let me make a list of things I hate
number one, feelings
number two, feelings
number three, feelings
number four...
have you noticed a pattern yet?

have you noticed that I hate these emotions
that flood through my body
when I see your face?

waves of emotions
hit me like a ton of bricks
when I even so much as think of you.
believe me,
I wish it would go away,
you won't get out of my head.
you drill yourself into the small crevices in my brain,
attaching yourself with tiny hooks
and no matter how hard I try to pull you out,
you're stuck to me.

I didn't ask for this.
why would I put myself
through this kind of pain?
why would I allow myself
to think of you in such a way?

but,
feelings are feelings
and they hit you when you least expect them,
when you don't want them.

let me remake that list of things I hate:
number one, you
number two, you
number three, me
number four, I think we both get the point now.

I am watching you
In my peripheral vision
And counting all the times you look at me (when you think I don't see)
By the end of the night it's at 43
That sounds pretty lucky to me

Every third day of the third week in July for the last six years
I would crawl out onto the hot, black shingled roof of our white and gray two story shuttered house
and I would try to count the stars in the southern sky

The course grains of each shingle would burn deep gouges into my knees and hands as if each shingle was punishing me for sitting on them.

But I hadn't a care in the world

For I had a reason and a purpose to be there
You see, that third day was my day, that third week was my week..

It was all mine...the day I would lose myself into the universe

As I nestled into my favorite spot, I leaned against the hard wood window frame, not caring for a second how I long i sat there. At that pristine moment, I just began to count the stars

Each single star I counted, whether it be faded as the night or bright as the day,  was surrounded by complete darkness. A pitch black of nothing.
Those were the lonely stars I saw and I breathed once again.

Each single star i counted, was all alone and afraid in the vast deepness of space with nothing to embrace them except for my eyes and my casual memories and I breathed once again.

This is my healing place. My escape from the life threatening complexities that invaded my inner being. I witnessed the thousands of morsels of light in the southern sky as if they were tiny demons millions of light years away, haunting and watching over me each and every night. For they can no longer touch me or break me apart. They will become the broken.

I have found my place of solace on top of that hot, black shingled roof of our white and gray shuttered house. Many peaceful nights I counted the stars, only to lose to count after I reached one hundred. My eyes would glaze over with an undue purpose of peace and I breathed once again as I started to count the stars all over again.

I wonder how many times

that hand has brushed those teeth
and fed that mouth.

How many doors it has opened
and things it has punched.

How many times it has pleasured
that body, pleasured a Body,

Belonged to another
Body, I wonder

how many times more
that hand

shall brush those teeth.

this isn't what my life was suppose to be like

i did not want to grow up to be who I am today

   it's hard to think of being different, though

    my whole life i've been counting objects, dates, everything

     when I was little and had a stomach ache i'd count the tile on the ground

      when I was a little older i would count the days my brother was gone

       i would count the trees and posts on the drive up to the hospital

        i would count the minutes while waiting for my dad to pick us up

         there came a day when counting the days became too much

         my brother was gone, and was not coming back

          so I started counting steps, i counted calories

           i counted how many times I chewed something

            and i counted scars and red lines on my body

             i learned to count objects and things I could control

              like how many spaces before a paragraph starts

               because I knew that I could not count ON anyone

seven

we're always counting  

six

...counting to life, to death, to peace, to health, to have fun, to true love, to have ***, to ending, to be yourself...  

five

we're always counting  

four* 

even if we don't  

three

we actually are  

two

but really  

one

someone else always does it for us  

*zero

I think of you all the time and how I never call.
So I bought cards and stamps.
I would write all the people I loved but hardly knew anymore,
and I would feel the keeper of guilty weight untie my wrists,
let me hit the ground hard and remember that I am connected to something.
I tucked them away on the windowsill and thought about what I would say.

The colours have melted into one another now,
coral reds and blue purples, the jewelry of infectious yellow card stock,
the ink's faded in the sun's light.

I haven’t decided what to say, and the price of stamps goes up all the time, so I’ve decided that I should leave them all alone after all.

I wrote to find solace,
In the space while you were gone.
My mind formed words,
Sentences,
Paragraphs,
To replace the substance,
I was deprived of within your absence.
My tongue spoke none,
But a fragment or two,
To tell another I couldn't be bothered,
I was too busy writing for you.