Do you hear it?
The breath of the sea, in swells.
Whispering sweet nothings to the sand.
I want to be in love like that.
In love like the moon and the stars are in love with the sky.
In love like the way the birds sing the world awake, and the breeze caresses the leaves on the aspen in the grove.
I want to be in love like everything that knows it’s dying,
to love without apology.
To love something so wholly and perfectly, without needing anything in return.
I want to love not in order to be loved,
but to love because I can.
Love in its purest form, the way the sun rises every morning and the people fall in love with the dawn.

No romanticized ideas.
about your heart.
You imagine,
a mound of bloodied flesh.
In darkness,
for there is no light inside a body.
It squeezes and releases.
squeezes and releases.
Making its gross distortions
until you die.
Life.

The words are dead,
before they are spat from the angry curve of your mouth,
They are dead.
Lifeless.
And they cannot touch me for I too, am dead.
Where you wanted to see the wounds inflicted by your words,
there was nothing.
For only you were still alive to feel
the pain
of your already dead words
So I left.

Soft wind,
tugging at the corners of my scarf.
Silence,
tugging at the corners of my soul.
I liked looking at the world
through the purple fabric of my scarf.

I was busy,
counting stories in the clouds.
The adults prayed,
all around me, they sat, heads bowed.

Silence,
doesn't bother me.
I can tell the best stories,
inside
my head.
I don't need to tell them out loud.
They are my secret.

I look at the people,
bowed.
So many souls.
Or bodies,
my heart tells me they are empty at the moment.
Souls pushed out, on a breath of wind and a whisper of prayer.

I panic.
I don't mind Silence.
But. I don't like
to be alone.

Gentle tug turns menacing.
Wind ripping purple fabric from my hands.
Silence,
overwhelms me.
I need to convince myself
that there is noise.
That there is life,
because
I feel so alone.

And just when these thoughts,
pass,
through my panic.
They rise.
And there is life once more.

Night reaches out to sleep beside dark.
Beyond, soft, precious breath pushed toward the light.
A dream where their light swallowed up the silence of the earth,
The years without cease.
A great stone, black and ancient, raised in light with eyes dead.
An alabaster heart, in dull glass
Turned soundlessly to silent sleep.
The dead daylight never spoke again.

It’s not that I meant for it to happen.
Yet even as my broken mind is forming these thoughts it feels like the biggest lie
I’ve ever told.
I meant it.
Every cut deliberate.
Every action serving its purpose.
I look down at the mess I have created, the mess that
                                                            ­           I am.
My body crumples and the action does not feel like my own.
Truth lies in the blood on my hands.
                                                          ­             Red.
Red streaking the map of my skin, the colors drip and blur.
                                                                ­       North America
takes shape on the tile by my knee. And I concentrate on it.
I see the secrets of the universe written in streams.
                                                        ­               Red streams.
                                                                ­       Red, like love.

Do I know love? I ask.
I never will.
But it’s alright because I have seen every constellation on the
                                                                ­  bathroom floor.
A night sky of red and white and it is more
                                                                  Beautiful
than anything I have ever seen. I am falling into the sky and
I am not myself. Not somebody else.
Just the
             blood falling,
                         slipping silently
                             down the drain.

A dog barks somewhere outside and I feel every wave of noise.
I am inside, wrapped in a cocoon of sound waves.
I am noise.
              I am everything
                        and nothing
                                      and I am free.
Eyes click open. One, two. See Blood.
                                                          ­          Holes.
Holes in my wrists. Holes in everything I have ever known. Holes in reality.
Every pump of my heart pumps my
                                                                ­    spirit into freedom.
Away from the cage of my body.

                                                           ­          Blink, eyes.
                                                                ­     Pump, heart.
                                                                ­     Blood.
                                                                     Pump, free.

I can feel my spirit slipping out.
I have to close my eyes. They can’t come with me.
                                                                ­        No place for eyes where I am going.

Eyelids flutter, they pick out the smudge that was
                                                                ­         North America,
bled into an apple. Bleeding apple. I have tasted the forbidden fruit.
Now I have the knowledge, now I am free.
                                                           ­               I wonder, aren’t all stories the same?
I have had what is forbidden and there is no return.
But it doesn’t matter; not really, because I can see the night sky and
every secret it’s ever held.
And I want to tell you.
I want to tell you the meaning
                                                                ­       of life,
                                                                ­       and of death,
                                                                ­       and of freedom,

but my spirit is already too far from my mouth.
Pumped out onto the tile.
                                                                ­       Free.

My eyes close and I am no longer there.


                                                        ­               Free.

There is a hole in my head
I can't seem to find it.
It's too small
But somewhere between my left ear and the place where my hair starts again,
thoughts go missing
I know that they get lost out through
the hole in my head, and into the
space outside.