This is the sweet spot
No sweet tooth again
Needing less from me
I'll be less than I should

I have dreamt of this many times
The warm hand resting on my ribcage
Rolling over to find love sleeping soundly
Gentle calls of frustration about running out of cream
Rushing out the door, late due to too long kisses goodbye
Simple little dreams of simple little pleasures
Yet when I find them I feel like a ghost
Hollow and never quite present
Seeing it all unfold but it passes right through me
I have never belonged in my dreams
Because I dream of being someone else.

It didn't hurt to say his name
This is it,
This is when life begins.

Now you've found a name for them
All the elephants in your head
Memories stampeding
They won't get off your chest
Try to forget what you remember
They will still remember you
These elephants will crush you
If you don't put them to rest

It does not end abruptly, nor is it brief.
It begins with sleeping in too late,
Sometimes lunch or dinner is forgotten,
Laughter sounds hoarse, even forced
They didn't do up their seatbelt yesterday,
Pharmacies will call for missed refills,
They won't make plans for next month,
Eventually they won't make plans at all,
When is the last time they showered?
Did you see them eat the other day?
Is their phone off?
Have you heard anything?

He loved me unconditionally
As God does
Promising me hell

I could tell you honestly
That I love you
But your laughter just
Sounds out of tune
And even his screams
Sound like a symphony
To me.

I am only one person
That is not a lot
It is still a lot more
Than I'd like to be
Today

Skinwalker lover
Call my name again
My heart a peach in your fist
Dripping
Ever longing
More, more, more
Lapping tongue
Starving dog
Cannibalize me
Again
I'll never notice
My pieces missing
Begging for scraps
While your meal
Grows cold

I pick up the pieces
Gently, carefully,
Place them down
In my bathroom sink
Wipe away debris
Collected and caked
Onto your being
I meticulously clean
Each part of you
Warm you up
Pat you dry
Give you back
To the world
And hope you
Don't return here
Broken and filthy,
Yet again.

When I was 7 years old
I lost my voice
"They won't believe you"
Ripped the vocal chords
From my throat
And buried them beside
My innocence
Years I spent
Blowing smoke signals
Drawing maps in my veins
Begging for help silently
Inwardly screaming
Through a sutured mouth
Teeth coated in paint thinner
When I was 19
I found my voice
I dug those vocal chords
Out of the ground
Breaking fingernails around a pen
Writing statements
Filing into court
Spilling truths out of a too full glass
Creating a beautiful mess
I could walk away from
"I believe you"
Rang through my ears
Into eternity
And tucked me in at night
Safely in a home he didn't live in
"I believe you"
Rang like church bells
Announcing my salvation
My safety, my safekeeping
"I believe you"
Rang like police sirens
Promising to lock the pain away
To protect and serve me always
I believe you. I believe you. I believe you.

Forever is too long.

The greatest suffering
Isn't the suffering itself
But the pain that comes
When it ends
And we know not
Who we are without it

You belong here,
When you are trying to be enough,
Remember you already are.
The days when you feel nothing,
When the world slips between your fingers,
You still belong in it.
There is nothing wrong with you.
The weeds outgrowing your lawn,
Do not represent your laziness,
They represent the jungle inside of you.
It's okay that you're wild,
Do not tame yourself for anyone,
Do not cut your hair again,
For the sake of a photograph.
Your life is not a puzzle to put together,
You are whole,
Do not keep looking for the missing piece,
Look for someone who already sees your image
As complete, perfect, artwork.
When I told you that you were too much,
I meant only that I could not hold you,
I wasn't strong,
I'm sorry to have asked you to be anything else,
But the fire that you are.

It was as though
A great mountain
Crumbled to dust
Before my eyes
Like watching
A storming sea
Calm it's swells and
Dry up in the sun
The greatest orchestra
Performing symphonies
With broken instruments
For a deaf audience
.......
To first love you
And then to know you.

You asked me to marry you,
10 years ago,
On an old, musty couch,
You asked again today,
In a field of dandelions,
Standing there surrounded by wishes,
I wonder if the universe,
Thought I was ready this time,
Or if it was only reminding me,
Of everything I'd already lost.

How do you remove memory
From flesh?
If you knew the war zone
My skin has been
Would you shudder
Before every touch?

My journals are a graveyard
I cannot help but dig back up
I wrote you a thousand love poems
When I read them now
They just sound like the eulogies
I didn't have the heart to give

I have thought about editing all of my love poems
To write you out of every beautiful moment
Where you inspired my sadness and my joy
But if I make you disappear from all of the imprints
I made of you then I have to let go of the aching
And the craving when my soul howls for you
In the middle of the night knowing you'll hear
Knowing you'll answer and help me write more
Love poems.

I had no filter
I said what
I was thinking
Like I was talking
To my walls
I ran in messy
Spoken circles
With no
Conclusions
No concise plan
No destination
And you, you
Followed my
Footsteps
And thanked me
For the walk
You'd never seen
Such scenery

In another life I am born in 1962
I grow up in a little house in Burt
September 1967 my mama walks me to school
I sit beside you in class that day, and all the rest after
We write poetry together during recess
We play Laura Ingalls together in your yard
Your mother makes me vareniki
Mine cooks your bacon til it's burnt
We walk to school together every day
You graduate grade 10, and 11, then 12
We marry for love and buy houses next door to each other
You have your first son when you're 26
Later, a daughter who is just like you, and in this life that means she is happy
I visit you every day, we have coffee and write our poetry
Eat our vareniki and bake our bread
If the world had been kinder, you'd have been my lifelong friend
And I could save you from all the pain that led to you being my mother

Its showing in my face,
The reality of the last week,
If I could only unclench my jaw,
No one would ever know,
If no one saw me in the dark,
I could still pretend I sleep.

You never forget how this feels,
Bones setting straight,
Jaw clenching in tune with arrhythmia,
I will always remember how to forget,
Forget sorrow and heartache,
Forget them and their taste,
$50 in my veins is nothing,
Compared to the price of regret.

Truth is not beautiful
When spoken without thought
This was not a treasure chest
I held the key for
Rather one I found propped open
It was not earned
Nor mine to claim
Yet I find myself filling my pockets
With the trinkets and gold
That come tumbling out of your mouth
Ground between teeth
Leaving your speech unintelligible
I will bury this beneath my own treasure
Leaving a map for you
To never use

I will not say to you
"In another life"
It should have been this one.

"I want you" is not the same as "You are a priority"
"I am trying" is not the same as change.

When faced with a mountain,
I discovered that I could climb
A raging river in my path,
I learned how well I could swim
In the midst of hatred,
I knew the depths of my love.

Sew your good intententions
Like stones into my belly
I'll never know the difference
Just the weight while I drown
I am just another wolf to you
I'll never know the difference
Between love and a burden

You know me as,
The creaky floorboards,
And the rattling doors
At midnight
I've been haunting you
For years now
I've been worried lately
You stopped singing
While you do the dishes
I've not seen you
Turn on the stove
In a month
You used to hear me
Breaking the silence
While you read books
Under your covers
But I don't remember
The last time
You sat in silence
With me and your thoughts
What is it
That you're drowning out?
You clean the house
Like the dirt is screaming
You scrub your body
Like your skin is poison
You fill the room
With background noise
Like you're afraid
Hollow air will choke you
The voices on the phone
Never last long enough
So you keep finding
More people to call
Youre always home
But youre never here
I'm just here
To say I miss you
To remind you I'm here
And that you're here
And that I'd like
To meet with you
In the stillness again
When your heart stops racing
Ans your breathing slows
I'd like to have the noise
Stop long enough
For you to notice
When I make
Floorboards creak
And doors rattle
When I'm lonely

You sounded just like someone
I've spent the last 5 years burying
I wondered how I could have
Risen the dead yet again
My very posture a seance
Welcoming the past
Like the welcome mat
The ghosts pass over
On their way in
I never opened the door
I swear
I guess I just left it unlocked
I begged you to leave me alone
But the exorcist said
It's so impolite to ask the ghost to leave
If you're the reason their dead in the first place.

You are what pushes me to grow and become better.
You are what warms my heart when it grows cold.
I cannot imagine living in a world where you don't exist, it would always seem dark.
I think the entire Sun is wrapped up within you and shines through your eyes.
To me, you are daylight.

I am weaving should-have-beens
Through my here-and-nows
If I could have been a child
I'd have loved my home
Designed to delight the girl
I never was, never knew
I can almost feel it
I know the space where it belongs
I cannot fill it, not with all the world
No hocus pocus halloween magic
No christmas morning anticipation
I try to recreate what I think I lost
How do you bring back
Something that never was
If I could believe in wishes
I'd wish to believe in them
Like I think a child might,
Like I might have, if wishes came true.

Drunk at 6 in the morning again
Get some ******* sleep
And stop waking me from mine.

Loneliness lingers
Where your touch once
Scorched.

I started drinking on the weekends,
Like you always used to do,
I wonder if I'll drink in the morning,
On Tuesdays and Thursdays too,
I started lying to my partner,
When I go out late at night,
I never own up to my actions,
I'm not afraid to start a fight,
I started missing all your birthday's,
I didn't call you back the other day,
I wanted to tell you I love you,
But I would only be in the way,
Just like you always said to me,
"To be alone wouldn't be so bad"
I'll just keep letting you down,
And be exactly like you, Dad.

I didn't die
Why am I still so angry about that?

You built a cemetery for me in your head
Just in case you found a way
To bring back the dead

What words can I carry when I meet you in the dark,
I have whispered so many nothing's to you under moonlight,
I know not the weight of the truth or the people that hold it,
Writing stories about you so that I don't have to live them out,
It all reminds me of a poem I read 7 years ago that left me empty,
I didn't know I could relate to these terrible, petty horrors,
I became a poet that loves nothing other than not being loved back,
I swear I used to be in pain long before I needed it to just to write.

Love is fickle,
I simply mean
That I only feel it,
When you're not being a piece of a ****.

In the afternoon sunlight
Weakened by September mist
A scent trail sails by wind
Bourbon and sea salt
Inhaling deeply, 1..2..3.. breaths
I almost thought I'd see you
Emerging from shadows and fog
I faintly feel your fingertips
Carried to me by the breeze
Shivers spiral down my spine
You've been missing from me
For 100 Friday afternoons
Why do I still look for you?

I waited for you.
For years now
I've been waiting
Putting love aside
In case you arrived
Today, though,
Was the last time
I got to wait around.

You lost your health
Your liver, your life
You chose crystal
Over me, over you
Over everything
You ran out of time
Life couldn't wait.

When I was small,
I picked out an Aquaman action figure
Out of a bin at the secondhand store
He was missing a leg
Most of the paint worn off at his joints
But he was brand new to me
And what my mother could afford
I made up a story
About how his enemies had hurt him
How he'd defeated them
Became stronger
Was world reknowned for his powers
I loved him and this love fixed his brokenness
One perspective change made all the difference
I am like this.
Not broken, just reimagined.

It still hurts, seeing you exist
In this world where nothing happened
The way we wanted it to

Some times
I think about how
The word
Alphabet
Means Alpha
And Beta
And how that
Implies a
....
Like the
Alphabet
Doesn't really
Ever end
So now the
Letter Z
Raises questions
In my brain
And I wonder
What comes
After it
That is why
I cannot
Sleep.

When you feel like you're being devoured,
Sometimes you're just being led to a better place,
Yes, sometimes it's the belly of the whale
Carrying you back home

It was the last night I loved you,
I let go before I ever arrived,
It was the first time you held on.

I retreat into the quiet world
Where wind sweeps softly
Through fields of poppies
Whispering sedative lullabies
While clouds of cotton roll by
Basking in salted sunshine
Light dances softly in the valley
To the songs of the morning

I blink my eyes open
You're still screaming

I drift back to the quiet world.

When reduced to a body
By the man who held my worth
I thought
"This is what an apple tree feels
When reduced to paper"

I'm happy.
By that I mean:
I want to be happy.
By that I mean:
I'm not happy.
By that I mean:
This isn't what I want.

I got tired of filling my gas tank
Seeing fences around fields
Driving a decaying highway
I woke up to the sound of a lawnmower
I thought about the grass
How it never gets to grow
I got tired of filling my gas tank
Just to go no where with you
Listening to apathy echo
From minds I never could change
I thought about the yesterdays
How I never got to grow.