I want to feel like it all fits in the end
But what's the point in feeling
If it doesn't fit until the end
The End

Words that I often don't even remember
I wonder if these of teal ink and hot April hold anything
If only to a distant me that time will someday pass too
Or if they are stories told and forgotten
Sitting on pages with scribbled dates
At the beggining of my book
At the back of my memory
Buried by their own epic poem

I lost you
As the Universe intended it
I shaking there
A lonely poet

I quit picking my feet up
And crossing my fingers over rail road tracks
The day I lost a close friend at the age of 20
"Close friend"
Gives me that sick cliche feeling
Its guttural attempt to bottle what I had for her
Into those few words
To bottle anyone into words
Though I see now, that is what I do best

I work for mason jars
To portray personalities
Like shapeless liquid souls

I don't know why I quit;
Quit picking my feet up and crossing my fingers
Losing her was no matter of luck
But maybe it's the vulnerability of wishing
Of hoping
Having hope
The feeling I get with my own luck-trapping-routine

I cross the brassy tracks a few times a day
I see them in the distance and lift my feet a second before reaching their metal edge
Crossing my fingers just after I lift my legs from the seat beneath me
Holding my luck-trap until the last moment
It's a close call
I almost don't make it in time
I hold my breath in my chest
As the front wheels pass over before the back
Pitter-Pat
There it is,
Sitting in my chest: Myhope
My hope I was always so afraid of losing

Until that morning
Cool with wind and warm with early spring
Gray-blue-white clouds
With sunshine peeping through
It was January
Where years started clutching onto months

I still left for class that morning
The windows down
I could see my own reddened baby face in the side view mirror
As my room mate sat almost awkwardly beside me
No one would know what to say
It made me feel sorry I put her there
I slid my sun glasses down my nose
As we headed East
We crossed the railroad tracks
With the fields to my right
With the river and the morning sun
Still early enough for a thin shade of pink in that child like cotton candy sky
Almost suggesting a good day

Pitter-Pat
Brass beneath me
I hung my head
Deciding then
Hope was good as dead

I decided I didn't like the word
Suicide
After Intermittently interrupting my thoughts
It echoed
And then was too hard to swallow

I decided I didn't like the word Grieving
When it hung in my head
The word too short for it's worth

Grieeeeeeeving
It droned

And still felt empty
No explanation

Right beside me
Small little bird
Tucked beneath my wing
I waited months
To get this call
But not this time
Right after fall
You'd been so warm
A week ago
Your smile clean
Your spirit shown
But somehow you lost
Those warm eyes of brown
Baby bird,
What made it all wrong?
I just wish I'd been there
To hold you
Until you were gone

You will always follow me
Like melting canyon walls
Grown of glass
Forever folding inward
At my back.
In my mind;
Even when the rain clears up
You still stir
Your whitened waters.

One day,
When you left me
Mid-November,
heat still settles in only the South
The sun stole every sip
Slurped up every drop
From every pore
In my thinned body.
You almost killed me
I suppose-
Even then-
You tried to save me
Saving you
Hives across my body:
Holding aquifer pockets
Of your own blood.
You tried to warn me
With swollen, itchy
Reddened feet
My fingers burned,
But I went to sleep.

Awakened with delusion
You kicked at the curve
Of my knee
I; collapsed
Unconscious
With only pain running through my bedrock veins.
You left me,
With white running down my face.
You showed me how much mama loves me
Barely breathing
Bent over my body
With her own salty piece of you falling in my face.

Neaseous,
I could no longer hold you
No matter how much I longed to.
Mama took me to you.
Again, like glass on a November morning you sent ice through blue blood and back to my heart.
Like mama,
You screamed
Until you brought me conscious.

Twice mama had taken me to you
And on the first I'd fallen in love.
Hooked to an EKG
My eyes rolled back to when we met
As they pulled tubes of my blood from body
Weakened, I held only a blurred memory
Of three years ago
When you carried me over your muddied body,
Still with softened white ripples,
And warmed- no matter how far upstream- by July.
It was there
Touching the silk of your skin
With sun on my chest
And life at my back
That I promised
One day,
I would save you too.