I have had dreams for 3 nights in a row where I am strong like ocean currents, I am amber rose sunsets, I am graceful, I am outspoken drunk girl in bar but I have not had a drink; I have swallowed everything else until now, in these dreams where I am strong. In these dreams that I have had for 3 nights in a row, you are wrong and Justice is my sneaker on your throat, it is your apology dripping venom off your tongue, it is you asking for my mercy instead of me asking you to stop over and over. In these dreams, I am telling you what you did to me in front of a  room of people that you love, instead of a room full of people that I love asking me how I even got into this situation. In these dreams, I am crushing your words in my hand and planting flowers with the dirt and dust I took out of my throat. I give them as an apology to my partner for the year we spent trying to put me back together and it only kind of working.  In these dreams I am already healed, as a past participle and as a present state, I am not fearful that I will not ever change the way I walk in the street, I can go on my old campus without forgetting how to breathe, I can do anything, really. In these dreams, for 3 nights I have been the kind of strong that other women who have had this happen to them look to for strength, I have rooted my forgiveness deep in my chest where resentment used to lay. In these dreams I am a woman I love who does not blame herself. In these dreams I am hurting you and you cannot speak. I swallow the irony. I am outspoken and loudly tell the world our story- and every time you beg or plead or say “no” I tell it again so they can hear me. In my dreams people finally hear me. I have been sleeping in.

I've offered you
an opportunity
to be my
whole world.

Darling you deserve
to be their
5 course meal.
I wonder why
you'd rather stay
their side dish.

On a quiet night in late November
I fell in love with a sunset. I grabbed ahold and rode
him into the night, but gradually he shed his vivid garb as if
it clung too tightly to his celestial frame. It’s nothing short of a shame because
what I adored the most were the enthralling ways his hues danced
pirouettes with precision,
softly staining my skin and sinking downwards and inwards,
tinting my innards with his alluring, warm palette.

But temporary tattoos wash off with time and cold water,
and the most psychedelic of colors will one day fade to a prosaic shade of grey.

I wanted to stay

But the starless black sky that he raised before me was filled
with unknowns and I’d rather be left alone than let down,
because I am only human.
So mortal that when he abandoned his dazzlingly
colorful mirage, I sabotaged every flicker of light that I’d learned to hold on to,
heedlessly metamorphosing until his dispirited shades of blue
became one with my shades too.

But I want to thank him for letting me in.
Because before him, I never knew how a color felt
or how it tastes.
And as I chased him across the horizon,
he taught me that yellows and reds taste like eating candy for breakfast
and feel like soft skin, akin to his own.  
And when he let his blues and blacks linger on my tongue and
occupy my lungs, it felt like tumbling down the most precipitous ravine
where at the bottom, unseen, the flavor of dirt overwhelms
your palette.  Like choking
until you’ve a head bursting with fears and muddy tears in your eyes,
obstructing your view of the most beautiful sunset our Earth has seen
in it’s years of being.

Thank you for helping me see.

And I can only hope that one night when the sunset has begun to die down,
you choose to wipe the dirt from your eyes and
become the sunrise.

Because just as colors fade, with time,
mud will wash away.

And when you breach her silhouette
And feel your pulse ignite
And when she gazes through you
And sees the soul inside
...
...
...
Don't let her feel the wind blows cold
Keep her warm in every night
She looks down on the ground
So show her the stars
That are nothing to the joy in her eyes
She doesn't need your saving
She needs one who understands
Who'd sit in silence (and sadness) when the bridges fall down
And not wonder what love is for her