Mar 2017
People tell me I have sad eyes.
They always have, ever since I can remember.
They're right.
Big sad brown eyes, like a child when they first realize that all living things
Die.
Like that moment, if that moment had eyes.
They look sadder right after it rains:
Whenever the rain stops, something inside of me curls back up to sleep
And I ache to see it go
Because it leaves such an echoing space
Like a single harp string struck all alone
While the others glisten with silence.
Sometimes
If I am very lucky and very patient,
I find someone who makes me feel like rain does.
I wake up inside, tentatively at first, a shock of green pushing up through snow, and then all at once
Roots digging into the core of me.
I look at her and I can hear the hush of a thousand shifting whispers
See lightning sliding through her bones and spreading along her skin.
My heart becomes the thrum of hot air high up, yearning for thunder but too human to reach it.
It is then that I'm told my eyes are saddest.
Funny, to be sad about joy
But inside I become a storm, a hurricane trapped in glass,
My body so dangerously brittle and transparent, a thin but hopeless barrier between me and a world I want to touch ferociously
Frantically
Wickedly.
Words are not enough-
I could build stone temples to this feeling
But it would only grind them to sand.
I hum inside like a tuning fork struck, unable to hold all this chaos in such small, fragile casings.
It is a fearful joy
It is joy that knows its hunger
Will be its starvation:
All storms end.
It is the joy and not the sadness that touches my eyes,
But they are so alike
Both filled with a longing too vast for either.
I reel with it,
For when I find my moments of freedom
The world has texture
And I want to spread my palms against it and never be torn away again.
I hold tight, searching every corner for a place to anchor myself
A scalding certainty seeping through me in layers
That it will always be too soon, never close enough,
That before I can begin to discover what people really meant when they created god,
This vibrant place will slip away and fall to dust
And the grays and browns of my stable solitude will bloom again
And crush the color from me.
So many times it's happened
And yet each time is like the first
Like a child realizing that all living things
Die--
The surprise
The grief
The innocence
All over again
And I am left so tired, washed up on the shores of myself
Bleached by cold light which slices through my haze of passion
Revealing
That it has only ever been me in here
And only ever will be.
People tell me I have sad eyes.
I expect they always will.
They always have, ever since I can remember.
They're right.
Big sad brown eyes, like a child when they first realize that all living things
Die.
Like that moment, if that moment had eyes.
They look sadder right after it rains:
Whenever the rain stops, something inside of me curls back up to sleep
And I ache to see it go
Because it leaves such an echoing space
Like a single harp string struck all alone
While the others glisten with silence.
Sometimes
If I am very lucky and very patient,
I find someone who makes me feel like rain does.
I wake up inside, tentatively at first, a shock of green pushing up through snow, and then all at once
Roots digging into the core of me.
I look at her and I can hear the hush of a thousand shifting whispers
See lightning sliding through her bones and spreading along her skin.
My heart becomes the thrum of hot air high up, yearning for thunder but too human to reach it.
It is then that I'm told my eyes are saddest.
Funny, to be sad about joy
But inside I become a storm, a hurricane trapped in glass,
My body so dangerously brittle and transparent, a thin but hopeless barrier between me and a world I want to touch ferociously
Frantically
Wickedly.
Words are not enough-
I could build stone temples to this feeling
But it would only grind them to sand.
I hum inside like a tuning fork struck, unable to hold all this chaos in such small, fragile casings.
It is a fearful joy
It is joy that knows its hunger
Will be its starvation:
All storms end.
It is the joy and not the sadness that touches my eyes,
But they are so alike
Both filled with a longing too vast for either.
I reel with it,
For when I find my moments of freedom
The world has texture
And I want to spread my palms against it and never be torn away again.
I hold tight, searching every corner for a place to anchor myself
A scalding certainty seeping through me in layers
That it will always be too soon, never close enough,
That before I can begin to discover what people really meant when they created god,
This vibrant place will slip away and fall to dust
And the grays and browns of my stable solitude will bloom again
And crush the color from me.
So many times it's happened
And yet each time is like the first
Like a child realizing that all living things
Die--
The surprise
The grief
The innocence
All over again
And I am left so tired, washed up on the shores of myself
Bleached by cold light which slices through my haze of passion
Revealing
That it has only ever been me in here
And only ever will be.
People tell me I have sad eyes.
I expect they always will.
