Move the magnet from your compass
when you want to know the way.
Slay the snake inside your stomach,
it hunts truth, its only prey.

Throw a stone at self-deception
though the mirrors in your hall.
Can you feel it, breathing slowly?
None but pride before the fall.

If you were to ask me what I am looking for,
I think I'd only tell you what I've found
I found love in a bathtub I lived in
My body soaked in gin and glitter
He loved me like he'd love me more
If maybe I just wasn't me
So when he moved me out of my bathroom
Into a hardwood floor home
Changed my clothes and my hair
But not my habits
He decided it was my fault
For not being what he wanted to love
And not his fault for telling me he loved me
Instead of telling me that he might one day
And if I didnt try to leave him
He wouldn't have to lock the door from outside
And if I'd just remember to do the dishes
He wouldn't need to break them
And if I'd just say yes
He wouldn't have to make me.
I found love in a basement with a guitar
Hair pulled back in a ponytail
A pipe that never stopped burning white
Crystalline eyes and cheap wine
Slow dancing in the early hours
When we wouldn't wake up, but we'd get up
And that was enough to call it morning
Until I stopped turning our pipes
And he found veins he didn't know he had
Invited death into his bloodstream
And asked if he could share it with me
In a letter written in crayon
Sent to the rehab he'd begged me to go to
And was now begging me to leave
He tattooed me on his back
So he can pretend I didn't leave him
So I'll be a part of him when he leaves.
I found love in a room full of addicts
His head bent down making art out of sorrow
I wondered if he could make me beautiful
Like he did everything else
When he met my family they found love
In the lack of bruises he left
And in the way his nose was clean
And he slept at night
And we called that enough because at least it was more
But it was nothing at all when he left
While I did laundry and cleaned
Stared at a wall because nothing was beautiful
If he didn't make it so
And I remembered too late
That people like me love everything else
More than they love those who love them
I became the one counting minutes
Believing that tonight didn't mean in a few days
Believing it was my fault
For not already being beautiful
Or maybe for loving someone at all
So if you are asking me what I am looking for
I'd say that looking got me lost
And do you please have a map

You say I add colors to your days dull
But what is a few particles of color in your waves of rainbow
What is my ray of light lost in your starglow
Your radiance kisses my nights gold
The guiding compass I will always follow

A pair, north and south
Whose love cancels each one’s doubts
Find their way, always

First we watched the fires dance
lapping at the old wood like
a parched dog's tongue to water

Second we bought vegetables from
a man and ate them without washing
or burning with fire

Next I can't remember but it was
so very long and sad and the things
that make people cry
made us cry

Without a compass I can't move
a new direction even if the wind
rips at my back and thrusts me
forward

I am the shadow of tree limbs
on bright mornings

Dark and soft and untouchable