Three days now
I've sipped licorice
in the afternoon.

I am, even now
as I write this,
warm in the liquor's womb.

Perhaps I judged too soon (?)


                             *mzf

Tight, wet, and so young.
Splitting of atoms, vestal.
Sliced fruit, wine, dead time.

Dead stains, blood and wine.
Soil, ancient roots. Nights songbird.
Savage tendencies.

At the end of night she bathes in light,
We tussle in the warmth of morning,
The blankets and she are of sea foam
And found shells, whispering lost ocean
Words.  Our bed is a raft, drifting aloft,
The coffee is brewing with mellow sun,
Her smiles, filling my silly, giddy mug.
Soon, we walk to the pebbled beach,
Her hair is waving at the friendly seas,
Gulls are circling in the moving skies
Reeling with the slow, slipping tides
And I skip stones with her as our feet
Sink in the milk of morning sands—
Must we be off to Dublin town?

We don't look at each other anymore.
The hurting is its own kind of sad
that I've framed with the words you never told me.
And you'd think because I gave you
so much of my own self-requited happiness and help,
that because I did pull you up from the trash can facade
you threw yourself in
covering your skin in your own garbage and alcohol rain
that you'd see me.
You'd think because I loved you that things would be different.

No, I didn't ******* in the back bedroom
like that sophomore did the weekend before.
But I did clean up the beer you spilt that you couldn't afford
on the night you shouldn't have been drinking.
I did let you hold me when you looked around the crowded room
of people you didn't know
realizing you were alone.

No, I didn't laugh when you smashed your hand
through that window on a dare.
But I did wash the blood from your cuts with a gentle cloth
when you weren't looking so it wouldn't hurt.
I did call your brother to tell him you were alright
when you were supposed to be home an hour ago and he couldn't find you.
I took a lot of your pain away.
In different ways than the beer bottles in you back pockets
or the empty body you left lying on the bed.
I did talk you through a long night when you didn't know what to do-
I did that for you.
I did help you pack away the parts of you you didn't like-
I'll always do that for you.

And you'd think that'd make you look my way.
Because all the things I did do
should outweigh the things I didn't.
You'd think because I loved you that things would be different.

But you don't even look at me anymore,
it's like I'm some broken angel on your shoulder you can't see.
I just always thought I was more important
than the things I couldn't be.

I tremble because I am not the breeze,
because I will never be the the auburn sunset on the surf,
because I will never be as cleansing as the rain.

I weep because I can not nurture half as much as the soil,
and because I have not solidified enough to be a stone.

My mundane body quakes with despair;
because I am too complex to be as simple as the clouds,
and I will never break as beautifully as a barreling wave.

I am terrified because I don't know if I will ever be more than Human.