Come dear night,
My veil from all the
Dreadful tales of the world
As the sun spirals down
I welcome you with open arms.

Lie with me
Beaneath the moon
That’s not the least
Ashamed to spy on our
Little meeting.

The silence
Left in the wake of dead
Seems to be our piece,
Our cue for the ball
That didn’t happen till yet.

Perfect twirls—
I can’t help but
Feel your loneliness as comfort
To me ;

The night and I —
Perfect companions.

I pin the anemic bodies
of poems
to the bed of palm
like they are cadavers
waiting to be
d  i  s  s  e  c  t  e  d.

This is the
only
way
I know to
make sense of things,
each enjambed line
a heartbeat closer
to understanding this
sadness
(or letting
go
         of
it).

I gawk at the contents
of the shelves
that live amongst the
curdling strips of wallpaper.
Yellowing mason jars,
each containing some
tragic specimen swimming in  
formaldehyde tears--
Plath's last breaths;
Sexton's paper cut fingertips;
Van Gogh's severed flesh.

The sight of this
ghastly collection
sends the scars on my wrists
into a spiralling ache.

I once made the mistake
of assuming poetry
would instantaneously
exorcize the aching--
it only brought me closer.

But I must remember
that bleeding is the last stop
on the route to mending;
it's gotta hurt
before it can heal.

So I write,
bear the sting
of these words
as they stitch together
the tattered patchwork
of my heart;
until the scars meet
at the pinnacle
of my anatomy,
crisscross,
bright constellations
flowering from the darkness,
starlit tulips
that shake the
sorrowed dew drops
from their rain-torn petals,
celestial hieroglyphs
waiting to be read--
This is your history;
not your future.

Lacking the feeling of empathy I walk amongst the pavement.
They told me sad was the word I had to put on, but I chose a different dress. Now I can feel how itchy the fabric is and I regret my choice. It never was my choice in the first place, I remembered. The dress restricts me and makes me feel numb, it turns my vision blurry and my body invisible. The sleeves tickle my arms and leave thin red marks where it touches my skin. I wish I could pull new jeans out of my closet, and leave the dress on the floor for once.

They sound so mellifluous, maneuvering through the skies
As a somnambulist I walk where they wander
Never ending fantasies dripping on my tongue
With shivering wings and etherial looks they pull me in
The petrichor of the first rain starts to work it's way into my memory
Solitude takes my hand and whispers into my ear
I feel welcomed by the bombinating sounds the insects make
They put me at ease while I wander further into society

Anxiety gnaws at the walls...
tearing at the black, blue, and yellow wallpaper.
The blasts pick up...
hovering shelves filled with knickknacks befall,
crushed as the hurricane begins.
Journals and notebooks strip themselves...
rippling throughout the chamber.
Jars filled with captured memories, moments, litter the floor
...erratic hops around bonfires
...flower wreaths
...crystal giggles piercing the atmosphere
all become mundane puzzle pieces scattering the ground.

And I rock back and forth in the middle...
what worse penitentiary, then your own thoughts.

Engines turned off as I free fall
and watch
drifting in this star's gravity
the ships
bathe in the ocean of life
and then
one continues toward the flame
a moth
heats up and dissipates
another lost to madness
So it goes