And with out question,
My heart of glass in my palms,
I dropped it and watched it shatter,
So I could hold your beer.

The savior
The perfect partner
The dominant
The free spirit
The fiancé
The parental substitute
The anarchist
The sweetheart
The nice guy
All of these aspects of myself
Yet none of them are fully me
These are the roles I've fallen into
In order to match my various partners
And though all of these may be
Different components of me
None of them feels quite whole
I do not feel whole

All of these personalities
Exist on a spectrum of time and space
None interacting with any others
Each signifies a distinct point in life
Each has its own home
It's own experiences
Attitudes and viewpoints
Behaviors and habits

Yet what do I do when
Two of my contextualized selves
Decide to overlap?
When my ex who knew the fiancé
Moves back to town where I live
As does my person
Who's heard stories of the others
But who only knows the nice guy

How do I begin to heal when
I do not understand what is real
And what existed solely for others?
How do I continue to grow
When the fiancé is fighting restraints
And the nice guy is exhausted
The sweetheart does not exist
And the anarchist screams for revolution?

They seem to be fighting each other
Just to have a chance to breathe
A chance to take the wheel
A chance to control "me"
Yet who even am I?
Are all of these selves fabricated
Or are they hyperbolized aspects of me
Connectable like puzzle pieces
Into one beautiful picture?

The problem is
The picture I see is not beautiful
I'm trying to be nice to myself
But all I see and feel is darkness
I am an abomination
An evil person who cannot be trusted
A dark soul inhabiting an empty body
A person who is not a person
A human with a lack of self
It's almost like I'm not even alive
But even death would be a relief
So I can finally end the confusion
And stop hurting people along the way

I think I'm afraid to lose you
Which is extremely ironic
Considering I'm the one who left
See I don't mean "lose you"
As in lose you from my life
I think it's more about your approval
Your desire
Your intensity
Your love
I want to be wanted and yes I know
It's super ******* up
I wish I understood it more myself
See, on a conscious level
I know I don't need you and that
I am not responsible for your choices
I am not involved in your life
And quite frankly I shouldn't be
Considering the mess my mind's in
Maybe my brain hasn't yet realized
That I've been without you for a year
And I've been doing fine
Maybe I only see my value
Reflected in the opinions of others
So I seek everyone's desire
Instead of my own acceptance
I don't understand
I wish I did
I wish I had the answers
Maybe one day this will all make sense
Maybe one day I won't be so sick
Maybe one day I can be me
Without fear
Without worry
Without anxiety
I just want to be happy
I just want to be free
I just want to be me
And know what that means

Another Night Here
Yelling in the Hallway
Can’t make all the words
Never can when they are drunk
A knife was involved
And a chain of some sort
Cops come
They are pleading their cases
Pleading their sides
Cops patiently listening
He pulled knife on me
She’s a *****
Sir please calm down
He’s a drunk
He stole my chain
Now I get the picture
I’m peeking out
I’m a peeker
Goes on for a bit
Ma’am Did he hit you
He pulled a knife
I was cutting something
Sir did you pull a knife on her
No
He threatened me
Did you threaten her
I threatened to throw her out
It’s his place
When this is figured out things calm down
Cops leave
She stays
She just wanted to be heard
She just wanted to be loved
He just wanted to be left alone
Don’t we all.
Don’t we all.

I'm waiting for your sweet words to drip out of your mouth like honey. I **** them up, filling my insides, hoping for more; the sweetness being the only nourishment for my empty soul. My body, a hollow corpse needing to be made whole by you.

Nourish me.
Help me grow.

We used to fight sometimes
late at night
after too many drinks
too many cigarettes
too many insults
thrown back and forth

First we’d praise each other up
then run each other down
to the lowest notch

There were good times too
But after a while they dried up
The way some things do.

Couple last screams
And I would hear some clanking in my kitchen
Didn’t pay too much attention

She’d go out with her big purse
“Should you be driving?”
“***** you”

I would go to the window
Yell down at her on the street
“Get outta here you bottle bandit!”

I didn’t want her to go
Not really
She may have been a ***** thief
But she had a sort of magic
The way some people do.

I bumped into her years later
In a liquor store
same one we used to go to
I wondered if she remembered all the fun
But the look on her face
underneath the smile
showed the pain.
The way some faces do.

The ground does not yield as I make my way

unsteady across the dirt mounds and bone-dry grasses

in the brittle frost of the early deep freeze.

It’s almost as cold as Mars at the equator, I find myself thinking.

I dream

of butterscotch evenings, and landscapes tanned

red and brown and meandering canals

clear straight to the bottom.

This is Bradbury’s Mars.

I close my eyes and stroll among the ancient ruins

until the cold drives me back into the chaos again.


The last rocket for Mars left a long time ago

and I am stuck on Earth to freeze.