step one.
you close your eyes.
you close them tight.
then you press your palms
against your
closed eyelids,
until
you start seeing red spots that remind you
of a song you wrote
for someone so long ago.
that someone doesn't matter anymore,
not really, so eventually,
neither will he.

step two.
you wear a nightgown.
the one with the lacy v neck, the one
that exposes your thighs,
the one with the vintage roses.
you wear it to bed to remind yourself
that you don't have to wear his attention
like a perfume
to feel ****.

step three.
you listen to those songs.
you know which ones.
you listen to them and sing or rap along
until your throat is sore, until
your chest hurts. do it
until you don't know why you're crying,
then write a song about why
you are crying,
so that when you look back,
you can see that it doesn't matter.
heartache fades.

step four.**
dive into a body of water in only
your under garments.
force yourself
to swim,
no matter how much
you want
to drown.

when the flowers blossom,
I will think of you.
And when the wind blows,
I will also think of you.
And when distance stand against Our love,
I will always think of you.

sleepwalking for one more hour.

sleepwalking for two decades with a protruding gut and
eyes as buried deep as petrified wood,
i’ve dug up a treasure-
a realization, if you will.
everyone will leave when they see the ice sheets on my bones.

a feather without a breeze,
a storm of acid rain,

wind currents in hibernation,

gasping, treading, begging for a direction to open eyelids,
sinking,
sinking,
losing oxygen-

marathons,
pockets filled to the brim with stones,
i am drowning as far inland as a swimmer can be,

i am a cold, cosmic dot and one hour will not burn enough energy-
my brothers and sisters in the cold, i am
one hour further away from leaving this lonely, unforgiving, jagged, racially segregated and
factory farming piece of terrain that has worn down my bones without ever using a blade.

one hour closer to the next heartbreak, to feeling my heart as a vase dropped down the stairs of an apartment complex, friendly enough to feel its walls in my soul like fresh lipstick on my cheek, apathetic enough to leave the shards under the jungle jim for weeks.

one hour further away from the dishonest dream of my grass-stained bare feet, no nails in tires, and mom singing to pop radio while making chicken-
one hour more distant from broken pencils and dad’s empty beer bottles. drifting like a poor, lonely cloud given the horrific gift of conscious thought, i am one hour further away.


sinking.

one more hour of frozen tundra,
i am waiting for daylight to come and pass
as a sheep without wool,
dying much too slowly,

for one more wretched,
godless
hour.

Joe was a guy with a great smile
In fact, every time he smiled
the whole world shined.
His warm brown eyes,
sparkled bright
they made me think,  
I was the only one around.

But Joe scared me
he got too close
He would ask all these questions
about who I was
   Where do you want to go?
        Who do you want to be?
            What do you dream about
              when you go to sleep?
                  What do you fear the most
                    can you tell me?
                       What's your future like
                        do you see me?
Joe patiently listened
at my attempts to answer
my replies were broken
kind of lackluster.
I didn't know who I was
I mean ...I still don't
and every time Joe looked at me
I just felt lost

He would call me in the mornings
and to say his goodnights,
But no matter how much I liked Joe
I was not yet where he was at.

So I said goodbye to him,
and proceeded my life
Leaving Joe behind me,
while he shined somebody else's life.