After everything.

After the embers finally
cooled.
And I left the rain that caused
the chill.

After I felt the touch of
rage
and the hand of anger
try to

finish me

after I heard the breath of
   dying

and I heard the song of
  hope -

after I felt the tug of
rejection on my
sleeve

and the toxic
black and white dream of days

it's
the bitter taste
of nightfall here.

The sinking pause of abandonment.

The hesitant blossom of
springtime.

I hope that I can
find
peace
with the
blisters that
you left me with.

This is about me

These words.

How I've given
myself
  away time
   and time
       a
        g
            a
              i
               n


the secrets I've
kept
to
protect
  myself.

It is you - it's
not me.
It's not my
vulnerability.

It's not my passion.

It's not for my willingness not to fight
- or because my faith is
dwindling

This poem is about me.
And it's about everything you've

taken
from
me.

I'm preparing for the
fall-out, it's lover's
Armageddon
Where you're in
San Francisco and you're
going to a wedding

And I'm in Arizona with my
goddess-empire dream
work it work it, hustle baby
I'm Palo Verde Queen

We're preparing for the
fall-out - our supreme
divination
and you're waiting for your next train
home
- Californian Exaltation

from one dry heat to another
two lovers, hope-possessed
work it work it,back to me
and to our honeyed love nest.

I could fall onto
my back
and into
cigarette burns and
the grief-trenches

I could hold onto the feeling
of your hand
in mine
and the hunger I
feel for your
magic
  healing
    words

I don't know if you
knew it then -
but since all this time has
passed
and all the knocks on the door were not
yours (they
couldn't be yours)

and I knew you couldn't be back to
say
goodbye.

I'm so glad I stayed
with you,
held you,
and called our family to the
room
when you died.

Looking back to a summer
afternoon,
where I hid behind every table
with my back straight
and my arms held down
a forced gentle on my face,

I felt like a rattlesnake,
waiting.

I've never been tame - and
I wasn't even, then.
I've never been possessed.
     I've never been locked inside a
room in June - your hand pressing on the silver handle
with its cracks and fractures, its creaky breath rattling like tuberculosis
- your black ash streaming lungs
your history of slithering poison where neither you nor I had
legs to crawl away

The longer the days go
between then's dewy porcelain and the now, and the
shadowy sound of your breathing,
the more I simmer and smolder my snake-seethe and fume
your venom never owned me -

I molted when locked in that room.

I went back to
that weekend
when the hills were full of
roses
and you were only ten steps
    from the path

I was in my
sundress
and you were in
your knack:

a deep and dark depression where there's no
going
back.

It's easy to say
that the other's to
blame

when the sand and
the sea play the
push and pull game

and it's hard to get
dry in this grey, coastal
rain

wet wood
on the coast
won't light up into
flame

So I sit by the embers,
glowing in shame

and take a stick to
embed the sand with
your name

- the month that you died,
I wasn't the same

I've never been sure
I was meant to be tame.