staring at me, and as I opened my eyes, trying to pull my eyelashes apart, you turned your back to step off of the bed. The muscles in your shoulders exposed, and I remembered them a year ago lifting me out of the lake to kiss my face. You pulled something over your hips and glanced back at me again. Then you walked off into the bathroom. And I thought how no one ever imagines these things will happen to them, but there I was, laying on your bedsheets naked and trembling. So this is irony.

There are some people whose worn and wrinkled skin only tell stories of horizons at the end of suburban streets and modern collages of white paper. There are others whose creases seemed to have transferred from dry soil that was cracked preceding water falling from the hose in that hand. American spirit was lost in those who spent their days nodding to a television behind them. Disconnected from hands that once felt the soil where nourishment sprouted now used only to unload cellophane wrapped vegetables from plastic bags. That spirit was carried on by a man born in Kentucky not fooled by artificial colors for he knew the full spectrum of letting the sunlight arch from ear to ear.

As if
the taproot of my spine.
And you grew roots from your feet
as we both tried to run,
but the earth turns,
so we are anchored,
but each heart carries.
So our wanderlust
leaves us spread the world
but you say it isn't enough
to fly with sparrows,
and die with another.

Give me your love, and give me your life*

Lie next to me, soak in my heart.
Gaze past the stardust,
and experience the world's
oldest mystery.

I'll tear you apart, but
only with my soul.
You'll stay gracefully
spill your tongue through my heart.

On our evening together,
we'll dine in tension.
You'll have catharsis,
I'll have regret.

Far within my mountain
lies a tiny pretty rose.
But no one knows,
how this little flower still grows
for its home is deep inside my mountain
where no sol ever shows.

Surrounded by stone
covered in snow.
So treacherous a place
few ever walk.
Those who have,
they shake the earth
For my mountain is frightened
it tenses, it shakes.
And my little flower breaks