Click the link if you'd like to listen to me speak this poem.

https://soundcloud.com/venniekocsis/the-separating

I have stared at pictures
of my face with
closed eyes

I have imagined
this is what I would
look like in a coffin

so I will be burned
turned to ash
sprinkled into the
soft earth of this Mother

so they can remember
the sound of my laughter
when I visited the trees

Some say "oh, that is so morbid!
how could you think like that?"

I reply, "how can I not,
when I know I'll be back?"

I am but just a blink
on this thing we call a life
when I return to stardust
I'll sleep a thousand nights.

But for now
I trudge the wreckage
of a complicated pain
to see if I can
build the strength
to return this way again.

How does one hold on to hope,
dying in the snow,
huddled 'round a barrel fire
as the sarin seeps the ground?

I say I am a washer,
some ask me what I mean
I have invisible knapsacks
strapped behind my knees

I have wondered why
I'd choose this kind of life
to feel the saddest parts
of a human's broken heart

Sometimes I stare at photos
I don't recognize myself
not the upturned nose
or the slight overbite of my jaw
I stare at foreign eyes
who was she before
she was forced to survive

I remember planets
where I sat beside the blues
places just like this one
without the sorrow

It has always felt abnormal
to be inside this skin
like my soul has always
fought a war
with being in human form

I have gazed at my face
in colorful gradients
long to kiss my lips
and feel their softness
to know just once
what it is like
to stand on the outside
of a bullet riddled body

I would hold my cheeks,
look at myself so sweetly
in all the ways I imagined
would happen if I was loved
unconditionally, fully,
wholly, without expectation

I have stared at the darkness
like it's a Hearst
where my dead flesh would rest first,
carried through dimensions
back to the before
if I could just have the courage
to step through that door

It doesn't feel familiar
being in this place
with the indifference,
the passivity and
the down turned faces

It's not to say I
don't have moments where I'm happy
but how can I skip through rainbows
when there is so much weeping?

I feel each time they ache
like it's my very own heart
like they're a piece of my existence
their shadowing lingering
in my footsteps and
I cannot catch a breath
for the intensity of
their desperate loneliness

I have stared at my hands
folded across my chest
the way my fingers would interlace
before the skin decays and breaks

the way humans display
other humans
to feel better inside
about the way
their loved one died;
pomp and circumstance
taking precedence
in lifelessness

I have images stamped in my head
my eyes black and absent
the way they'll be in the end

take it back
put it in concrete
make a chisel with a code
so deep
they'll have to go to
great feats to figure it out
because there are two choices
love and doubt

and in the end
neither will matter
it'll just be you and the stars
and the echo of grief
evaporating into the mist

and you will see your face
on white paper
with words about
a second of an inch thick
before you become separated
into a remember when

let the shards fly
sink into my skin cause
I'll be back this way again
but until then

I wonder what will be
written on my epitaph
she felt too much
she let the sadness gush
she whispered in the silence

No, No
save the stone
instead, make me flame
in my last moments let me shine
and be light
then take me to the sea
where the waves will bury me

and I'll return home
to tell them of a dying planet
and the few eyes
who have not yet lost hope

v.k poetry
copyright @ dbv publishing 2013