You made me stop believing
in who I was.
You slapped my *** with your shower caddy--
blamed it on invisibility
with a smirk and a wink in my direction.
I saw your reflection
in the hall mirror from the corner of my eye.
Your body was full and half-clothed,
your imagination molding me
as I stood there innocent
trying to view myself
the way you saw me.

It was a dark shadow you cast.
I bathed in your deception.
I saw my own reflection--
in my bedroom mirror at midnight
with your hands on the nape of my neck
and your fingers cradling my skull,
flattening my spine into
what you would fit into your figure.
There was your lips on my ear and I heard
a backwards whisper of a promise you swore,
you swore was true.
It wasn't--
and didn't like who I saw.

I won't love you like a man will love you.
I won't love you
Like a woman will love you either.
I wish I could say
I fit something I knew a word for
In terms of love.
But no.
I will love you
Like the ground loves the rain after a drought.
I will love you like the moon
Loves its little glimpses of the sun
As it slips behind the earth again,
Lovers
So similar but so different,
Never in the same place at once.
I will love you
In terms of Nature
I will love you
In terms of
Universe.
But
I cannot love you in terms of man
Or woman
Unless you mean
All that either has ever been.
And I think I should apologize-
I think you should know that
If you think this is different because I am a woman,
That's not why.
It is different because I am a cyclone,
An earthquake,
A natural disaster of hurt and hope,
And I love you like the planets love the star
That gravity bends them towards
And that
Is not how any man or woman I've ever met
Has loved before.
And I am not sure if I will ever meet another one
Like me.
And I am not sure
I would even want to.

for the past months
the thin veins in my arms
have been ruptured and scarred
due to unhealthy habits of distasteful breakdowns.
drunk on absolute insanity
intoxicated from the feel of misery
i always hope for this to take it's last turn
unfortunately it is one straight road
a long road of wretched nights and messy sinks


- m.n.

You can tell people
Everything that is right
And still they look to you
Blank bovine stares.
I'm at a crossroad
A true love affair with humanity
A violent, dangerous hatred of human beings
We live in a country
Where the people who say the wrong things
Are either dead or silenced
Gone are the days of freedom of speech
Gone are the days of personality
Privacy stripped away
Every person clad with phones
A reason not to act

**** **** ***** ****** ****
These words weigh heavy
Regardless of context
Gone are the days of progression.
This is not a poem
This is a rant.
If you don't like these words
Then go **** yourself
You can choose what you read
People too concerned with people
While out government does it's best to eradicate
The brown skinned low lives of Gomorrah
As if we have any ******* right
To dictate the movements of humans,

Say no to orders,
You are not the car being driven
You are the driver
This poemish thing
Has gotten out of hand
Just don't let the worthless mother *******
Tell you you're wrong
Wrong doesn't exist
Speak freely
The rest is just noise

I walk the line between loving cautiously with my mind, and loving recklessly with my heartbeat.
It's like a secret.
I keep pace with my life, but
I know I can weave a rhythm into everything I do-
"I love you, I love you, and more." with every step.
I move on and everyone sees me forward bound,
But I ground every footfall in the knowledge that there are nights I will pray to like altars,
Things I will sacrifice just to remember I want to.
This is what I am.
My body ain't a temple, but my heart is.
In there I stand so still I barely dare to breathe,
Because what if I kick up the gold dust heaped in patterns on the floor,
And destroy the map of where you've gone that I've drawn with my fingers?
And the air will shimmer with the fact that I've forgotten-
No.
Not a sigh too deep, or I won't see your face in my mind when I close my eyes.
I forge on out here, and I am ready to be everything scary and new,
And these months everybody will see the big picture- that my scars
Are paint-by-numbers,
Embossed on my skin in designs of roses and fairylands,
Ready to be art.
They'll see that I can make my footsteps ring like earthquakes.
And inside I will move slow and soft like rose petals,
Afraid to kick up that dust and skew the image.
I'll marry fast and slow, skin and sinew,
I'll meld my love with my defiance and this world
Will be different
Because I am in it.

I am asking you to be kind to me.
Let me remember.
Let me dream.
For however many months,
Don't let it fade.
I've read articles, I've researched for years
The mind, the logistics of memory.
I did it out of love.
I've explored it with the singular focus of a dying man
Scouring old books for evidence
Of the Fountain of Youth.

What can I do?
A certain perfume
Worn
To jog the brain and keep a memory in tact.
A gesture or a way to breathe
That brings you back to a lost moment,
A song or maybe
Just the deliberate reconstruction
By the detail
Of a beloved face in the air before you
Although you know it isn't there.

You can train your mind
To conjure ghosts.
And I have done so with mine, over years,
Even when it turns the talent on me viciously.
Am I toying with insanity
Inviting it in?
Perhaps.

Memories are gossamer, fragile,
Like paper so thin and pale and delicate
That you can see right through
And one touch of your fingers,
Even the lightest,
Powders them to silky dust.

I've sought relentlessly
Every trick and association,
Every scientific shortcut
To keep my treasured moments close.
I've touched, willfully, every detail of every second I can recall
Touched the smallest lines and angles and
The little places where the illusion wears thin
Unable to hold the potency of reality
Only its reflection.
I have made myself touch every single moment
That I know it would be easier to leave alone-
Memories are not meant to be so scrutinized.
The price of keeping them is the uncomfortable proximity
To something good which is long past
And the peculiar grief that it will never come again.

But there are things
There are people
In this world
Simply too important, too essential
To let go of.
There are memories
Worth the unsettling work of holding them.
There are moments
I would rather die than not relive.

Please,
I know you are more extraordinary than math equations and good grades
And pages and pages of poetry.
I know that with all of our hidden corners
And how little we know about our minds
You must have a way, you must have a gift for me,
You must have a chance to keep this close.
I am asking you to be what you are.
I am asking you to let me remember.
I am asking you to send me dreams and smiles
And to never let those blue eyes fade to the sepia of old memories
But to keep the vibrance that stops my heart
Alive in my head.