Clasp your hands.
Bow your head
and pretend it's your choice,
and not the weight of the sky
crushing you in its need
to kiss the earth.

I pray that I won't hurt you,
even as I know
I ask the impossible.
But that, I suppose, is prayer;
dusty lips and hollow bones
and a fervent need
for dreaming,
hoping against all odds
and asking for changes
when faith says it's all
already written.

(It's the most beautiful paradox.)

I've said it before
(I'll say it again)-
grief is where I come back to,
because she made me that way
and I am a lot
like my mother.

She taught me how to cry
for other people,
and I am crying now
not for my own pain,
but for the pain I will cause you.

Cry.  Cry until your tears
dissipate and die,
and scream in a way
that no one will ever hear,
like I have for months.

God, I've got to tell you.
I'll tell you,
and I'll cry with you,
and when it's done,
I'll still cry for you.

Because she gave me
a lot of tears to spill,
and a heart bigger than
a broken galaxy,
I have to spend it all
on other people.

Like my mother,
I am nothing short
of charitable.

...or leave me in your wake.

You never believed me when I told you
I was not some do-it-yourself, weekend project;
these holes are beyond your repair
and you simply have to live with them.

But you thought you could fix me.
You have wasted your staples and plaster
and spread paint over casts
that never even fit.
The dust of the drywall has settled
in the hollow of my throat
and choked out my laughter,
and I am simply tired.

These halls were meant to be tred lightly.

I tried to warn you, but you,
thinking yourself experienced,
announced your arrival with loud steps
and by swinging wide the windows,
and proceeding to tear out the frames
so you could make them anew.

So if you cannot learn to tiptoe,
I will have to draw the shutters
and remember how to lock the door at night.
Those old muscles will ache
but it won't be hard to relearn.
For I am Misery's daughter,
and you thought you could fix me.

I oil my door to choke the cry that it makes,
and the rug on the porch hides the fact that it breaks.
my windows are broken, my structure's unsound,
but people don't know it when they walk around.
my white walls are painted and hung with a sheath
that is anything but the gray bleak underneath,
and they call it a portrait but nobody knows
the painting I framed hides a thousand black holes.
they could swallow this house and no one would see
anything but this lovely shell of me.

it's still white, still pretty, seems all the right way-
so long as the people inside never stay.
and they don't (the dust on the floor is my proof),
I blame their absence on account of my roof,
for it leaks cold wind and can never keep heat,
but the truth is, you see, that my friends never keep.
so I protect my walls and tread light on each floor
and I never, ever willingly open the door.
I can stay tall and sound and sure on my beams,
and, if I try, pretend I'm solid at the seams,
but the wounds are still there and it takes up a life
pretending to be perfect when perfect is strife.

My fingers are aching.
They have stretched out to you
pleading, trembling,
needing your touch-
and you have taken the lips
that should have brushed my cheek
and instead whispered into
someone else's ear
that they are beautiful,
they are special,
they are not me.

You don't believe that there's
any issue with loving more than one of us.
Your heart, you say,
is more than big enough to support
that much affection.
But it has never been a question
of your heart, which, believe me,
I already know is strong.
It has always had everything to do
with mine, which falters
and stutters at a tilt of the world
and threatens to break
when you touch her skin.

is that there's never
enough syllables for you
to say what you want.

(I think that's why they're beautiful.)

you sent me a love letter, a message in a bottle
but when i cracked it open i cut up my hands.
i guess i’m the same way;
i wrote you a love song
but i forgot i didn’t know how to sing,
so i yelled the words at your window like
i was flinging pebbles and you told me to put down
my boombox because i was going to wake up
the whole **** neighborhood
with my teenage angst,
my painfully naive i love you-s.
i think my heart is too loud for suburb lawns
and white picket fences.
and i guess that’s the trouble with us;
we were always
controlled chaos, a dormant volcano
and all the kids counted down to the eruption
like they were waiting for the other shoe to drop  
and numbered their calendars for a date
that should’ve been on a unmarked grave.
and we’ve just got short fuses,
kisses and bruises
because when someone is the pin to your grenade
when someone is the oil spill to your wildfire
you’ve always got to be wary of explosions.
and we were always going to ***** each other over,
we were always going to
burn too bright, burn out too fast.
because i was just a pretty girl in a sundress,
and this is just a memory you’ve been trying to repress
hand clenched in the fabric of us,
so determined to not let the inevitable happen on schedule.  
and i love you so i’ll ruin you, it’s inevitable
and i love you so you’ll leave, it’s inevitable
and i love you so it’s not going to work out like i want it to.
it’s just... inevitable.
there’s no avoiding it the future unless
you take your own away.
sometimes i have to remind myself five times a day
that destruction, that implosion,
that falling apart isn’t as poetic as i think it is.
and now, i’m biting my tongue to keep from saying
baby, bring home the wreckage
maybe there’s still something there for us to salvage
and if we're a sinking ship, i'll go down with you
and if we’re doomed, i’ll be ****** with you.
because i’m still thinking there’s an off chance,
because i’m still thinking that maybe if you still...
i’m still thinking that all this time
i was just wishing on the wrong star and there’s still a chance,
there’s still wishes to waste
and coins to throw in the fountain
and eyelashes to count on.
but you know somebody once told me
that the stars aren’t really there, we’re just seeing
footprints of where they used to be.
we’re always looking a galactic graveyard, a sky littered
with the star-studded remains of supernovas.  
always thought you were more of a black hole than a star,
but maybe there’s some truth to every cliche;
i see everywhere you used to be clearly,
i can see your presence in every absence.
because i miss you terribly
and i know i’m not supposed to.
but i still wonder what you’re thinking about sometimes.
i still wonder about the stars
you’re looking at sometimes.
i still wonder if we see
the same constellations
anymore.