Ten.

I love you.
We fit so well together
And you are the lost puzzle piece
That I didn't know was missing.
We are effortless
And beautiful
Because you love me, too
And every time you say it
The words fall into my mouth
And I savor the taste
And the way they rattle behind my lips.

Nine.

We bicker sometimes.
You don't like the pasta I make
And I don't like how late you work.
But you whisper sweet nothings to me
While I clean the dishes.
Then you pull me against you
In our room
When the dishes are done
And I liquefy
Like ice in hot coffee.
And we'll be okay.

Eight.

I stayed up for you.
You didn't come home
At five like you always do.
There's food in the fridge
And my trust in the doorstep
Where you wipe your shoes
At two a.m.
You go to bed.
I follow behind
Not asking questions,
Not wanting to know.

Seven.

I haven't talked about it.
You haven't talked about it.
We don't talk anymore.

Six.

Where do you go? I say.
What do you mean? You say.
When you're not here.
Work, you say.
I know that's not it, I say. Please don't lie to me anymore.
But you tell me you don't want to talk about it.
You storm off to bed
And I melt against
The cold linoleum
Like I once did
In your arms.

Five.

I haven't looked in your eyes
Since that night
When the dusty kitchen floor
Held me closer
Than you have in months.
My tears did nothing
To wash away the fear
That the liqueur didn't.

Four.

I ask if it's another man.
You don't reply at first
And then deny.
But I know.
I've known.
I ask who it is.
Can you at least tell me that? I say.
Your silence fills the room
Like a cup overflowing
With water
Or something murkier.
You say it so quietly,
A woman from work,
And I nod,
Blinking through the salty licks of tears.
How could I possibly have any left?
You don't say you're sorry.

Three.

You pack up your things.
She comes by to pick them up.
You look right through me and say  you've fallen in love.
I say nothing
Because I haven't yet fallen out of it.

Two.

My bed is cold.
My mornings are quiet.
I'm no longer cooking for two.
There is no one to come home to
Or to come home to me.
I sit alone by the window
Not even
One with the stars.
I feel hollow.

One.

I see you
Around town sometimes.
With her
And a red-faced baby boy
Who looks just like you do.
I love you.
And I don't think I'll ever stop.

Zero.

The faceless young woman
Who lives in my house
Is rare as a spirit to see.
She hides inside mirrors
And chillies the room,
But it hasn't been bothering me.

Although she's not social
And odd to the eye,
She often has some kind of glow.
And one time over tea
She spoke slowly of
The time that she spent down below.

She had lived through the plague
And the crusades and more
But died one black day of a noose.
For the people, she said,
Back then and e'er since
Found women with voices obtuse.

The sunshine sets
Over mountains and hills
The blood red of time
No time to fill

The moon rises up
Through the waters of space
Oceans of stars
Spill over your face

Chasing the sky with feet pounding softly
The grass and the dirt and the freedom
Voices are calling and fires are burning
You don't look back 'cause you don't need them

You're running against
You're running within
The path where you live
Has never been thin

There's dread at your heels
And thrill in your heart
The Earth in your veins
Tears you apart

The shifting of plates and the current of cosmos
I yell but my voice doesn't find you
Under a tree, in a glen, on a mountain
A time and a place and a virtue

A bird that flies before it's grown
You found your home in a world unknown
You broke to pieces in every corner
A single atom escaped today

Safe and sound a foreign concept
Blue beyond repair
Layers deep in plastic promise
Seaweed in your hair

A river of silt
A forest of flame
The world is a fish bowl
And the fish are to blame

You keep running still
Through thickest of night
You, losing your chains
Me, losing my sight

How do you expect
Anyone to write in this
Really weird format?

Little Miss Mirror Eyes
Danced all alone
To a music none other could hear.
For no one came close
To Miss Mirror Eyes Joan
And the terror her two eyes drew near.

Some people would say
You could see how you die
In the looking-glass pools of her gaze,
Others said the truth
Of your soul lies in the eye;
If you sinned she would set you ablaze.

But Miss Mirror Eyes
Didn't mean none no harm
And the globes in her skull weren't bad.
But because she could see
And laid truth on her arm
She never, at no one, was mad.

I have seen Death
And he isn't a bone-white, saggy old man
Or a dark hood with a cape
And a vile, gleaming sickle.
No, Death is much different
Than the stories of horror
Painted in humanity.
Death has a sweet face
And soft, warm hands.
He holds you while you're weeping
And takes all your sorrows
With a sweep of his arm,
The twitch of his brow.
He catches the hearts of teenagers
With flowers splattered on their skin
And fire in their fingers;
Itching and uncomfortable on their own home.
He pulls away the chains
In the young's unspoken minds.
As they fly through the air
Out their Peter Pan windows
He is right there beside them,
And the bitter taste of pills
Is masked by his lips.
You see, Death is so attractive
With foggy fingertips on hearts,
The young and the lonely
Jump into his arms,
Make split-decisions in his smile
While he just tries
To soften the blow.

The perfect world
Would be one
Without the idea
Of perfection

I am not an "it",
Not a "what" but a "who".
You look but you don't see me.
I am here, so where are you?

Ev'ry time you call me "girl"
It stabs me in the heart,
You twist the knife with "daughter"
And refuse to play your part.

I wonder, if I died tomorrow
What would my fun'ral be?
Into the earth I'd wear a dress
And bare a mask of "she".

My body is my strangled tomb
And, you, my epitaph:
"Here lies a sister, daughter, friend."
But I lie split in half.

Ev'ry time you call me "daughter",
Ev'ry time you call me "she"
Holds a venomous reception
In the darkest parts of me.

You say that it gets better.
Just a phase and nothing more.
I don't know how you can say that
With my heart spilt on the floor.

Walk o'er my bones in high-heeled shoes,
Kiss my pale skin with blood,
You ***** me with names of she
And wash me in pink mud.

I'm smothered with assumptions
And I'm drowned in prejudice,
A balloon fills up inside me
With ev'ry uttered word of "miss".

So if you wish to watch me die,
Melt away and o'er again,
Then tie me to the threads of girls
And taunt me with ropes of men.

The selkie sits on solemn sands,
Her hair a curtain wet.
She sings her songs of splendid seas -
A shining silhouette.

Her lily coat lies loosely strung,
Her shoulders slim and white,
She sighs with sounds of salty spray;
A voice of naught and night.

A word
Nobody knows.
It's a mental thing.
"A sensation produced in one modality when a stimulus is applied to another modality, as when the hearing of a certain sound induces the visualization of a certain color."
A confusion of senses.
But I don't think I am confused.
I just see farther than anyone.
For me;
I see colors
And think sounds, tastes, textures.
I see objects
And think gender, personality, music.
All the letters
Have colors, smells, jobs in an office.
All the numbers
Have heights, voices, fashion senses.
I don't know why it is
But it is a malfunction in my brain.
I don't know how to explain it
But it is not very complicated.
Everything has a color
A personality
A food
A texture
A sound
A taste
A smell
Associated with it.
Because everything is deeper than they look.
Because I am confused?
Because I can see.

The witch watches withered nights
Falling, flying through their heights.

I see it there
The curtain on the wall
Where there is no window.
There is nothing to cover,
Yet it stays tied shut.
The lace tails quiver
With imaginary wind;
It drips with
Invisible rain.

This poem isn't about love,
Or sadness,
Or really anything else.
It doesn't have structure
Or really any deep, philosophical meaning.

It is about sleep
And how hard it is.
At first it is slow
And then very quick.
If you feel yourself drifting
You're doing it wrong.

You can't pinpoint when you actually lose consciousness
Or when you wake up.
You can't remember
The beginning of a good dream
Or the end of a bad one.
Isn't that weird?

If you want to stay awake you fall asleep
And if you try to fall asleep you stay awake.

There is no method for falling asleep
And no talent for it.

Isn't that weird?

Weird.

We are the thrones
Sitting squat in the gutter
Our bodies are charcoal
Our fingers are bone.

We are the colors
Washed out from the river
Through cobblestone curtains
The ravens have flown.

We are the maps
Of a civilized city
With sleek silver Saturns;
A chrome-cluttered rave.

We are the glances
Thrown sharp over shoulders
To plot shallow stumps
Of our moss-swallowed grave.

That thing between my legs.
Folded nicely.
An envelope.
A door.
That thing sealed my future
But it isn't me.
I look down and see nothing,
Feel nothing,
Want more.
That cave took from me
All I ever was;
Ever wanted.
Now I have to find it on my own,
Pay for it,
Take skin from my leg for it.
But that thing,
That concave mountain
Of my set role in this society
Can't take any more.
That thing.
I won't let it.

They say to have a writer
Fall in love with you
So you will never die.
But I say
Seize the love of a musician.
Someone to write you
Into colors in the air
And star-****** behind the eyelids
Of any who will listen
To the tale of you that they wrote.

Musicians, like writers,
Bring light through a fog
With their love-speak and poems.
But music-makers
Can create flowers in winter
And warmth without fire.
Their melodies dance
Over the swish of grass blades
And between the tooth-gaps of children
Whose fingers are sticky
With sweet popsicle juice
While an oil-painted scene
Is painted in your mind.

So be cherished my a musician
And hear yourself forever;
Be sung by a hundred different voices,
Danced by fairies and pretty young girls,
Costumed in dissonance,
Etched into souls.
For you can never really die
When you echo forever in the cavern
Of a good song.

To the man who fell in love with the sea
Come back to me, come back to me.

Who, in the waves found yourself free
Come back to me, come back to me.

Whose eyes lit wide like a banshee
Come back to me, come back to me.

You dove down seep and tried to see
The under-water majesty
You went down, down, I guarantee
Your love for the sea was much more than for me.

Come back to me,
*Come back to me.