With every whisper,
a smile ending the sentence.

step one:
do not look at their mouth,
for you will expect to see rivers flowing from it,
poetry slipping through the space between their lips
in the same way that the wind slips through the space underneath a door,
but instead you will only see spit and saliva
and a tongue too big for its home.

step two:
do not look at their hands,
for you will expect them to craft cities from marble right before your very eyes,
but instead it will be just the thumbs,
the twiddling of thumbs,
the aimlessness, the senselessness,
the lack of experience with building empires.

step three:
do not look at their eyes,
for they say that the eyes are the windows to the soul,
and when you see that the curtains have been drawn,
you will feel so very alone.

step four:
i did not love you.
you have to repeat it.
i did not love you.
i did not love you.
i did not love you;
i loved what i thought you would be.
i thought you would be eden,
but you were only the apple.

step five:
i suppose i am to blame here
for digging holes too big to fill,
for crafting shoes too big to fit in.
and for that i am sorry.
i am sorry that i expected more from you
than i even expect from myself.

step six:
human.
human.
let the word roll off and around your tongue,
let it cover every inch of the inside of your mouth.
say it. over and over again.
say it. like it is foreign and you need to know what it means.
say it.
and when you have said it enough times and it feels
dull, old,
disappointing,
you will know that we are nothing more than flesh and bone,
and that as much as we wish there were gods among us,
flesh always rots in the end.
this is the beast of truth that we cannot outrun.
hands cannot craft cities from marble
if only given clay.

step seven:**
do not let this frighten you.
clay, after all,
was meant for molding.

(a.m.)

It's too late for anything now
To patch it all up
Make sure every one is happy

It's just too late

I'm too far gone to be saved and I don't know if I want to be saved.

ne pensez pas de moi
j'ai besoin d'oublier
même si c'est juste pour une minute
une heure
un jour

childhood memories feel like rust
crumbling in my fingers and leaving their orange stains
as i skip over the horrific teenaged years
that my little sister
remembers as her childhood.

i resent her for having a bad childhood.
i say that our childhood was good, was great
with two loving parents
in a big house in the country
with long grass and animals to hold.
but her childhood was a falling down home
with seeping walls and crying mothers and a screaming father
stuck in a house that imprisoned all of us in seclusion
and an older redheaded sister
who maintained control in her life
run by parents who no longer saw reason or justice
by treating her little redheaded sister
like trash.

i forget that her childhood was not mine
i forget that the things she remembers were awful
that daddy did scream and shove
that mommy did cry and quake and throw and push and smash and shove and scream and rip
in the middle of the night
while she slept
and i wandered
the lonely caverns of my book-filled room
where i hid with my fantastical friends
who shielded me from the screams
in the middle of the night
that your deaf ears
missed

i am sorry for undermining the truth of your childhood
i forget that we are different
i forget what changed
i forget the hidden, resentful monster that overtook our parents
and bled down into their children
but you,
you remember
it was the only thing you knew

i remember the good,
you remember
the screams

I called you after it had happened and while I was sitting in the bathtub in ice cold water watching the water drip from the faucet and as I let tears fall down my cheeks and as I scrubbed away what you did I tried my best to sound composed but I couldn't and that's why when you answered I hung up because I wasn't sure I could tell you of my shame and how scared I was and I was so afraid to let you in, because then you'd see a part of me you had yet to see and what if you wouldn't want me anymore because who wants a used and so severely broken little girl like me? I wouldn't be your little girl anymore and you wouldn't see me as a beautiful flower, but as a bunch of broken and dried up rose petals and there's so much more in the world besides someone like me and how could you stay with someone so repulsive I don't know I don't know I don't---