At the eve of another summer
I found myself in a Paradox
Longing to painfully suffer
due to a beloved lost vox.

The greatest pain for the greatest joy,
quite the paradoxical alloy.
For a voice to be pandora's box,
fate of the shattered heart boy.

The promised call, refused in past,
For no heart could possibly endure,
is steadily approaching, at long last,
to ellicit a heart-rending overture.

An opera of pouring pain.
Even the sad tears cry in pain,
but everything cries in vain,
for her heart was washed by rain,
and will never be mine again.

The ambrosia out of reach.
Its scent alone is enough,
to relive blissfull memories
and dreams of a future... a bluff.

A world where you're next to me,
but i'm forbidden to hug, kiss
or tell you i love you more than life,
is not my world, but Tartarus itself

In my world it had a simple name:
forgivable human confusion,
led by pressures, human, all the same,
inconsequential to our passion,
once ours, now mine.

Our worlds shan't collide
in any future fate.
Your friendship i must decline,
to be reborn and not desintegrate.

The green hills of my heart,
the blue ocean of my eyes,
the starry sky of my mind,
the nature masterpiece of my soul... Is gone.

All that remains is a heavy chest,
containing Schrondinger's heart,
with a decaying undead hope,
to both reunite and forever stay apart.

There once lived a boy called freedom,
And his twin brother loneliness too.
Quite the same in face and body and mind,
But the townspeople saw them as two.

Everybody loved the boy freedom,
But loneliness was hated it’s true.
With love for one and hate for the other,
They grew apart like most differences do.

As the men grew older, free lived like a king,
But lonely, he rotted and withered within.
One of lonely’s enemies, Naivety by name,
Plotted all night and came up with a game.

To Naivety the only way to be free,
Was to end this man loneliness for all to see.
So he packed up his case with all manner of terror,
To set about making lonely a horror.

On the day of his reckoning, loneliness sat,
Wearing an old gift from his brother, a ******* hat.
Whilst freedom, about in town was adorned
In a red shirt that once loneliness had worn.

So when naivety set out to do the deed,
He crept up to lonely’s house and what did he see?
But freedom standing there in a ******* hat.
‘Hello freedom’ said he and that was that.

He strode on into town and caught sight of some red,
‘I know who owns that red shirt’ naivety said.
With a swish of his knife and a click of his gun,
Naivety believed that his deed had been done.

When loneliness learned that his twin had been slain,
He cried for the fact that his face was the same.
‘If only they knew’ wept lonely in pain,
‘Then freedom and me might have been brothers again’.

Yesterday I swallowed a tiny glass capsule
much like that
I've been walking around in for years
amongst these picture people.
My palm clung to walls made sticky by the heat,
skin to pane,
I could not bear to let go.
I wanted to enjoy their stapler smiles
but the fog made it impossible to see.
I only called it what it was
when I breathed it into the glass.
It was always there.
I wished it would fill the whole thing,
wished I had a match,
so it would serve some purpose.
So my capsule becomes gray and troubling
against its paper background.
So they stop and stare,
Look at the girl in the bubble.
I think she's suffocating.
Like it's a revelation.
Like Gabriel himself hand-delivered
tiny glass pills for them to swallow.
Let me be their spectacle.
Let me be the object of their pity.
Let me be a one-woman-glass-capsule miniature show.
I'll be their tired metaphor.
I'll choke on shimmering shards so they can watch my blood color their roses.
I'll drink until I'm heavy with turpentine.
I will destroy myself.
I will make it clean.
Tiny glass capsule
in my wooden palm
who did you once hold?

Dip your poets brush in words
give me the east wind
the smell of snow beneath my feet
heavy yellow summer heat
splashing rain upon a roof
sketch me proof, or lies, or pain
draw me a sound I will not hear again
paint me a picture, for the things my eyes cannot see

When the spark is gone
And just a candle burns
I can't promise I'll be around

See the wax it melts,
So painfully slow
But the sparkler,
Knows how to put on a show

The wax could warm me,
And make me feel whole,
Scented with safety and patience

But the fireworks?
They make my heart race,
And for a second it's my only focus

And I know what they'll say
You can relight a candle,
A sparkler's a one time thing

But that won't stop me,
From fighting for the spark
Even if it keeps me on my knees

If my mind was a river
You navigated her current expertly
But no one warned you
About the opening to the ocean

Brilliant and breathless, bending
language like a gardenia wreath
hanging from the rafters
of a sun-drenched mouth
that could only be mine.

Bullish and breathless, tangling
ellipses, clinging to a simile’s hem until it
trips and rips the thread of thought.
I don’t mean this as a manner of speech–
I speak without manners.

Billowed and breathless, humming
out of its skin and into mine.
Meaning is a feathery, fallible thing,
twisting, writhing, vanishing;
tough to trust, prone to rust,
words swirling and spun,
sea-tossed and salt-stuck
on a foreign tongue.

Beaming and breathless, flirting
with the edge of a rockwall,
a siren call,
more lullaby than warning shot,
more hymn than howl, a voice
that could only be mine.

Belated and breathless, underlining
the good lines, never shaking the bad,
plucking at the precipice, never leaping,
clamoring to be heard but never speaking.
A lot of words, but no poem.
A lot of pinch, but no push.
Graceless and glitching,
mine alone.

I open my window and toss my hair to the trees.
Someone told me birds use hair to insulate their nests.
Google says it’s harmful, but the birds and I have an understanding:
they won’t be strangled, and I won’t be stranded.

All I do is shed;
flesh hangs off bones like someone else’s dress,
I put on jewelry then take it off, hoping the fool’s gold won’t crumble
in my wallet. I’m sure I’ll self-immolate
if earring-backs and claw-clasps
keep licking my skin.
I shed hair and thighs,
guilt and fingernails, doubt and light,
until the world is full of me and I am full of nothing.

I gather my hair from brushes and shower drains,
pluck it from elastics and carpets, slice it out of vacuum rollers
with a box cutter, roll it into a tumbleweed in my palms.
Then to the window, where I drop it onto crabapple branches below.
I want the robins and starlings and sparrows,
the heaven-sent cardinals,
the crows I tell my secrets to,
to build a nest with my dead parts,
to make a home from the parts of me that couldn’t hold on.

Midsummer,
the worn-out end of June brushes against the beginning
of July and I’m wearing shorts to work for the first time in years.
I’m reading fiction in the sun, writing down my horoscope,
pretending I’m not a hostage to that first week in April
where he hurt my feelings, and I just hurt.

All I do is patter;
my hair drips to the floor in long, black rivers,
my aura drips down my back like a gas leak,
I think about how many trees I cut down to make myself,
and I think about birds falling asleep
in a haunt that’s made of me.

Losing my hair, losing my patience—
legs thinning, heartbeat skipping,
eyes squinting like commas, mouth tensing like a fist,
fingers like pitchforks reaching up from the grave,
skin like an avocado rotting on the counter.
All this losing, at least I’m helping the birds.

Words come and go with no consequence,
I buy dumb **** online and write poems without any soul,
I imagine a life where love is a faucet that drips through the night,
and I dream of him with long hair and daisies in his teeth.
My writing doesn’t pinch, my feet don’t tingle,
I just knot phrases around each other like tangled string lights
with half the bulbs burnt out, and it’s fine to say things like that.

I’m on a losing streak, but the birds don’t know it,
they tend to their babies, they sing to the dawn.
I can shed my way across summer like that was always the plan,
like I wasn’t born to ache, to be left gutted and graceless and wondering.
I wasn’t made to be love-bombed or pulled into trench warfare
after being invited to a picnic. I didn’t want to hold the gun,
but he was screaming to pull the trigger, and then my skirt was ruined.

I can leave my body in the grass and my hair in the trees,
I can write dry poems and feed them to the wind,
I can leave a trail of me through the trees like I was never there,
and when I find my way back, only the birds will know the difference.