I am a nothing queen
With sand so deep
It grounds me
To the water floor

I'm here for you
And I forgive you, too
And I hardly know
But begin to see
If you are me

Is that double homicide?

A mass murderer of one.
Just my luck
That offing myself
Can't even be a private
Affair between
Me and my sandbag
feet reaching the
Water floor,  I'm done.

You collateral damage--
It's  more your fault
Than mine
That we should share blood

I feel so full of movement words
and language that skips and spins and slaps
as movement does
expression and silence and quiet screams
the tautness of my lungs
like in a dream when you can't
quite
speak

so full of wooden unopened doors
that lead to dusty rooms
with sparse shards of light
coming in through boarded up windows
from the outside that is my imagination
but it, too, has a yellow sun

and aggression that leads to unsavory thoughts about
people I don't know
who don't deserve my tightness coming out at them
through narrowed eyes behind a blank expression
just because I can't break the dam--
make a pinprick hole in my brain balloon
to relieve the pressure of my chest bursting at the seams
with angry love for everyone I don't know
but I do love them
don't you doubt it

and in my fullness I question
what it is that all in there was made to do
to write or dance?
and maybe do I want to sing?
pen music, words, be on a stage
or behind the curtain, mouthing what is heard
is that the needle? with which
I can make the hole
to empty out the art
that causes so much tightness
that I can barely close my hands,
my fingers can't come together

and then I want to paint so fully
that I don't need a canvas, I have skin
and can't I be a moving dancing writing painting?
that sings her own lyrics badly
and plays an invisible piano with dexterous fingers
self referential to a painful fault
whose badness screams
THIS IS ART
because, why is it not?
and it empties me out
I am no longer taut

"Stay here, I'll only be
30 seconds, a minute
maybe--
No, really, it's
okay, I'll be right
back and keep
petting you, then.
Look see, isn't this nice and
comfy, you're fine and can deal
with 30 seconds."

And he watches from the bed
my every move till over the threshold
I step, out of sight 0.01 seconds and
he springs with his hidden coils
up and off to
follow me to the kitchen where
I refill my coffee.

Every. ****. Time.

And don't I just love him for it.

I'll only be enough for you if
I'm enough for me;
Are you the only one who
I have a higher standard for
than myself.
(That wasn't really a question).

Take it as only the most obvious
sign of my utmost respect for you
That I reserve all of my talking to you
for writing, because it's the only
way I trust myself to
relay to you clearly--

my unedited and fallible voice and moments of being
human are not good enough for your ears and
eyes.

I must fine-tune our
casual interactions to
imperfect perfection.
And I must find your love for me

in there, somewhere.
And every time come up
empty-handed from
my gold-mining of your
unadulterated body language and
voice language and textual,
exasperated responses.

I break so easily, and again find
why I respect you and
it's because you make me believe
that you don't love me,
and that makes me love you so
unhealthily and I know

that you see through me,
just like I see through me
and it stings like a pain that tastes of
blood in my mouth because
it reminds me I'm only human,
and scratches bleed.

--And get infected if you don't
take care and you
have infected me to the point that
I'm suffocating in my own blood poison(ing)
of self-doubt and desire and
the pitiful knowledge that I may just
get over you if only
you
loved me.

Let me clarify.

Loved me the way
I would have you love
me; affectionately.
my friend, my -------

the comforting statement of "I like
who you are" I
enjoy your personality and
I take your opinion seriously because
you, like me, (and you like me)
are human.

But you love me in what
way you would have--
conditionally,
with rules that change
(only you know them anyway).

And I'm realizing with
bittersweet dawning
and incomprehension:
it's not  that I want to
be you,
but that I already am you,
except,

you're happy.

And I want the secret of
how to be you (me) and
be happy, I always
thought it was a
contradictory state until I met me (you) and saw
the version of myself that
could be at peace,
feel laughter bubble from under my
cheek bones,
and know joy as an intimate
companion.

But being you only reminds
me of that truth that I am
close but can never reach
the level of you-ness I desire.

And in my far-reaching imagination
I wonder at what
will be said about your
influence on me when
I turn out to succeed despite
my self-proclaimed shortcomings
         because deep down I know I'm good
         because of the differences between us
and my sorrow writes my movement for me

and will it ever be studied and observed
my obsession drove me to success
and drove me crazy concurrently (?)

and that craziness drove me further, still.

These are all just bad beginnings
in my search for a show-stopper,
a jaw-dropper,
trying to be just the right balance
of sarcastic and lovely,
the right balance of writer
that I idealize and am not,
of course,
what am I, a narcissist?

I'm trying to put into words
the feelings I told you I danced
because they are wordless (spaceful)
and because of you
I have to say them with voice;
what a dilemma is this--

That when I tell you with movement
what I can't say
you put me in the place
of having to voice it and now
I have no words
other than bad beginnings.

So is that it?
When I word to you
instead of dance for you (for me?)
what you have to return is a nothing,
a less-than-nothing saying,
saying nothing, leaving me

hurt and confused because
maybe there was a something
in all your nothing that I can't find--
because we are dealing in words now,
and I'm a movement reader.

And I know I will forgive you for this
but I won't forgive me for knowing that.

Even while I'm still so angry, it just reveals
my pathetic (patient?) desperation for your love,

But I didn't say this right.
I need to move (dance) this.

"Too late" I remind myself,
too late to go back now.
There are some stones
that can't be turned
because I'm an adult now;

That's what this means.

The love I feel
exists,
but it's not
what I chose.

And what if I'm tired
of being the old soul?

I begin to discover--
there is daring in
playing it safe.
And I'm happy--

enough.

Don't look in the misty waters of
"could have been"

what is? what has been?

I rested my head
on his shoulder, a plea
of my youth
asking the world
"is this all there can be
for me?"

But the May in Maine is over.

Let it go
let him go.

And after weeks go by,
I can look back
on myself looking back,
and I'm so grateful that it was
too late.

I'm happy.
And that's enough.

the words stopped coming.
not to my mind,
but to my mouth--
forming in the chamber of teeth and tongue,
out with my breath,
into the air(
creating)
what we call
'voice'.

bottled up letters
filled my brain to the brim
like a stack of  tethered
dictionaries
that mildewed
and smell of
doubt and old dogs
with no new tricks.

the gathered dust
on my lungs-- look
closely enough it is
alphabets upon alphabets--
the unspoken sentences
my heart forged
and mouth rejected, swallowing
them back, crumbling
them into
a graveyard of lost
thoughts,
killed by the fear
of being an unsolicited
opinion.