Tonight I will sleep on my fragmented thoughts
that my anxieties found too delicate to embrace.

Crushed by nature and neglected from nurture -
I'm not one to hoard but my head must rest.

Is it so wrong for a woman to caress her melancholy
as tenderly as she does her lover?

These pieces of madness once smelled so sweet
like the roses I've kept from years foregone.

I crowd my mind with scraps of death
to remind myself that what is dead, is never gone.

Words were for whispering small
truths or swollen somethings
with the power of rocks, resting
on sifted oceans--back and forth
in the rocking chair.

Mama's song rings
cracking. Almost
the surface. Barely
a scratch. Lightly
on the record. Hitting repeat.
Falling

just short
of an earthy gesture. A smokey
word and a hallowed cave. Lethargy
drifting in waves.

i think i see you staring at me,
  But then i turn my head and it is just a trick of the light.
The luminescent bulbs reflect off the white walls, and i wince when i hear you speak.
     A butterfly settles on my cheek.

i thought i saw you standing in the corner of my room,
  watching me sleep as my chest rises and falls with the thought that i will wake up next to you.
     But it is only a ghost i had created in order to replace you.

i hoped i would find you in my dreams.
  i did, but you were not dreaming of me.
And they say that when you dream about someone it's because they fell asleep thinking of you.
  i highly doubt that is true,
     And i don't dream during the night, much less about you.

i wish you would talk to me.
  A half of my life says that i can't trust you, because they are afraid that you will hurt me.
And the other portion of my life tells me to take chances now,
  or i won't have stories to tell to my children, or my children's children.

And if i can't reach you then i know that i am nothing more than a fragment of a broken star that is not part of your constellations.
     Because i am too far away for you to see or care about.

And I hope that someday i will be part of someone's world.
Close enough to see so they miss me when i am gone.
  But if that never happens then i will fade out rather than burn away.
     Having nothing to give, i will leave no trace.

They say that heartbreak stays with you
and love hurts when you are young
and that pain stays with you

I am trying so hard to move on
it gets easier every day
I don't even think of it most of the time anymore

But today while doing laundry
I found one of your curly black hairs again
why? HOW?! I literally yelled out

QUIT HAUNTING ME
You're like a zombie of my loved one still walking around
the old you is long dead
and whoever you are now stumbles in and out of my view

I am afraid
but if I show no emotion
maybe you won't try to eat my heart

It didn't hurt as bad
finding pieces of you here and there
but ******* it
it is still as exhausting

I don't know what wood
this table is made from
as I bought it from a yard sale,
but to be brash
it seemed the people's home
had been foreclosed.

Knocking on the table's surface
imagine the beating sounds
of drums, a native tribe
secluded from the river of reality
and yokes the essence
of their seclusion to be culture.

Now imagine the opposite
and you'll understand the quality
of the table I just bought--
who has no history
and most likely
rested on IKEA's factory floor,
it's welcoming to the world.

There is no grain to this creature
as the metallic hands that crafted this beast
lacked a soul and its creations lack one too--
fittingly, it's perfection is a symptom  
to the disease that lies in it's faux-wood.

Placing the poor table frame
inside some high rise studio in Manhattan
I can't help, but imagine--
the hands that will enviably gloss over this shell
and preach to their acquaintances
of a life the table never had.