You bought a dress shirt,
Button-up and black.
I could see your mood in your eyes
like the shirt in my hand
dark and neatly pressed.
Buttons in a perfect row of black on black.
I undid them hurriedly
so I could get the **** hanger off
and put your purchase in the bag,
then flushed and looked away
hoping you wouldn't notice,
suddenly struck by how intimite a gesture
undoing a button could be.

In this place the trees grow taller.
I listen to the pound of my foot steps hitting the muddy earth-
a thunderstorm in beat with the tick of my heart that resounds so loud in my ears.
I look to the vast expanse of green all around me and wonder what keeps bringing me here, alone,
out of breath,
running from all that chases me.
Tick… tock… tick.
My heart ticks.
Keeping in rhythm I continue to run farther,
deeper into the green that surrounds me, until the weight of my feet let me go no farther.
I collapse and the cessation comforts me.
I feel my heart slow for the first time as the green intoxicates me, my senses overwhelmed.
My eyelids grow heavy with the newfound stillness beneath me.
Shadows swell and ebb across a carpet of mossy browns below while the canopy shivers above, caressed by the unseen sky.
I let out a sigh and am hushed by the wind,
my voice hanging in the air like a curse in a sacred place.
Time is slowed with the return of silence as I am left
Alone,
in this green again.

Dizzy. Head spins. Confusion sets in.
Night whispers sweet nothings with a tinge of revenge.
Confusion settles in. Gets comfy. Decideds to stay for a while.
While all the while, while...   frustration hits.

Singular- One- in multiples of one- spins me.
Tears come and go, flipping emotion through and through me.
I get dizzy sometimes. I can feel sometimes
Only confusion twirling me, twisting me, hitting me,
Not letting me live, live...

Live each day singular. One. In so many multiples of one.
Through and through me. Screaming into me.
Becoming my known way of life.

When will this end? Revolver. Revolving.
Circling, Cycling, Breathing on it's own without the need of me.
No longer a function of me,
has become me.

Oh- the tears- Hole in chest, in head, in heart.
Hole of me making the whole of me.
Angry me, ripping through me, cutting me in two and two and two.

Singular. One. So many multiples of one.
Penetrating peace, any semblance of sanity.
Never an end to my dillusion. Called Life,
Called Me, I, You, She,
all of We, she says, quiet under breath
while water drowns her head.
Hollow vast nothing, eats the pieces of me, tearing out bits of me.

We do not understand. We do not stand
straight. Too singular, too multiple.
We are too spun and the web goes on and on...

Star night, Star bright,
First black hole I am tonight.

Today you speak to me in the annoyed tone and acrid stare of adolecence
plate full of half-eaten vegetables and disdain
"Starving children could live off that broccoli for a week!" I scold as you curtly empty the greenery into the trash and slam your bedroom door shut before I can say anything else. So many days pass this way between us. You, trying to avoid me, me trying to still be your mom
but I remember
tiny youth plump fingers and pigtails,
a voice small and squeaky still needing my voice to guide hers,
chilly hands that warmed inside mine
and arms that once liked to hug like no other.

Loving you is a self inflicted wound.
I begin to heal, scab over and itch
but I like the way (loving you) feels,
so I scratch the wound open again.

Loving you is a silent deed
done alone in whispers I dare not speak.
Done in darkness and in guilt.
Never knowing if the simple act of feeling
makes me more human
or less.

Loving you is a deep rooted poison,
an unforgivable sin,
a sickly sweet ichor that has seeped into my bones.
It wakes me in the night while deep in dream
making me live things that never were
and that will never come to be.

Loving you is a forest fire
and all I've made,
all I have,
is resting right next to the blaze.
All I can do is watch
and pray that loving you
won't burn everything else to the ground.

Loving you is full of loathing,
full of shame.
It is done in hidden, dark places of my soul.
I can take you out and play
with the idea you put inside my heart,
secretly.
It's a self inflicted wound, you see.
And when I'm finally healing,
scabbing over my thoughts of you,
thoughts you put there unknowingly,
unwittingly,
accidentally,
I scratch.
because I still like the way (loving you) feels.

I can turn invisible.
I do it all the time.
You may not even notice that I’ve changed- just that one minute I'm here and then suddenly I'm gone.

It has a price.

I can turn invisible and the world gets vastly larger.
I shrink inside myself until all that’s left are atoms smaller than you can see.
Impalpable.
Insensible.
Compacted super-dense matter.
Dark and malnourished, I cannibalize .
I eat the pieces of me that are brightest and leaden with memory each time becoming smaller but denser;
heavier with the weight of myself but faded.
Stunted.
Fragile.
Small.

I can turn invisible and you wouldn't even notice
because I've been here all this time just lingering and shrinking.

The world keeps getting larger and I keep getting smaller.

It’s a feeling like butterflies.
It’s a feeling like mourning.
It’s a feeling like no other I can describe to you coming from one such as I.
Invisible.

The world gets larger.
I still get smaller.

My tears are hot and tiny. Puny things full of anger and loathing and loneliness.
I consume them.
They make me smaller.
Super-dense matter burning within these half digested bits. It's a feeling like no other.
I've reached the apex.
I've reached the abyss.

I can turn invisible.
I've been doing it all this time
and the world has gotten too big for me and I am too heavy with the world for it.
Compacted.
Super-dense.
It feels like butterflies and mourning and the pieces of me that burn.
It's hot inside my shrunken belly,
too small for you to see,
all the while I grow too fat on my tears and too full on this emptiness.

I may explode with this smallness;
this denseness;
and all that you couldn’t see will come spewing from me and the world will stop getting bigger
and I will birth a new me.

I'm a Super Nova.
I was invisible
but the weight was too great.
Compacted super-dense matter.

You couldn’t even see me.

But now you can.

Our love is an old love and I yearn to feel it with new fingers. New lips. New bodies to twist and ache. So I ask you how it is to become something new? Will I lose what time has taught me of us? Will I unravel with the unknowing?

There is a war waging in my head- not of ammunition, but accusation.
Shouts and cries and threats. Screaming not bullets, but voices.
A war of words.
There is no peace in my head- no calm, no place of respite- only raging fords.
Mind like Niagra, falling, falling, empty and broken.
Not even sleep is really sleep any more, just another battleground.
Dead bodies scattered, A war of words.
A war of words.
There is a Cold War going on in my head, cold like the weather, cold like the rain.
The rain tastes sweet like my sanity;
but sanity is just another state of mind. Just like the river, it never quiets down.
The enemy is the successor and Niagra is falling down.
Bridges in London are falling down, only my fair lady is dressed in army fatigues.