Showing us what
we want to see.
But it should
show us what we
needed to see.

-HIY

she’s reminiscing,
a young woman,
who already feels old.
The weight of her heart
hunches her shoulders
and adds girth to her frame.
She wonders if life would be easier
if she was skinnier
because she looks at photos and
recalls a waif with big eyes
and bigger hair
nineteen and lovestruck,
his hand in hers
sneaking into abandoned houses,
and lying in golden fields,
the cool summer nights of
bicycle rides in the dark.
How much easier it was fall in
and out of love when you felt
invincible and didn’t know it–
when you’re more than the
woman cloaked in black,
like the heart she’s always
joked about
and drenched in
wine and smoke–
if she could be but the night
and swallow the sun, moon,
the stars, and all
that ever was–
but no, she’s a whisper
one word slipping into silence.

Birds chirp outside my window
I guess it is morning now
What was once the call of dawn
Is now the daunt of dusk

The unspoken hurt holds heavy
On my tired timid tongue

Softly, the music makes me weep, and I
sink into the storm. You are breathtaking.
My life before you was a dream, a lie.
I am awake now, love, trembling, shaking.

You have ripped my feeble façade away
and doused me in ultraviolet bliss.
You, you are the sky. I am a blue jay
forever reaching, begging for a kiss.

I smolder under your luminous gaze;
I grow heavy, molten under your touch.
Slowly, I open, close, my blood ablaze,
Undulating in your leisurely clutch.

I rise, yield, my heart beating like a drum.
I float, complete, my breath a steady thrum.

Your pain is not a gift.

Don’t be burdened
if they don’t rejoice to receive it.

Don’t
let the lack of a correct response
ebb your purge.

They don’t understand.
Of course, they don’t.
They are not you;
They have not suffered
your black holes.
Do you wish them to?

Don’t
brush away their sympathy.
It is the price you pay
to have someone
care enough to listen.