You,
The experience
You,
Beyond the
Main five
Senses,
You,
Inside
Surrounding
Enveloping
Me

Two o'clock sober
might still be hungover
you're begging for my tongue while I beg for your love.
I never thought I'd love like this,
one-sided and founded on ever unstable lust. I shouldn't even call this love,
I think it's love and I think you're just in it for a ****. Writing
poems about you is "hard" because I can't admit
what I can't bring myself to say out loud. You told me your secrets
and I swallowed the seeds, letting your admissions
bloom inside of me.
How could I have been so stupid? I should have known
you would plant a garden just to leave.
Girls made of gardens wither without affection
I must not be your favorite flower. I don't think I ever was
but you keep coming around just to see my petals unfold
every spring and I let you leave dew drops all over me

We've done this before. Lines and rows of blooming pinks and red,
scratches, finger prints, bruises, hickeys, marks that fade
after a few days. No matter how many days it's been, weeks, months
we find our way back to the patch of wildflowers
where we first decided to make love.
There will always be changes to the scenery and
I can't think of anyone else that I would plant myself anywhere with.
One of us is always leaving but somehow the wind blows us back home.

I'm not religious anymore but the Ten Commandments
seared inside of my psyche flash
before my eyes and I hear myself repeating
"Thou shalt have no other gods before me"
while I make myself ****** to the pictures you sent me. One night,
I wrote everything about you that I idolized in big letters on lined paper
and ripped it into squares. I twisted the paper bits
into your godly shape and whispered
your name as I dropped you into a floral candle and let the flame
eat your tiny body. Have you ever felt crazy?
Have you ever been so in love that it makes you crazy?
Until you've made a lover into an effigy
and tried to force your passion for them to rest
by cremating their paper remains
I don't know if you understand how close love and crazy really are.

I swear. I swear, I'm done.

But I'm not done. I pretend to forget
the way your name feels for a while, I pretend to idolize
other things but when you appear
uninvited to my dreams I can't forget the things I've seen. You kiss
my forehead as midday sun
settles on my skin and a garden of roses
start to bud where you've planted love. You pick the most precious one
and when you cut the stem I **** awake, facing the candle
where I tried to destroy what I thought of you. I don't know
why I see you everywhere and I don't know why
I keep asking questions that I'll never have the answers to.

Once you're actually here my laugh bubbles
from my throat and chrysanthemums and lilacs and daisies
fly out. When you kiss me I swear I feel ivy
entwining itself into my hair and my eyelashes grow tuberose.
I bloom with you and when you leave I become winter, waiting for you
to tend me. Every day with you is spring
and I know exactly how fast the seasons change. "Thou shalt not covet"
but god, I want you
I want you to trust me with everything and I want you to sow more seeds.
I can't tell you the last time I read my bible,
I thought it didn't have a hold over me anymore but I want you
to choose me and I don't want
to feel like I'm setting myself up for heartbreak anymore.

I've been thinking
about touching you
for so long
And now that I am
it feels euphoric

Your skin,
as soft as
I remember it

I melt into your words. I catch the flame
flickering on my bookshelf
where I burned your likeness and look into your eyes
flashing my most devilish smile.
You're back in my room and you've covered my body with sticky honeysuckles
and forget-me-nots. You, imperfect as anyone else but I see you
like you're some walking god. You, human as me. Your hands
left prints of hibiscus on my skin and when you leave
I open my diary to the page where I pressed cherry blossoms and maple
leaves and they fall as I write about how happy I am to see you.

"I just don't think that men like you like women like me who have moonstone eyes and crazy day dreams, women who dot their poems with inky pearl tears, pressed poplar leaves and, well, I wanted to write you a poem but I can’t think of any creative words. I want you to read how beautiful you make me, how your eyes drink me in, how I overflow for you. I want you to feel the conflict in my heart... so rarely that I see you but every time we reunite we are even better than the last. I don't know if you want to read it but I want to write you a poem. I want to write you a poem that makes you cringe because I write with honesty. I want you to feel the rhythm of my words the way we feel the rhythm of our bodies. You should be happy to inspire someone’s poetry. You, you don’t love me. And that’s fine, because I’ll always look back at you and see sunshine streams on your skin."

My room is all white and pink, floral print and my African violet.
You look perfect in the rosy glow
of my feminine sanctuary and I feel so appealing,
I trust you enough to show you everything, I say, luxuriating the words in the sunlight.
I want to absorb this moment to keep me warm. When I lay alone
thinking of drifting to sleep in your arms, it is this moment
with you around me,
the way you kiss my face like I mean something to you
and this is the place I go, when I swear
all of this means nothing to you. Doesn't everyone want to feel home?
Maybe I think being with you feels like the kind of home
with a nice garden I want to live in. Maybe you feel it too.

Maybe I'm reading too far into everything
and not saying enough of anything
maybe both of us say nothing hoping the other will
be the one to admit the feeling
but you, as soon as you leave and I tell myself I’m done. Swearing
I've burned up the last of you, I’ll never do it again.

I can't stop thinking about you

And I'm back thinking about you, too.

between her palms
raw as a bleeding heart

******* the juice
from a ****** pulp
still beating throbbing

I pictured her tongue
******* a ****,
throbbing in her throat

The way she kissed
the soft flesh and
licked every red drop.

~Many people rely on the convenient, easy ways of living in this age of fast food, plastic packaging and rapid development. Most people do not care to see why they live the way they do or what it takes to live in such a way. Toxic pollutants leaching into our earth and water should not be worth the convenience! Third world women working in dusty, cramped factories to make designer purses for fifteen year old girls. Garbage is America’s biggest export and it ends up in China, on the coast of Somalia... anywhere that American citizens won’t be bothered to see it.

~What does it mean to buy a pack of plastic razors? Some metal, some chemicals, some plastic, more plastic for packaging. Use a razor a few times and toss it in the garbage. Somewhere, maybe at La Chureca, someone will pull the rusted metal and plastic from the landfill. They might make one US dollar per day collecting scraps of aluminum, glass, plastic and other scrap metals. What does it mean to wear deodorant? The plastic stick isn’t reusable. The ingredients are highly toxic. Aluminum-based antiperspirants have been linked to Alzheimer's and cancer. Soap comes in plastic bottles, coffee makers made of plastic, water bottles made of plastic… hell, my plastic shower curtain came wrapped in plastic packaging.

~Americans are lucky. Indoor plumbing with quality water. Green lawns and exotic flower beds. Buy and use, throw away and repeat. Big corporations pay off politicians to pollute. Industrial waste, land erosion, low air quality, pesticides. Why are we so quick to trust an artificial sweetener being promoted by a company that makes poison? They call you a hippy, a conspiracy theorist. They tell you that you only live once and to stop being so worried about it all. I ask them, how can you look away? Deforestation and destruction are all around. Those that profit are not concerned with what happens to the land after the loggers and miners have left the ground scarred and desolate.

~Modern living is a hoax. Yeah, you get around quick in your car but at what cost? Carbon dioxide, greenhouse gasses choking us and everything alive that lives with us and cannot speak. Can’t you walk to the corner store? Can’t you grow a few things in the garden or in the windowsill? When was the last time you saw a sunset and didn’t take a picture of it? Dairy cows packed together so tight they can’t turn around for your glass of milk. The disconnect is everywhere. Overpopulation. Overconsumption. People don’t care.

~They can choose. They can choose paper over plastic. They can buy a water filter instead of 20 plastic bottles. They can bike to work. Anyone can lessen their impact, anyone can think more deeply and live more sustainably. But we’ve made it so easy to be lazy. We’ve become so dependent that we’re forgetting to use technological gains to make the way we do things better. We’ve come so far that we’re forgetting what brought us here.

~

‘We are slaves in the sense that we depend for our daily survival upon an expand-or-expire agro-industrial empire – a crackpot machine – that the specialists cannot comprehend and the managers cannot manage. Which is, furthermore, devouring world resources at an exponential rate.’ Edward Abbey

‘In the developing world, the problem of population is seen less as a matter of human numbers than of western overconsumption. Yet within the development community, the only solution to the problems of the developing world is to export the same unsustainable economic model fuelling the overconsumption of the West.’ Kavita Ramdas

‘Water and air, the two essential fluids on which all life depends, have become global garbage cans.’ Jacques-Yves Cousteau

‘Globalisation, which attempts to amalgamate every local, regional, and national economy into a single world system, requires homogenising locally adapted forms of agriculture, replacing them with an industrial system – centrally managed, pesticide-intensive, one-crop production for export – designed to deliver a narrow range of transportable foods to the world market.’Helena Norberg-Hodge

‘Throughout history human exploitation of the earth has produced this progression: colonise-destroy-move on.’ Garrett Hardin

The lust we share on cold midnights, lucid
and gentle but so passionate and rough
can keep me hypnotized. Translucent blue
eyes shine like moonstone, glinting bright with love
hidden from sight. I want to call you mine
but I know better than to pine over
a man up way too high, stuck on cloud nine
not planning to come down or to get sober.
I’ll let myself get lost a little while
in the forest of curls behind your ears.
I’ll wander your body concealing smiles
that give away feelings that interfere
with the promise to love myself before
someone else. I am who I’m living for.

First glance, I’m a good Christian girl. But dark purple flecks decorate my neck.
In leather and lace I forget to pray and let you do what you want with me
because pain is complex and melded with pleasure.

Do you know what they say about girls that enjoy ***?
They never dare to say it to my face but I can feel them staring from the pew
at the dark purple flecks that decorate my neck.

Your hands, more powerful than God, make the earth of my body quake
while I draw fault lines down your back with my nails under the broken
crucifix above your bed. The pain is complex and melded with pleasure.

Deep, growling voice shakes the dusty rosary on your nightstand when we ****.
Your handprints are left on my flesh and the hand around my throat
leaves the dark purple flecks decorating my neck.

Coffee in the narthex and I’m labeled a harlot. Sinner. Sacrilegious. Branded as freaks…
Brush it off. I know what you like and how you like me. God will have mercy.
Sensations blend because pain is complex and melded with pleasure

and I can’t have one without the other. To reach our peak
you leave me red, marked and breathless, gasping, “Oh my God.”
Questioning my beliefs with dark purple flecks to decorate my neck,
I know pain will always be complex and melded with pleasure.

What is it about this drunken town where the snow falls like cement
that made it so easy to fall in love with the delirious nightlife that never sleeps?
It seems like when I’m with you at night I never sleep.

We’re dancing around the cemetery like we threw a ball for souls.
No one believes you when you say you see something from the corner of your eye
but we all feel the chill and agree that tonight we will never sleep.

Do you remember the night you told me to never hold back? ******* I wanted
to cry but I forced a smile through my lips and eyes. I laid next to you with a blank mind
for hours knowing that you think I‘m a mystery. I learned that the train yard never sleeps.

The ******* microwave is broken again when you come home drunk.
You called me a **** and punched another hole in the wall and
I’m scared enough to know that tonight I’ll never sleep.

That bag of ice clutched tight won’t leave his hand jammed in his pocket. When
he gets home he feeds the crystals into the glass and heats it up. Tweaked out
and wandering the streets at three. A woman mutters, “**** addicts never sleep.”

Have you ever dozed off in warm grass while watching
clouds passing lazily by? My god I swear there’s nothing better than
a nap in the sun for someone who never sleeps.

Glass rips my forehead clean open and exposes my frontal skull bone while
strange men hold me down and taunt me with knives and chain saws.
Reoccurring nightmares are why many insomniacs never sleep.

A sensual shower at midnight, that fat hit at two did nothing. Lavender and candles
aren’t working. I’m staring at the ceiling. You roll over and pull me close.
“Leah, please, go to bed. It kills me that you never sleep.”

I mailed you a letter because you said
the art of writing is dead but I know
how to twist words into sculptures still small
enough to fit in the post box. I hope
you read what I wrote. I opened my heart
and sent you a poem. Someday when you’re old
you will show your grand kids the written art
some hopeless romantic girl undersold,
prefaced with ‘it isn't anything great but
maybe it will lead you to understand.’
I never claimed to be the best but my
head is full of cosmos and volcanoes
begging to explode black holes on paper as
relics pressed between pages like a dried rose.

Scorched pavement would hold on to day
light. The concrete,
still warm, would kiss my barefoot feet.

Until dark I
would roam on summer nights, tasting
freedom in my

midnight curfew. When autumn came,
dancing in like
blown leaves skinned off weary trees, the

sumac flushed red
as cardinals wings blanketing
the landscape and

reminding me that winter comes
with a heavy
hand. Bitter green apples fall from

the backyard tree,
does and fawns passing through to eat
the fallen fruit

are startled by me and dart back
to the swamp where
the fog rises up every night.

Poplar trees stood tall while their leaves
made the final
kamikaze plunging fall. New

Converse shoes made
their debut on the way to school,
briefly, happy.

Winter brought isolation and
dreams of still warm
city streets under wandering

feet. Holding out
through cold purple glow, I wait for
spring’s warmer air.

I woke up to the sound of a train and it was raining. I might be dreaming.
My mom has always loved
the sound of a train and here I am in someone else’s bed thinking
about how much I love the taste of blood and the smell of sweat.
My plant has a pulse but my eyes might
be playing tricks on me, I have a way of forgetting to separate my dreams
from reality. Sometimes
I share too much of myself with people too soon. I told
him that my grandma had green eyes
and that’s where I got mine and that I’ve got nightmares that test
my patience night after night
with grotesque new realities on display before my eyes
and that my nails are stained from pomegranate and that
I got straight As and I told him to bite me because
I like it
but I shouldn’t have said it all so soon.
When I’m hurtling home in my metal death trap
powered by explosions I take pictures of the sky to show myself that
I’m alive and beauty is only here now and a deer
could leap or someone could swerve and ****
me or the airbag could rip off my jaw and I’ll
spend my life bearing my ******* way that I didn’t intend. I’m the writer
with no jaw that everyone reads out of pity and to get a glance
in the windows of a ******’s life.
When I wake up my jaw is still there
but I’ve been clenching it again.
No adderall, no *******, no caffeine, just the pressure
I put on myself and the weight of life knotting up the muscles in my back
until my ribs start to tighten and constrict my breathing so I pull at the ribbons
laced up and down my sternum
but it is too late and the bone corset pulls me in,
pulling pulling pulling until
my organs burst out of my skin.
He tells me,
“You’re hard to read, you know.” I giggle
but I find it tough to explain the rich cascade of emotions that are tied
to the lunar tides and make me crave coffee at midnight in terms
that don’t make me sound completely crazy.
Well, tonight I am eating dinner and attempting to read while the television
babbles at me from another room
about something I don’t need to hear but I hear
a cracking sound and my teeth are sharp and jagged and crumbling
as I run my tongue across them. I wake up sweating.
When it was sunny I bought socks from the little girl section and I drenched myself in perfume. Later on we were drinking chai tea
and getting *****, so I **** on your fingers
while you choke me and in the morning you make pancakes
and I eat it
but I’m afraid of the flour and the substance because it rises up
under my skin and collects in unwanted pools on my body.
I shouldn’t have drank any beer but
I had three
and I spilled my secrets the second I felt the warmth of trust.
God ******* ****.
I drive in silence.
The poster’s eyes have been following me
all night and I don’t know if it is a matter of perspective
or some delusion convincing me that I’m not alone
word vomiting on notebooks and textbooks and gushing
piles of words onto my comforter. I pictured
growing a human being inside of me and my heart
started trying to run from my chest
I scared myself into an anxiety attack
picturing years flashing before me. Before I told him
that I’m not like most girls
he kissed my forearms
and then he kissed my neck. Maybe I’m crazy for believing in astrology but
last night I was hearing your moans
as roars like the lion you are purring, nuzzling me
until you fell asleep and I remembered
being five and wishing I was Belle, marrying the beast. I don’t know.
I don’t know if I’m crazy.
I kept losing my earring in your bed like I secretly wanted to leave something more tangible than my scent or stray blonde hairs for
you to find and remember me by. I think you like me too much and I’m
afraid of what you’ll find when you get in my mind and see the battlefield
that rages inside of a pretty head.
I used to see the world with the eyes of a child but today I feel like I’m senile and looking at the world from the future and dissecting the past
because I lost track of time again and no one knew where I was for seven hours. I might have been wandering but I think I was asking
a fruit fly for directions when she flew into my pupil and laid eggs on my optic nerve causing the light to fraction
and my thoughts to be projected onto the wall ahead.
People passing by could see it all streaming out of me,
every emotion, every desire, every fear and every image,
even the smoking **** on the cement
from when he left got stuck on my screen
and the dream I had the night before
about a man with gigantic hands
and a woman shielded her eyes
as I thought about the way you use your tongue on me. When I finally
stumbled home the projection had stopped
but the maggots had started and I stared at the mirror
and branded myself with the word ugly.
The pill is folded in the dollar and I whack it with a lighter,
the white shards scatter out and I lay the bill flat and crush crush crush
until the powder is free of chunks. One two three
making ten perfect lines, five on each side and my nostrils are on fire.
I **** smoke from a pipe and get so high that my entire face feels like melting
off and I’m so determined to sleep that I can’t
and I anticipate
gritty dreams but I never drift off.
Three glasses of white wine later I drive to his house and I can hear the train hitting the breaks while we throw empty beer bottles at the moving cars
from the roof of a crooked house. And then, the willow tree
draped over the train tracks
grabs the wind with her branches and she summons
sheets of rain that come blasting down.
I’m afraid of heights and I’m not sure why but I think falling
from the apple tree at age thirteen was the first time I realized that
bones break and they never heal the same way and my hands are shaking but

I stay on the wet roof with you and I let myself melt into this
momentary reality.

You. You were
never better than when
you
wore that cologne
that smelled like Havana nights and
fresh cinnamon spice.
Your
scent keeps haunting me through
days and nights.

What is it
about sensory types
of
memories? I
can't shake you from my five senses
no matter how
hard
I've tried. Will you forget
about mine?

Barefoot
in hazy summer
dew on honey skin.

Sun sets over
new chapters
blown  in
by warm wind.

My body burns to rove far from man-made
buildings, prisons for the modern soul.
I need to traverse the frontiers white man stole
from those who made it their home.

I've been down to the Everglades of Florida.
Fan boats flew through the estuary lines with roots
of mangroves. I've been to the Hoh Rain Forest of
Washington where fog descended on the shoreline
and married the sulfur smell rising from hot springs.

I must experience America's coast to coast beauty.

Every spare seconds I spend luxuriating in the
sun, thinking of all the places untouched.
My list of desires grows as the glaciers
of Glacier recede in Montana, beckoning
me to the Rocky Mountain Peaks.

Old Faithful gushes, surrounded by wolves and grizzlies.
Someday I'll cross Yellowstone's expansive mountain ranges.
from Idaho to Montana to Wyoming. On the arches of
Utah I'll face my fear of heights and find solace at
the tops of time-layered sandstone towers.

Descending the Grand Canyon I'll study beautiful
colors exposed by years of erosion. In winter
Death Valley will be braved. The lowest and direst point
will exhilarate me with scaled creatures as sand
dunes whisper my name with every hot breath.

The Badlands of South Dakota will hope I come
backpacking through prairies to watch precious bison roam.
California Redwood trees and I will stand side by side
as friends. Yosemite will call me to her cliffs and I will chase
waterfalls and sequoia groves until I've seen it all.

I ache to explore the terrain that bears
my name, the country I call home.

I
Summer came with scorching tar, grit
whipping up in the warm wind getting
stuck between the gaps of my teeth.

Boys come in sheets like rain,
leaving my curly hair a mess of cotton candy,
loving with marvelous humidity in the air.


II
I crave the familiar in fall. Men with
beards the color of dead leaves that absorb the smell
of cold air, bring the freshness inside with a kiss.

Will the dying season bring better things?

Naked trees shiver bare in the breeze. I could run
away, until the trees are cloaked in rich green.
For now we mourn the shed leaves.


III
Winter brings darkness
short but brilliant light.
From childhood we have been
tricked into seeking
someone to make us happy.

Muddle through the memories
holidays bring. Purple skies shine
late at night but the months
move like molasses as
snow turns ***** white.


IV
Rebirth brings light. Curtains on fire
with your eyes in morning shine. Haze
settles on the room but everything feels new.

Open windows coax goosebumps like your fingers
early in the morning. Transparent chill clings to air
though the longer days I've been lusting for.

Read the cryptic writing on the foggy
bathroom mirror, you'll never understand it.
My words have blossomed into more.

Glass is cheaper than the stone skin
tattooed on their foreheads. The palace, a splendid fantasy,
half built when the idea will be abandoned.

Freedom is a powerful nuisance! Their only
sin is looking at the world through rose-colored
glasses, make people feel at ease despite distress and disease.

The right wing redneck reactionary republicans continue
religious slaughtering. This nightmare scenario should
be nixed, said with a sneer, I hope they’re wearing warm socks.

Still, I couldn’t crack the code. Changed envy to admiration
to cultivate mystery rare as it is rewarding. The weird thing
is the high-end whiskey collecting dust on the on the shelves.

Nothing short of astonishing, like the space farers gazing back
at the home planet. Distant. They fascinate people.
Animate the inanimate environment. Isolation above.

Looking back I am ashamed of the mess we are leaving
our children and grandchildren. How to allocate these limited
resources? The key is to engage. No easy fixes.

Morning light comes crashing through the
windows of my terribly mundane room,
the same place I wake day after day. Dust has settled
on the picture frames week after week and leaves
a pall of sadness over the bookshelves.

Misery isn’t always some place we speak of
so distantly, as if waking up here wasn’t akin to
tearing off a scab and rubbing salt and sand
into the wound. My first thought of the day was
a wish, that love could be more than
just a blank page staring back.

The first sip of hot coffee reminds me of the
velvety words that always fell from your mouth. I’m
wishing that I was in another place or knew
another language, like the one I already know
somehow isn’t good enough for writing you poems.

I’m snapped out of my nostalgic mind
by the neighborhood children playing on the street.
Their screams echo down these barren halls; I wish
I could be five and full of pure joy while
learning the world all over again. But I have aged
and my innocence was lost so many years ago.

Everything I had tried to write you was full of guilt
and sadness and missing my genuine joy. Before I had to
picture my mother in a casket. Before I knew you’d leave
for someone who could fake happiness better
than I ever could. Before I lost that last bit of naïve light.

I’ll be searching for the beauty I once held inside.
Today my thoughts are shrouded in what was better
about yesterday. There is no use in counting money and
moments already spent. Maybe for a day I’ll forget you and
force myself to write freely and be childlike. I won’t try to
quantify beautiful, writable moments of everyday life.

Maybe today I’ll actually let myself write.

I've tried to write you a sonnet so elegant
but like daggers my words are too sharp, too harsh.
Crumpled pages liter the floor and all of my ink is spent
from my attempt to twist phrases into proper English.
Nothing can better describe your eyes but the color blue.
Perhaps the ocean or the sky? Every metaphor is too cliché.
I can’t capture the rich color with words as I see it on you,
everything I want to say defies the rules I’m to obey.
Sure, I could compare you to a vast and cloudless sky
but I’d be missing all of the nuanced details of your face
as you send a silent wink and an expressive smirk my way.
My inability to describe your eyes has made me into a mental case!
I've tried cyan and azure, turquoise and sapphire too,
but nothing compares to the beauty I see deep in you.

The blackness of night screams alive.
Voices shouting from the deepest place
buried away in my scarred mind.

Flashbacks,
and the penny taste of blood keeps me awake
dragging and twisting my exhausted
body and psyche further away from sleep.

Liquid of life burns through my veins.
I feel it flow knowing those under the sheets
lined up on sides of streets were left cold.

The smell of blood is thick tonight.
It persists on the hands of any soldier
long after arriving back home.

I swear I leave ****** finger prints and
stray scatters of crimson spatters all around.

The secrets I keep
are starting to drip
slowly out of me.

I look back on  minutes that
drag on- and yet months
have seemed to escape.

Clawing hands of time, I beg
for those moments
back in mine.

I have searched for every last
bit of warmth I could find,
groping the bed for some
tangible piece of this
disaster you left.

Every breath of cold stings just
to remind me that I am alive.

The sun warms my face
the cold splits my skin into
shards that fall to the ground
and effortlessly blend in
with the glinting snow that
has been wintry blanket over
the nuances of my soul.

There isn't a single word to
be said- the silent struggle will never
be heard by deaf, unappreciative ears.

Every passionate heat I’ve ever known,
killed by ice you left coursing through my organs.
If you’d even look my way-
you could watch my vibrant blue veins
running up and down my skin coated skeleton.




Time lingers on and
words are always left unsaid.
I distract myself with
the coming of seasons,
but I cannot part with warm
memories of our time.

My muscles once swam so graceful under
my skin, but now they are rigid and
stiff with the winter’s freeze.

I haven’t closed my eyes to you just yet.
I could still see all of the things
that I should have said floating to
the ground between us. Silent flurries
of words built up behind my eyelids,
I refused to let them melt and
well out as tears.

I couldn't let you get to me like that.

Ocean waves washing up dead bodies
on the shores inside my mind.

The distant fear of storm clouds rolling in
obscuring the future of everything.

Internal dialogue screams, demeaning
roaring, beating like trees in the wind.

“Sure you have it all together now, but
don’t forget how easy it could be to fall!”

Fear inside remains stronger than me,
don’t be fooled by the placid exterior seen.

This is the fault of my mind’s own demise,
the storm never warns when it begins brewing.

The hurricane destroys windows and doors
leaving me emaciated on the barren floor.

Anorexia starts by starving the soul
I’m trying not to dig up old bones.

She's a happenstance mistake,
a healthy baby born on Independence Day.
Four days of work- for all it is worth,
nights of hearty cries
the soundtrack to a sudden, upside down life.

The needle pulling history
repeating different color threads-
patches of cloth, events and mistakes
patterns running through time,
past always stitched together.

I'm wondering where you came from,
drawing memories from the back of my mind.
I can only make up stories
as you sit in solitude
curving glass, covered in dust.

The alleyways are empty at this hour.
Only the vagrants, ******* their cigarettes, and strutting tom cats roam.
Nights drenched in orange glow-
street lamps guide me as
I wander the streets alone.

Is this the life I wanted?
Is this just how things have happened?

You convinced me that I could be loved
that I was beautiful.

I realize I am without you
but it doesn't stop the want.

Now I'm just a whisper
of the smooth low morning voice
I loved to speak to you with.

Now I'm just the skin
you used to touch, and you'd tell
me you liked it so much.

I haven't eaten in two days
because I'm sick to my stomach
over your lies.

White lines, crushed pills
call my name, begging to numb the pain.

I'd let you in again on my own terms.
I'm always twisting words
remembering when you brought me to tears
your stories, your mind is war torn.

Now you're just another
playing me in some sick game
I've been subjected to before.

I ask why I'm never good enough
but I haven't forgotten my worth.

I am crumpled morning hair, black coffee and poetry.
I am deeply emotional, understanding.
I am filled with wonder, every sunrise and sunset.

I would be the dedicated love
you always wished for.

But here I am, questioning
my own worth
because someone else
is blind to it.

I ache for you,
and yet
I pity you
for not seeing
my worth.

en·dear·ing
enˈdi(ə)riNG/
adjective
1.
inspiring love or affection.
"an endearing little grin"
synonyms: lovable, adorable, cute, sweet, dear, delightful, lovely, charming, appealing, attractive, engaging, winning, captivating, enchanting

enough for you?

It started with kisses
strokes, brushes of your skin
igniting my fire
awakening my spirit.

Your hands moved my body
malleable as ever under your touch
and begging for your pent up passion.

You get me sighing, "oh ****"
as your lips make their way
down my thin neck
across my sharp collar bones
down my supple chest.

Everything moves so fast
my heart is racing
you're twisting me and
pleasing me, until I'm begging.

Perched on your hips
you look me up and down
with wonder, your gaze
darting from my eyes to my lips.

You're moving with me
until I can't stand it anymore
I give into the release
flooding your body with my
hot, sticky sweet.

"Wow, I really like that." All you can say
between stunned gasps. I giggle-
splashing and rubbing around
loving the look I've put on your face.

You're back inside me
slamming my body down
mercilessly, until my little whimpers
grow louder and I'm gushing
hot liquid all over you again.

"I really ******* like that." You tell me
and I'm trying to catch my breath.

I give you that look again
working my hips
sliding around-
our bodies connected
a rush that feels stronger than *******.

You're right on the edge-
forgetting the strength in your hands
together we're magnetic.

You push me off of you
but I haven't finished you yet-
I slide down your thighs
swallowing your passion
down my throat, full of love.

We stare in awe
of what just happened
two bodies interconnected
your eyes give you away
and I see you're amazed.

You look at me with adoration
and I'll promise you my dedication
as long as we always have determination
for each other's satisfaction.

I'm trying to push you out of my head
but somehow my thoughts keep going back
to your smile and the way you sing
my favorite songs in bed.

I'm wishing you would have told me
how you really felt
and that I would have told you
how I really felt.

I'm terrified of your love
but I would never resist it
and I will never lose you again
because I miss the imprinted
sheet lines on your face in the morning.

I wanted to love every space
and every missing piece -
I wanted to see.

From the moment your
warm hands held mine
I felt safe, and I knew
this would be more.

I needed to know every
wonderful secret
every dark thought,
I wanted to know you.

To stick my fingers in
the little gaps of your
soul, I wanted to feel
everything you felt.

I wanted you to feel whole.

I desire to know every
dark nightmare,
the smell of blood
still thick in your mind.

Every dream and
every regret
I wanted to feel it all.

But-
I hesitate.

I need you to know
the love I've felt
and hidden,
for your sake.

I wanted to gently mend
every flaw you saw
in yourself, I wanted
to make life beautiful.

To let you in?
I wanted to try. I wanted to feel.

I wanted to be there to share
when the demons come breathing
down your neck and every sick
thought stalks your head.

I wanted you there when the
tears wouldn't stop
or couldn't start and
I wanted to catch all of yours.

But you feel I've done wrong.
Pain that ripped through my core
and begged me to scream out
every truth I've concealed-
terrified because my love is so deep
yet I never bothered to reveal.

I wanted to tell you
but the words are so heavy and
emotions so real.
Someday I'll tell you.

War in my mind as real
as the war you have seen.
Silence leaves me wondering
if you would fight for me.

I would fight.
I will fight.
I will fight for your love
until I can't fight any more.

I fell in love with you
that was my first mistake.

Empathy that shook my core
I wanted to feel all you felt.
I wanted you to feel what I felt.
(Because I knew you felt it, too.)

I wanted to give myself
until there was nothing left.
I wanted you to love me.

Fingers move up the frets
blues entwined with the metal slide
drowsy smoke swaying with hips and pool *****
knock with the jukebox keeping time.

You’re ******* down another drink
drown out demons
haunting your soul,
hoping you can take someone home.

Forgotten beauty, only fear
lurking in the heavy air
the bar is spinning and every lesson
you've learned, you’re dead set on forgetting.

Regulars hustle another game
trying to win back years lost
in this basement
that smells of ***** and **** and sin and long lost dreams.

They come to forget
the war, they come to forget
the rent they owe, they come to forget
why they came to this godforsaken bar in the first place.

My eyes glaze over
watching the ghosts drifting around
green felt tables and the old dusty dart boards
heavy hearts hidden under calloused layers of tough love.

When the lights come on and the music stops
your touch pushes me further into the haze
and every plan is put on hold when
your lips find their way up my neck
teasing every nerve until I forget how to breathe.

The forgotten and the lost
roaming aimlessly together
to the tunes of regret
the pangs of sadness
drinking only to forget.

I was once igniting sparks
spilling over
burning scarlet holes
in your precious Persian rug.

Swelling streams
my molten lava
always scorching
delicate, paper skin.

My flowing melted iron
My flushing crimson cheeks

You saw
crystallized flesh-
colorless again

I succumbed
unpinning from the floor
once firm under my feet.

My blood
depleted

You caught me.

Gasping, whispering, teasing wind
billowing my clothes, messing my hair.
Calm and still before the world is
deafened by the groaning cries of incoming
thunder rolling across the sky.

We watch the storm blow in
wind scattering angry tear drops to the ground
from rich purple clouds crowding the horizon.
I run one step behind you
dodging hail that pelts the soft earth.

By the time we reach shelter
my hair is slicked down, stuck to my skin.
Safe inside from the ever stronger wind
in dim light we wait for our clothes to dry
I’m wishing you would stay the night.

Rattling windows sing in chorus
with my clattering bones
and your deep, soothing voice.
Wind shakes the stucco house
your steady breath becomes my lullaby.

The morning comes with dew
bright light touching down from the sky.
Still steaming ground smells of petrichor
strewn with branches
the only hint of last night’s wind.

Clear blue skies in morning light
hide the storm that was so angry last night
stillness concealing violent winds.

{177 words}

He is everything I remember
and everything I had once tried to forget
rumbling engine and tires on the wet street.
I am shoes in the grass, kicking leaves
walking through cold drizzle and gasping wind, dark sky on a moonless night.

He is the blue pickup truck with the window down
his face lit by a cigarette drag,
something I’ve seen a thousand times before
handsome face warmed by the orange glow.
I settle into my spot beside him as stagnant cigarette film settles on me
silently clinging to my clothes and swirling into my hair.

Our fingers brush as he hands me that glass pipe
smoke wisps twirl out of our lips and mingle together
rushing out of the doors into the night sky as we walk together under it,
now we’re inside and he is the touch I’ve been anticipating.

The last thing I see is brown eyes and I feel
his kiss bristling my face, consuming me like we will never experience this again.
He is blonde hair and a brown beard, he is strong, he is tall. He is everything I wanted.

I am satisfied, carefree, if only for a moment.
Studying the lines of his face, how they have changed, the startling
way he is his grandfather’s face, showing through those dark eyes.
When he leaves, he is a kiss that dissipates
with the sound of the engine turning down the block.

I am alone. The mirror displays a flushed, smiling face
with tones of pink and peach, silently studying the details.
I see my mother and grandmother in my own reflection
I see their age making way down my skin.
Marbled green eyes, dark in color,
mine yellow flecked.
my mother’s mixed aqua.
my grandmother’s deep green.

My pulse rushes with the realization that it goes so fast
My eyes fill with tears as I imagine looking into the eyes my own children and theirs
I picture those deep green tones reminding me of generations past
I breathe in realizing what I’ve seen and what I feel I need.
I am the details and complexity of life, one of many heirs.                                           {360 words}

Leah Rost

The heat of those moments spent in passion reveal my true emotion
as the wispy little hairs of your skin raise to my touch;
flushed lips part before gently meeting mine and radiating heat
that flows through my body and thaws the cold hands you always complain about,
every second new sensations bombard the grey matter in my head confusing and pleasing the neurons that fire in pace with my breath
until I’ve closed my eyes and let myself drift from under your touch
because your eyes are blue and I open mine wishing to see his coffee brown irises searching my body for every ounce of emotion I wouldn’t dare speak out loud and
I’m begging to stop thinking of him when I’m with you but my memory refuses to block out the nights I spent warm under his thick, strong arms and domineering hands.

Day after day you're
critiquing, pulling apart
anguishing over pointless details

You scold, you demand
your silent booming voice is ugly
never stops reverberating between my ears

Torture and twist
even after they tell me,
"You look sick"

You paint cold purple
streaks up and down my skin
You deny me time and time again

Each rib has been counted
scrutinized through my skin-
but it is never enough in your eyes

I feel insane, wishing I could
scream and shout
out of my head to drown you out

Today I love you
as you're an old friend
Tomorrow I hate you
as you put me through hell again

I've tried to silence you
yet I always give in
ending up in my own prison.