Your eyes were mostly closed
struggling to stay open
To keep from falling up or falling down
You were ***** all over from travel and your always-the-same clothes

But I didn't mistake you for Nobody
There was a light in those mostly closed slit rolling eyes, easily missed
sparkling at me like so many yellow glow lights through ***** city windows
Something so beautiful in your solemn self destruction

So I rubber necked at you
watching every minute of your wreck
Searching you out when you were gone losing yourself again down the hall of locked doors
Tiny black-hole pupils in those slit rolling eyes
same sweat filled long sleeve shirt
same baggy jeans with cigarette ash woven into the leg
And that shaky half-smile hiding your truth and my corruption

As they make their way down my limbs
Trailing closely the paths my blood takes
Hardened from years of misuse
A map showing where I've been

And in the shower they disappear

Overshadowed by plump blue pipelines
Having healed
Tempting me to be imperfect again
To build more railroads and enjoy their ride

Fast friends
Make for faster allies in the
War against ourselves
We stood united
A secret club where
Self-consciousness
Isolation
And defeat
Tied us together
Limb to limb

You were different from me
Going deeper than I ever would
Finding enlightenment in
That warm bath that followed the
Silver spike into our skin

You awakened over and over
Until it was finally enough
To release you from this incarnation

Untying your limbs from mine
Leaving our secret club
Leaving us to fend for ourselves
And wonder
If you meant to ascend

She'll make her escape someday
From the pain of loving someone she sometimes hates
A rumbling volcano ready to go off at any random thing
Any random moment
His negativity lurks about infesting her at regular intervals
Whenever he's near

Except
There are instances when he shows himself to her
The man he was
Before the stress and the chaos devoured his goodness
Leaving behind this hardened carcass

She glimpses his humanity
His compassion peeking out through a caged heart
Momentarily, then gone

Those moments become farther apart

So she packs her baggage, carefully, and  prepares herself for the day when she's had enough
When she finds herself ready
To be rid of the fire and the uncertainty of living on tips of toes

Then she'll make her escape


Someday

Little condo close to campus
With a jail cell of yard in back
Listens to the ocean before sleep

Occupied by more than things

Conversations set to wine glass and silverware symphonies
Fat cat soaking up sun
Carpet smells like possibilities and red wine

But the patch of grass
Guitars we played
Closed doors
All hold a secret
Carefully hidden in plain sight

The birth of the death of my twenties

Where

Indifference finally wins and
Self preservation packs a bag
Warm nothingness filling it's place
And settling in for a long stay

The interesting thing about life is that in the precise moment where you delude yourself into thinking you've decoded but a morsel, tragedy or mortality or some other lucid moment will strike and your so-called understanding of this mystery is likely to be turned entirely on its head. Flailing, blood rushing to its indiscriminate face. An etch-a-sketch whose treasure has receded once more.

And, for another (but not the last) time, the possibilities and choices and paths abound. Carving a labyrinth inside your striving mind. Hungry for the finish line.

Is it wrong to feel again?  When it's been so long I had almost forgotten the sensation. When life swells and fantasies play like an all day matinée behind taught eyelids.

Pull the curtain closed, let no light escape. For the last time a passerby wandered in, ticket in hand, the film presented an ending much different than the times before.

My entire childhood contained in a Disney princess gift bag
Torn and overflowing
A relic from one of my replacements

I don't know their names  
Her do-overs

New children cancel out
Old mistakes

She sends me photos, report cards, awards  
Proof that I existed
In a time before I crumbled
Before she trampled me

I wonder if she terrifies them

There is a Mother construct in my mind
Born of tender moments witnessed
Of hallmark cards
Imperfect but striving

Maybe she loves them
Some way she couldn't love me
A constant reminder of the man she threw away
A life that brings shame
Locking away the proof
The photos
The same place she kept her heart

We've both moved on, now
But I don't mourn her
The loveless ruthless mother

I mourn the construct I imagined
That I never knew her tenderness
Never heard those words