Paris sleeps. Her naked body,
all soft lines and faint curves,
is captive to the sheets.
Where restlessness ****** her limbs
only moments ago, now
she knows the happy side of rest.

I wish this had been a different
morning--any other morning.
The freckles on her face
deserve to be counted,
to be hoarded away.
Who needs diamonds
when you have Parisian constellations
on an alabaster canvas?

She makes sleep look like
a Monet, all the brushstrokes
of her breath and the roots
of her blonde-dyed hair,
every dot of color placed with
a Deity's unshakable hand.

I’ve been chastised for writing poetry that was too angry.
I guess there is a lot of red in the world already,
why not spread some pleasant lilacs and a checked picnic blanket
and sit down for a while?
Why not quit thinking?
For just a moment?
Quit forcing the words to fall from our lips and
quit trying to speak over our friend,
Silence.
They have a lot to say.
Why not let them talk a minute?
Close our eyes.
Listen, smile, and nod.
No need to answer.
The quiet can tell when we’re paying attention,
and it meets us halfway with serenity.

I know all that emptiness
where the noise used to be
can get scary.
I know that all too well.
But it isn’t the Silence that tries to tear us apart.
They want to wrap us up in blankets of soft evening clouds
and remind us that not all is yet lost.

Look at me.
Let that sink in.
Not all is yet lost.

There was a time in my life when I thought you could fix me.
The two of us were lost and scratching for meaning in a post-post-postmodern world,
looking for purpose and clarity,
looking for the black-and-white morality in our grayscale lives.
When fate left us reeling in a shared embrace,
I let my sorry *** believe you were the Big Bad to my Virginia Woolf.
Leave it to me not to learn from past mistakes.

There was a time I saw you as a hero, a martyr of some twisted kind,
willing to give back to me that missing piece that someone else had cut from my flesh long ago.
I saw your love as the highest I could ever earn,
and I was devoted to your work-- whatever that meant.

I never saw the casualties.
I don’t even know that there were casualties, but I look into your face and I can see--
blood has been shed,
and it was on your behalf.

You don’t have the kind of face that launches fully armed battalions.
Leeland says you look like a mall Santa,
but I think you make quite the lady-killer.
And I mean killer.
You may as well call me Lizzie Short.

And when your life or ours started to wane,
when I saw your empty promises for the broken vessels that they were,
I realized I didn’t know where I ended and you began.
I realized there were so many words in your textbook full of saccharine lies
and you were using all of them to keep me weak enough to stay.

Was I falling for it? Hell ******* yes, I was falling for it.
I wanted so desperately to have someone in my life
whose every word I could believe
without fear of betrayal or accidental abuse
that I chose intentional manipulation.
Better to know it’s coming, that was my logic.
Better to cause it myself.
Better if I’m the one who dips the cigarette in your poisoned blood and lights it.

You won’t end my life.
You look like it, you act like it, but you don’t outright **** anyone.
You just give people the means and method to end it themselves.
I’ve heard it said there are three types of people:
the type that lose to you,
the type that win and suffer the trauma for the rest of their lives,
the type that win and then become you.
I’m the third, and though you hate to hear it, I wish I’d been the first.

Some people are so grateful to be alive.
But not me.
Not anymore.
Not ever.