Leo

Leo with the spindly frame, Leo with the too short days and endless nights, Leo who walks like a shadow darting across the walls hardly daring to be seen, a boy avoiding crowds, arms crossed in knots, sits in a room 8 years too young, thumbing through the infinite pages of life's mysteries, holds smooth black stones in open palms to the rain at the edge of those long and winding roads that are lined with tunnels of trees and pillars, takes matches between his teeth to splinter the tongue that so badly wants to speak.

Leo, harsh or gentle, tries to wrap his arms around cold air, too close to nothing, still never falters. Holds his upper lip stiff as a board, closes his chest like a cupboard filled with terrible secrets, shakes his furrowed brow, mumbles nothing's to the carpet, tiptoes down the stairs that groan under his fragile weight, because tonight, like so many nights before, he has to help the broken girl under boxes and brass pipes, sort through the mess of her head with the man in his own, gives her polished rocks to rub between her fingers to quell the demons, but he knows he cannot help.

Leo in those battered bones, with peeling fingertips, crammed into little glass vials, filled to the brim with waters and weeds, mouth corked with a cap so tight that a whisper could barely escape if it tried. Leo in hands as cold as death itself, skin so pale and clear that you can see the little thump of a heartbeat, and the stream of ice blue blood through thread-like veins creating a web of eyes, lips, voices, hands, a spindly frame that could collapse upon itself with a single blow. Leo whose eyes are sharp as arrows,  words striking off that flint stone tongue, flicking sparks into the gasoline soaked pages, dripping with rage, lighting a fire that will never be silenced, hands curled into fists that tremble in fear of what they might do. Leo who's greatest fear is the second voice inside his head,  another life he has to lead, another mask he has to wear, sits screaming behind that too familiar phlegmatic face, that strained jaw so sharp I'm sure he's accidentally cut himself on it before, Leo with too nice shelves, the untied shoes, presses his lips into a firm line, wavers oceans in that cracking voice, puts one finger to the screen and disappears without a sound.

Around 2008- Momma and I move into a rental house. I want to paint my room pink. She says no. I'm anxious at night and can't sleep. I memorize the creaks in the floor.

Around 2012-I take a wheel throwing class in the summer. The red clay hurts my hands. I mess up a perfectly good ***. It looks prettier that way.

Around 2003- I yell at the people I see smoking. I have just learned to speak and I wrinkle my nose into a coil, running around shouting "Ashes mom! Ashes!" I didn't just mean from the cigarettes.

May 27th, 2001- My family waits expectantly to see me. I curl myself into a smaller little fist. I don't come out for another 2 weeks.

Around 2009- I'm in a play of the 5th Harry Potter. I haven't read it. All the girls want to be Luna Lovegood. I audition because I don't know any other girls besides Hermione. I get the part. All the older kids tell me how jealous they are. I read a book upside down.

September 2015- I'm disappointed in the car. I think I've lost my earbuds. Mom whips the car around. Her face is very red. Her voice rings in my ears. We soar over the speed limit and she isn't looking at the road. I think we're going to die.

December 2008- We go to Paris for Christmas. We eat dinner on a boat. The engine blows out and something catches fire. We are stuck for 4 hours.

December 2015- Mommy tells me we stayed in a hotel that was the headquarters for the ****'s during World War II. I don't feel well about that.

Spring 2013- We go to Gulf Shores for break. I go in the ocean even though I come back blue. We visit a war fort. I fall in love with the grass and the sea.

Summer, some time ago- 3 little kids ask me how I exist. I tell them it's an operation. One responds "Like getting your tonsils out?" No. Not like that at all. My tonsils feel terribly large.

Around 2009- I pick up a book by Lemony Snicket. I make my mom read all 13 books aloud to me. I sleep through half of them. I still don't know what happened to the Baudelaire children.

June 3rd, 2015- I leave my home of 9 years. I think I'm sad. It happens too fast to remember. When did we grow up? No one answers. I don't cry like I thought I would. I mess up the one hug that matters most.

Some time in 2004- I can't sleep. I'm too nervous. I climb up the bars and sprint down the hall. My parents decide it's time to get me a real bed.

Some time in 2009- Momma and I move into our own house. I'm infinitely anxious at night. I warm my clothes by the heater. I memorize the creaks in the floor.

Spring 2014- I go to gymnastics on a Sunday. I do 50 back-handsprings in a row. I jar my brain and end up in the hospital for 5 hours. I suffer migraines. They ask me why I haven't taken my tonsils out.

I remember the way you used to stand
And how I always had to crane my neck to look you in the eyes
I remember the way you sighed when you were mad
How you'd clench your jaw tightly and roll your eyes

I remember the pleading in your voice that first night you urged me to open the abyss
My tears tasted salty as they stained my sheets and stuck in my hair
I remember the quiet coaxing in your voice as you whispered
"It's okay, just let it out"

And I felt so heavy as I lay on the carpet floor, clawing at my clothes
Needing to hear the sound of the tearing fabric as though it was my soul
I pounded the floor with fragile fists, wanting the release of finally shattering
My voice was so hoarse the next day from all the screaming
I wish you had stayed on the phone.

The fog that settled in my brain that night never left.
And now it's causing issues with my eyes,
Pulling at the corners of my mind
I cannot focus, I cannot sleep.
The darkness is too persistent
And you don't seem to care

It hurts to look at you now.
You left a scar in my mind and it aches when our eyes meet
I can feel my pulse in my fingertips when you talk and it takes all my energy not to reach out and touch you just to make sure you're still there
And you tell me that you're not perfect, that I sometimes think you are
I know you're not.
I know you're damaged and broken and sad, just like me.
I'll be okay when I get better
You know. You will.

What happens when two black holes collide?
Where do they come from?
The stars. They are made from what once were glorious stars.
Gigantic celestial masses that began to die
And as their light faded, they exploded into a beautiful shower of colorful sparks
That was before they collapsed upon themselves, swallowing time itself
All light powerless in their wake.
And when those two black holes get too close, they cannot escape each other's gravity
They send ripples through the delicate fabric of space time.
And these gravitational waves resound through then entire universe
And those pits of darkness become one.
It seems so beautiful, that the sheer power of gravity could alter the fabric of time.
And inside it causes time to slow.
How perfect it would be to grow up in a place like that
Every moment could be savored, every memory carefully recorded.
That is the place I want to love you.
Where time flows like molasses and nothing else exists
But us.
We are infinite and finite, everything and nothing
Perfect but so incredibly flawed
But does it matter?
Does it matter if we're terrified of what we might do?
I'm not leaving, and I don't think you are either

Except... You did.
You left with your iron hot brand on my pale flesh
A gentle press that seared my skin
The train track scars I sustained from running through the the woods of your mind
I don't think you quite understand how much it hurt
The pain that came from you scratching constellations into my very soul
I thought they were beautiful.
I still think they are
Coupled with the visions you spun in threads of fate,
Delicate dreams that took up residence in my head
Bleeding out through spindly veins.
I feel weak.
And still you continually rattle lies off that silver tongue of yours
It never fails to amaze me how I still believe.
I'm still here.
You said you were here too.
You lied.
There's not much else to it.
You lied, I believed you
I believe you.
I love you.

You still don't seem to care

I am a child without a home
I write myself into circles
Push my knees into my chest
Wrap myself in my own arms
No one else will do it for me
I live under an endless gray-slate sky that somehow finds a way to be beautiful
I often forget what summer looks like
But the chemicals stick to my bones like car paint
And I hate the sound of fluorescent lighting
Because I was born sterile in an empty lot
It still hurts to look at the pile of scrap metal
On Wednesday nights when the sky is black
And I run through empty parking lots with bare arms
I run my tongue on the roof of my mouth
Spinning salty lies into threads and tying them across the murky ice that sits in sidewalk cracks until March
I fall asleep to the chorus of train tracks
I'm not even sure they're real

When I was small I used to reach red hands to the sky
And I'd wonder what it would feel like if my palms could touch
I used to leap off creaky silver after my hands scratched its ridges
And I'd pretend like I could fly
Like nothing ever mattered but the scraped knees
I miss those nights when I was breathless and numb
Sliding down raw streets on my stomach, when the laughs escaped my lips without a sound
And I collapsed beneath the white waves, I remember what it looked like
When my ribs folded themselves into hands around my lungs
The deafening roar of silence and the violent passing of time

I love the taste of red wax pouring down flickering fingertips
Cradling ash wood that they used to spell my name
I steal hearts out of mason jars and ask which one was mine
Those days when a laugh wavers on every exhale
And I fall to the ground in fits of dizziness because it's so funny that they all look the same

I've never liked hospitals all that much, but sometimes they feel like home.
But mine was a shell
The reverberations still give me headaches.
And so I write myself into circles to sort out the recalls of illness
Taking frameworks like contraband pills ingested through pencils and flashlights
Because I live under blue tarps and newspapers that never get read
I crave the feeling of falling and the scent of winter mornings
Against the backdrop of a whitewash sky that doesn't exist
Because my hospital was imploded on a Tuesday and now I can't go home.

Home

I walked away from home last night, with it's warm lights, good food, and comforting memories.
I walked into the cold, and the snow looked like stardust and I swore I'd left this earth.
I wanted to.
I wore no jacket against the cold, what's the point when you're trying to remind yourself how to feel.
And the wind spoke sonnets into my skin with icy tongues, causing me to shiver like a leaf in a hurricane.
I could not shake the feeling of being watched.

I took a walk with the moon last night and the stars looked like someone had spilled salt across a black table.
The ground was slick with ice and I was alone. I saw no one. The world was silent as it always was to this sort of thing.
Who cares?
I'll be back by morning, but I'll never go home.
I can't.
There is no home in a world like this.
Not for anyone.
And especially not for me.

If I walked far enough I'd reach the feathered edges of existence.
I wanted to go further into the darkness that lay there.
My red hair wrapped around me like a cloak.
A beacon of color against a sea of black.
A match, flickering into oblivion.
I felt a hole open up in my chest, as if my lungs would split open and out would pour the sorrow of the galaxy.
My eyes ached as though they were capable of crying the salt of a thousand oceans. And the fabric of my life began to unravel before my eyes.
Fraying strings sticking out from my finger tips.
I did not see the cliff on which I walked.
I did not see the ravenous water below, or how I was only a few steps from the edge.
My arms had unraveled into thousands of threads that blew lightly in the breeze, hanging haphazardly by my sides.
And my eyes were set on the dark horizon before me, so I didn't even feel my right foot step directly into emptiness...

And then there was you.
Your firm hands grabbing my arm, the only thing holding me from oblivion
You pulled me back, away from the cliff, to the beginning of the darkness
And suddenly I was enveloped in your light as you wrapped me in your warm embrace.
All I could see was the sun, and all I could feel was the happiness that flowed through your veins as we connected and it began to fill mine.
You picked each thread up tenderly, painstakingly weaving my soul back together, stitching a bit of your love into each nerve.
All I feel is you.
You are a part of me.
Your soothing words occupy my every thought
Your touch sending sparks across my pale skin, setting me alight
You are everything.

I found myself a home last night as the darkness disappeared
And in the gaping hole it left, I found you
And in your arms I found a home.

I don't want to be a forgotten face, plastered between the pages of a yearbook.
A name that would be so easily forgotten if it weren't for the bold, black lettering underneath my smile.
"Oh yeah... She was that weird girl"
"Theater geek"
"Sick girl"
"Such a shame..."
The list goes on.
I don't want to be remembered for my time in the hallways
Where I pretended like I was invisible just to make it easier for my stomach to hold food down
I wouldn't have eaten if I didn't have to.
But I did.
I caused tables of chatty teenage girls to fall silent because no one had to guts to tell me that I was unwanted
That the chair I pulled aside should've been saved for someone with a better attitude
Someone who would talk and smile and laugh
Everything I couldn't be
I don't want to be remembered for the times I sat outside, alone.
With my headphones in like a neon sign saying "don't talk to me" because I was too busy trying to focus on my breath between the drum riffs,
Pressing fingers to my pulse points checking to make sure I was still alive
Rarely did people ever stop to notice me
I grappled with the sounds of the breeze in my head and watched the people flow around me, through me, and I didn't make a sound.
I don't want to be remembered for those nights spent on the bedroom floor
Weaving fists through the **** rug
Tears spilling down my face and neck, filling my ears so all I could hear was the steady melancholy ache of a heart that was broken
Inhaling silence, exhaling sirens
My lungs became paper bags for a man who was hyperventilating on the 12th floor of the hospital because he just found out his wife has stage 4 cancer
And he breathed too hard into them, while someone else stepped on my chest
My ribs folded into hands to protect the stitches that threatened to pop open and pour my sorrow onto the floor
The sleepless nights when my body felt nothing like a body and I dreamt of salt shakers and the moon through the gaps in my eyes because my limbs were too weak to drag me into bed
I don't want to be remembered for the way I looked
Hollow circles under my eyes
A carefully pulled up expression that I called "I'm fine, really #1" that aimed to eliminate the crinkles in my forehead while lifting my eyes so I didn't look so tired all the time as well as pulling up the corners of my lips to avoid the inevitable question "what's wrong?"
It was fool-proof
Except when it wasn't.
Those who knew me well enough could see straight through my ruse
They were quite helpless in that regard.
I don't want to be forgotten.

You are the sun and the moon,
The stars and the dark of night.
You are the salt spilled across the sky from years ago that they forgot about.
You are the light that beams from the sun
Delicate and powerful, you mean well but you burn just the same

But you are not the blackness that fills an empty room
Nor the harsh lights of the hospital,
Nor the linoleum floors that squeak with scuff marks from too much rush.
You've never been too much rush.

I firmly believe that you are the fireworks
The straight lines that explode into showers of unexpected sparks
Piercing the air with your cries
Similarly, you are the fire, warm and inviting,
Lapping your silver tongues across the rough fuel
Setting it alight, making it glow until it is black as the night you came from

You are the flame, flickering atop the candle
Dancing in the production of your own light
Until someone or something causes you to waver and fall
Collapsing into a deep gray mist, lingering in the air for hours
A memory that stings my eyes when I breathe.

I am the adrenaline that courses through your veins in times of distress
But also the lethargy pulling at the corners of your mind when you haven't slept
I am the wind, whispering nostalgia into your ears, trying to remind you that I'm still here
I am the dance your shadow does when you're asleep,
The feather that your parents always warned you not to pick up
I am the blanket of snow that lulls the world into a wintry sleep
And the orange street lamps that stand guard against a silent night.
But you are, and always will be, the sun, the moon,
The stars, and the blissful dark of night.

You.
You are the summer nights when I roll my windows down and reach my arms out into the velvet night
You are the orange kiss of streetlights on wet pavement
and the long and dripping reflection of tail lights down city streets
You are a pale, red haired girl sitting at the bottom of a swimming pool
And the curls as ripples dance through her hair
And the long exhales through even lighter lungs
You are the warmth of two hands sliding into one another
And the pulse of tiny veins tapping each other
Like the gentle sound of a never-ending metronome
You are the whisper of a needle on vinyl in the breath before a song begins
A moment of anticipation
The second everything begins
You are quiet nights spent in someone else’s car
Listening to the rasp of old songs on ancient radios
And the spilling of salt across a deep blue twilight
You are a sleepy child sitting at the window
Watching the world fill with snow
Watching the world fill with snow
You are the soft edges of these winter evenings, when trees and hills and homes cover themselves in thick white blankets and drift into a peaceful sleep
You are the feeling of being cradled after a terribly long day
The brief and incessant ache
The blissful release as every nerve, muscle, and bone gives it’s weight unto something other
You are a room filled with candles
The half-lidded eyes that flicker with hundreds of lazy flames
The gentle glow that outlines only what must be seen and melts away all worry
You.
You occupy a space in my brain I’d never known was empty until it was filled with you
You.
You are all the little moments
All the tiny bits of this world that make my heart a little lighter
You are made of so many of these moments
Woven of thread that ties these memories together
The thread that holds every seam
It’s all in you
You.
You are all these things and more
With a voice like butter being smoothed on a piece of toast
You are made of stardust
You are an exquisite cosmic amalgamation of all the little things I like best in this world.
It’s all in you.
You.