I. “I will always love you. I need you.”

A small seed is planted
In ground that has long been barren
Any flower or tree or life that has tried to grow
Has been cut down by her own callous blade
Against olive warm flesh
Or surpassed by the loud rumblings and grumblings
Incessantly begging the girl to eat

But now,
A ceasefire

The girl is loved
She is cautious, at first
Perplexed by the boy’s affection
But he sweetly holds her hand
Looks at her with eyes of wistfulness
As if she was an intricate work of art
A thing of beauty
And she decides
To
Let
The
Seed
Grow

II. “I’m not sure how I feel anymore.”

The girl had grown into a lemon tree
Made from light and love and vitamin D
But he took away her light
He forgot to hold her hand
He looked at her with eyes of apathy
As if she had become a colorless, bland  
Thing of normality
And she decides
To
Let
The
Boy
Go

III. “I’m sorry. I still need you. I want to make it work.”*

The girl thought she had grown on her own
But she wilted without her sun
She cut herself down out of pity
Because all her lemons had turned sour
She was no longer beautiful

But now,
The boy returns

Sad to see that her tree is gone,
He asks to plant a seed again
But the girl is trying to plant a new seed
Her own seed to create
                                         Her own light
                                                         Love
                                                         Beauty
So that the tree will belong to her

But she misses the boy
She struggles to find a seed to plant
Too distracted by rumblings and grumblings
Because she keeps forgetting to eat
She looks at the boy with the seed
And she decides
She
Does
Not
Know

“One day she left without a word. She took away the sun.
And in the dark she left behind, I knew what she had done.
She'd left me for another, it's a common tale but true.
A sadder man but wiser now I sing these words to you:

Lemon tree very pretty and the lemon flower is sweet
But the fruit of the poor lemon is impossible to eat.”
(Peter, Paul & Mary – “Lemon Tree”)

This week’s case of the Mondays
Entailed plummeting
Into an inescapable hole  
Rubber clashing with jagged asphalt
Trailed by a pop!
Precisely slicing a crescent shaped space
In the preferably airtight place

I remembered
With an abrupt smack
In the face that the one
who was supposed to teach
His petit chéri
The science of swinging a bat or
Changing a spare hasn't
Been there to care let alone
Disclose ins-&-outs
Of tire repair

You were supposed
To toughen me up
And teach me how to
Make a 3-pointer / 3-point turn
And how a boy should treat me -
Or that I could survive
Without one at all

Still-
I have embraced
Evolved and
Learned to be tough

I may not be well-versed
In car mechanics but
I’ve learned to survive
With a flat tire father

They keep telling me
No, yelling at me,
“For your wounds to heal,
You must stop touching them."

But Rumi told me,
“The wound is the place
Where the light enters you”

And I’m not sure if I ever
Wanted to heal in the
First place

You will get over him
You will get over him
You will get over him

I repeat to the blurry reflection in the mirror
Of the hollow girl with perpetual
Tear streaks stained on her cheeks.

But what am I to do
About this gigantic hole?
This huge gaping chasm in my
Soul that makes my chest tight and
Makes each inhale and exhale a fight?

My world is still capsized
From the crater you created
When you let me slip away.

When will my heart stop seizing?
Or will it just stop beating?

“You explode in me here and there, now and always; you are causing a brain seizure in my ******* heart. I’ve been so actively lethargic, I am in ******* literal pain without you”
- Ernest Hemingway

I want to curl up in the bend of your elbow
Where it is soft and warm and close to you

I can look up at your granny smith eyes
And be enveloped by your cinnamon smell

I know I can’t stay; eventually I simply must go
But I’ll always come back to the bend of your elbow

We were just close friends.
I loved the way you could make the grass stand up straight
With the way your lips moved when you spoke
And how the sounds your mouth uttered
Buttered the blades with a sparkling dew
But we were just close friends.

I loved your smell of vanilla and tobacco and
I daydreamed all day about sharing four cigarettes
With filters laced with your spine tingling mint Chap Stick.
I loved to watch your soft hands glide effortlessly up and down
The neck of your guitar and sometimes I thought of your fingers
Plucking blouse buttons instead of strings and I tried
To keep my voice from quivering as I sang along
But we were just close friends.

Sometimes we gave each other back massages without shirts but only because they would get in the way of hands carving sculptures into each others shoulder blades and once when we were high and drunk we even kissed and you leaned over my shoulder and whispered stop fighting it, let it happen and it was easy and gentle and felt like music and when you snuck my shirt up over my head the butterflies that had been fluttering ceaselessly in my stomach flew up with it and into your mouth and neither of us wanted to stop and we both knew we weren’t that high or drunk anyway but we had to be because
We were just close friends.

Then you fell in love with her.
And I said was so happy for you but my insides felt knotted and mangled and I wasn't sure why because we were only close friends after all and I wanted to be happy for you but I didn't want to share you and somewhere along the way I think we passed being just close friends but neither of us mentioned it because I couldn't let myself feel that way or I couldn't admit to feeling that way and then you found her and I didn't get to see you as much because you were busy sharing your minty cigarettes and kisses with her and singing songs about her and plucking her blouse buttons and then eventually we stopped being friends entirely.

Now its four years later and you are fine I think and I am fine I think but sometimes I still think about sharing cigarettes and secrets and kisses and sleeping with your arms wrapped around me like we did that summer when we were close friends and every time I hear the symphony that is the name Hannah I can still your smell vanilla skin and I get chills where you used to mold sculptures and sometimes I wish I had found the courage to tell you four years ago that maybe just maybe I wanted to be more than close friends.

A vehemently charged electric shock of events
Made an innocent trip to The City to visit a friend transgress
Into a less-than-innocent night in a more-than-pocket change hotel room
Behind the closed door, conversations were tasted instead of heard
Fingertips grazed and hungrily circled inner thighs

For two restless hearts who searched for dreams
In the affectionate eyes of someone else instead
Of their own shut eyes and a resting head in bed,
The City that Never Sleeps seemed the most peaceful
At five in the morning in a bed with two lost souls tangled
Together, a jigsaw puzzle of legs arms and misplaced emotion.

She found her oxytocin from his soul-warming coffee laugh,
His black rampant hair and the inebriating feeling of being wanted.
He found his from a backwards desire to repair himself by fixing her,
By making her feel safe with a theatrical saint-like performance until
The vulture he masked overpowered and devoured her.

She is simply a coffee addict, hooked on his warmth and
Deliciousness and his laughing mocha eyes that resemble
Hot black coffee mixing beautifully with milk and sugar.
She’s dependent on the quick fix of brewing a fresh strong ***
Of happy! percolated with objectification flavored beans
Until she finds a way to concoct the happiness without the beans.

He, on the other hand, harbors something far more sinister.
For while she only intended to drink in his warmth
And let him drink hers in return,
He consumed her whole
Spread his wings
And instantly returned
To making circles in the sky.

You held out your hand, inviting me
To dance barefoot across the cedar
Splintered wood of your living room floor

Despite my guise of grace I am not
Capable of keeping your quick pace
The glass slippers I misplaced around
Midnight helped to hide my two left feet
Knobby knees and numb toes stumbled through
One  two  three  one  two  three  one­  two  three

We danced till the sun interrupted
Not with my tongue-tied toes but with our
Chapped Lips, teeth, pink cheeks, racing heartbeats
Fingers waltzed across your warm soft flesh
Memorizing skin maps and tracing
Constellations of belly buttons
Palms, spines, collarbones, and speckled chests

In the abrupt light of afternoon,
I rushed to leave before you saw the
Disheveled remnant of a Princess
Still in her dancing dress, but shoeless

You searched for long-gone slippers as I
Faintly heard you ask my name beneath
The echoed slam of the palace doors

Yesterday you came to my door, took the blade from my shaking hands and closed the wine I had been drowning in.
You held me and cried with me and for an eternity we made no sounds at all because there were no words that could fix me. Your words were the first to cut through the quiet. "You are so good," you said. You are so good. You are so good. I let the words bounce around in my soul and tried to hold on to them but they felt to heavy to contain. We said nothing else and you kept your arms wrapped around me until the sun was peeking over the darkest night and heavy eyes gave in to sleep.

We woke up and you cleaned me up and tried to sweep up all my broken pieces, still knowing that no one else but me would be able to recreate the shattered glass puzzle. You sealed the sharp jagged edges and shards of my shattered soul in a plastic ziploc bag, paying close attention not to leave a single piece behind. You placed me gently next to you in the passenger seat of your car with the busted radio, shifted into gear, and tried to drive me away from the bad.

We drove to New Jersey, to the cold, eerie, but peaceful January beach. We walked barefoot, side by side, me finding solace that I was still here and I could see my footprints stretch behind me on the shore, and you still clutching my bag of broken pieces and letting it swing slowly by your side with each stride.

I stood with my feet in the crashing waves and breathed in the salt air, letting it fill up my lungs with each purposeful breath. I tried to exhale the pollution and toxins of the past year, and felt the waves softening my sharp edges each time they pulled back to the ocean abyss.

On the walk back, my foot prints had already been washed away by the soothing salt water. But, for the time being, I was still here. I would keep going, keep making new foot prints, and keep trying to piece myself back together. Still, I found serenity knowing that if I was unable to solve the puzzle, my broken soul could someday become a part of the ocean, and be smoothed down by the currents into something beautiful. Perhaps by next year, the sharp pieces of my soul would be softened by the artist of the ocean and scattered across the shoreline like a beautiful sea glass mosaic, waiting to be picked up by a curious beach goer.
Even broken can become beautiful.
It will be okay.
Happy New Year.
Time to go home.

I kept trying
To put it off
I rolled over when he tried to kiss me
I pushed wandering hands away
I pretended to be closely watching
The movie I didn't give a **** about

But the credits came
And took my alibi as they rolled
He got on top of me because
He assumed that’s what I wanted
Funny
How consent works

I am thinking,
         Feeling,
         Lost in my head
I wish I could talk
But I am entirely too busy
         Watching,
         Thinking,
         Feeling
I simply haven’t had the time
To think of my own words yet

I do not want to sleep
Because though I know
I'll dream of you
,
When I wake
I will have to lose you
All over again

*(I have become
A very tired girl
Who lays awake each night
And dreams of you
With eyes wide open)

(The one I put my heart into that you read and promptly handed back to me)

*T,

You know as well as I do that when I want something, I don't know how to give it up. I don't think I have ever loved anything as much as you or wanted anything as badly as I want you and so I have absolutely no choice but to keep trying.
I don't know how to stop loving.
Trust me, I am trying so hard.
I’ve gone on my fair share of dates
And gotten a kitten to distract me
And cut my hair to start over
But dates make me sad because
They don't hold my hand the way you do
And I love my kitten but
She reminds me of you more than she helps me forget
And my hair is short now but
I still have no interest in a fresh start
If it doesn't include you.

Maybe I wasn't supposed to stop loving you.
It feels like the whole world is trying to prevent me from getting over you.
And so I will keep choosing you.
Without pause, without doubt, without hesitation.
I will always choose you.

I cannot give up.
I know I can fix it.
I know I can be better.
I just need the chance.
Please give me one more chance.
Until then, I will keep trying to get over you-
No, until then, I will keep waiting for you to come back.

“Have courage to trust love one more time and always one more time.”
-Maya Angelou

Love (Always),
S

P.S. I will send you three hundred letters if I have to.
Three thousand even.
Three zillion trillion.

You
Liked
My
Hair
Long
So
I
Cut
It
Short
.

You undressed me faster
There has never been another who has not
Devoured my naked body before
Drinking in my laughter

You kissed me better
There has never been another who has
Kissed me slowly, purposefully, without
Greedy intentions of making me wetter