Driving. With rain sliding down the windows, too dark to see much beyond the headlights and taillights rolling ahead and towards me.
I have the music turned too loud to really think clear thoughts, it almost stings my ears a little.  
Pin picks of memories are pushing through the lower subconscious of my mind
I can feel the cavity below my ribcage expanding slightly as I'm trying to let everything in.
Stuck between shallow breathing and taking too deep of raged breathes.
I never liked the sound of my own breathing.
It always seemed cruel that I was allowed the one natural courtesy that my father was eventually denied.
Sometimes I hear the ringing of hospital bells in my ears when it's too quiet.
It's been 7 years.

This can't be it, this can't be it I think as I slide my hands over the wheel turning too hard onto my street with itching palms and dry lips
This can't be everything that we are lined up for marching in and out of office buildings and hospital waiting rooms, born to live, live to die hands turned up and out pushing past the next person in line because
when I was younger
I used to stand in the middle of my backyard
and hold really still
staring at the sun motes that twirled in the leaves of the trees
holding really still until I heard a hawk scream loud enough to send my heart sky rocketing and knees driving through the grass and to the front door
They call that "Checking In"
a way 6 year olds way of making sure I was still alive
It's been 7 years
I don't know how to be still anymore.

You curled your hand around my chin and told me to "never change"
and I don't know if I can do that because
I think I've got hurricanes in my hair
and the graveyards of shipwrecks in my ribcage
with the force of ten thousand years of tides crashing against
the hulls of my chest

and you are the lighthouse glaring through the storm

you always chide me for opening my mouth and shutting it before emitting any words

I'm just trying to keep my head above water

when i'm choking on the right words to say I use my fingernails to trace them into your back when you sleep
words like "I" and "you"
I hope when you dream you hear all the words I never got to say to you
I wonder if you tasted black ink when you kissed me
sometimes I think my heart is just an inkwell

I can't waste any ink to spill about you because I can't find one poetic thing in our beginning, middle,  or end.

Swear to God, they would toss every firecracker aside if they saw just how fast you spark up.
Faster than the blink of your tear thats slithers down your weathered cheek you can go 0-80 miles an hour, all screeching tires and pumping veins.
Let them see  how quick you shatter glass and then  how you'd cut your own hands just to put it back together before anyone saw the blood.
Tell them about the screaming lions in your chest.
I wish you never caged them.
Shatter mirrors and arrange them back in jagged order so they actually reflect the same thing you see.
I saw you crow counting, heart pounding, sirens sounding lying in the grass.
Did the earth ever speak to you? Or were the wolves howling too loud.
I wish you never caged them.

It's been two weeks
four days and
seven hours since you left
It's cold in the bed. I can see the fog unfurling on the floor around the bed posts. The morning sun burns through the blinds and unspools like liquid metal in patches on the quilt.
"You're acting crazy" You told me
"I am crazy" I said
I threw a glass at the door after you shut it. I heard you laugh as you walked down the sidewalk. I heard you laugh as it shattered across the tile.
I fed the cat. Sat down on the floor next to her while she ate. Watched the steam from the teapot tumble through the air. She doesn't purr like she used to.
It's been two weeks
four days and
nine hours since you left.
I'm still picking up pieces of glass.

I have poison in my veins
I am dark matter
I have shadows in the curves of my collarbones
switch blades tucked into my hips

I am venomous
I am a viper
a black widow

and I am so, so sorry, my darling
that you are the only one that I strike

I hope
  (with a fire that consumes my kindling of bones)
that the first thing to strike you
when you run your hand down my back
is not the stretching of my rib cage as it settles around my lungs.
I hope you are lit,
with a ******* wildfire,
when your fingertips alight upon my skin.

I have created a yellow house
(with open windows and white curtains)
It is always summer here.
It is always sunny here.
Bruce Springsteen plays in my barefoot kitchen
and I have breakfast and tea for three meals a day.
It is always summer here.
I am never lonely here.
There are no fire escapes, winter winds or clocks.
I have created a yellow house.
Created it years ago.
I have nothing.
I have everything.

The force that propels  lightening and hail to the ground is the same force that sends me crashing into your arms at the end of my thundering days

See, when I talk to you, I want to look you right in the eyes.
But I can’t.
The weirdest compliment I ever got from a mutual friend:
“Listen, I really wanna hang but I just smoked a ****-ton and your eyes are really tripping me out. So I’m gonna go”
Ex-boyfriend, first date:
“Every time you look at me I feel like I’m saying something inadequate. You always have this intense look on your face. I feel like I’m not meeting your standard”
The first boy who really broke my heart told me the only reason he stayed at that party was because of my eyes. We were on the roof and he leaned over and made a gesture with his ******* pointed to my face, “Those right there” I reached out and grabbed his hand  “reason why I stayed”
So forgive me, if I don’t look you in the face when we speak. I love too hard and feel too much and, Heaven help, you feel inadequate.
I want to hold your hand and lean forward when you talk. I want to comprehend and not just listen. I want to take your words and translate them into my language so when you say that you want to be a teacher when you grow older, I understand that it means someone helped you when you needed it most as a child. But empathy is frowned upon now. Tuck your hands into your pockets, scowl at the sky and ignore the openness of the strangers on the street.
I’ve learned to pocket my trust because wearing it splayed on my chest is akin to a scarlet letter.  It’s a modern-day sin to care too much.
“You put so much of yourself into people who don’t deserve it”
I said “I love too hard”
He said “I think you can be forgiven for that”
No, see I don’t want to be pardoned as if I have a flaw. I want to be embraced like the sand embraces the salt water every time it crashes down, and draws away.
I want to bare my wrists to someone and be able to say “I loved this world even when it didn’t love me”  
I want someone to have the audacity to know that my scars are not signs of weakness, but tally marks from when I was counting down until the day I was free again.
Maybe I’ll never learn.  
But I’ve decided that I’ll keep reaching out until someone starts reaching back.

It was our  1am rendezvous' that were my favorite secret to keep.
Sneak out, lock the door,
drive to your apartment where you were waiting for me before I raised my hand to knock.
Our greetings were stand offs but even before you turned your back to let me in
my hands were around your waist, my lips to your neck just relishing the chance to be
near you again.
You would snap at me each time I raised my arms to you like a plaintive child
but you came to me anyway
and I pulled you down tumbling into your sheets.
The finale to our sordid dance.
Sometimes we never kissed and simply talked until our lips were chapped
and we were tired of chasing each other's tails.
Other nights you had a hunger I couldn't deny and our words were our clothes
that we shrugged out of and dropped onto the floor.
By 7am I was up shimmying out of your sheets with a kiss on your cheek and nothing else.
You told me you liked how I never looked back every time I left.
I learned that from you.