Floating
Spanning
Sprawling
Between Worlds
Hands and feet gripping corners of places
While most of  me hangs in space
Brushed by breezes
Cooling shiver
Quivering I lose my grip
First on one world then another
Curled ball-like
Collapsing through the air
But calmer than before
No strings
To bind me to this place
I am without
There is no measure for this moment
Except eternity

Brick by brick
I build a wall
“Mine will be taller,”
I think.
“Mine will be stronger.”
I hear the words you speak
With lips that have lied before.
My expectations are too high,
I will take this blame.
I will shoulder the burden of this guilt.
Built to tear us both in two.
Separated from ourselves as well as one another.
I hate it here.
Inside depressions cloud.
Where air feels heavier than lead.
I the problem.
I the weight.
I the reason we won’t survive whatever time we are given.
I, a waterfall, sometimes a trickle other times a torrent wearing at rocks sure and stable.

I want to pluck you from my memory
Extract you from my minds eye
Where you had lived too long
Now some dark cancer
Before a guiding light
I can’t think you out of my head
And she’s there too.
Along with you, the new “chosen one”
To protege your opinions
Some gullible peddler hoking wares as truth
Less likely hers


So rather than ruminate
I write
In hopes that pen to paper puts you and her in places further from my headspace
To call it sacred
To call it home
A wildlife preserve
Ideals endangered released to explore again
When for an elongated moment
Nothing breathed that was not you

We stretch and blink and breathe in air cleaner now than before
Slow
Slow
To take time to be
To know
I at one with my mind
To observe
To act
To care
To live

When I see your name
A blackness envelopes me
Crushing coal dark
A mine-like tomb
In seven letters strung in some specific order any momentum I had gained halts and crumbles into crystalline shards

A singular moment rings bell-like in my mind
When all I had become became what you saw of me and not I of myself.

In that surrender I shadowed and slipped into a world you made

I became your creation
Closing my minds eye to itself
Closing my heart from itself
Relinquishing imagination for apathy
Living only for the sound of your voice praising your definition of me

I existed
For too long
In ambiguity
In pockets of bliss
More infrequent as time progressed

And now
Free to pursue dream and desire
Find myself caught
By sheer frustration
Throat aching to cry,
I am not second.
I am worthy of time spent
Of openness and honesty
And public displays of affection
Of respect. More than anything.
And it begins with me.
So I will begin.

A tiny cake
sickly sweet

covered in fondant icing pressed paper thin and filled
with jam
or
buttercream
all one word

marzipan
made of almond  
fruit imitating

that yellow, warm, soft, sponge

Eat of me, that you may be filled