You howl across the smartphone speakers
“unstable”
I roar back,
“healing.”
Ah, semantics.

You cling to definitions tighter than static
Your arguments are magnets to my geyser:
stuck, yet I flow on

You build a face for the day,
reinforce it, ready for the wrecking ***** in our vernacular
nothing will shake your perspective
your eyes are glasses to our periscope

The things you’ve been told are just that
and my illness doesn’t make me any less blood and bone
any less ups and downs
any less success and collapse
than you
despite what you’ve heard about depression from some friends or a Facebook post
it’s more than a daily beast
it’s a mountain to climb with only one arm
and I’m on my way to stable footing

You want to attach words like “lazy” and “uncaring” to my identity
go ahead, I pick them off like fleas
they can only drain me for as long as I let them.

I will say “suffering”
you might say “a lil’ sad”
we both sit there, hoping truth blessed us with its language

Only one thing is for certain.
Whatever “it” may be
It.
Won’t.
Stop.
Me.

We are just arguing over semantics,
when we both know that
what I said is true.

I could have said it another way,
but that will not change what is important -
the truth.

Accept this,
or choose to judge the way I speak...
but I am correct.

Do not let emotion
cloud your judgement,
or anger douse what is real.

I may be mean,
while ignorance is bliss...
but I choose to remain above all this.

I remember being in elementary,(a)
I was constantly bored with the(b)
Drivel. Learn what they teach,(b)
Never mind differences, Jamie;(a)
                  

  Just memorise the drill.

           I remember the Spelling Bee,(c)
          They were impressed by me.(c)

They thought it strange to go(d)
So well, since I slept or wrote(d)
Thru ev'ry class; never to note.(d)

"How in the Hell is it that you won(e)
At Spelling, I was State Champion(e)
At my old school!??! Teach said you(f)
Do your thing; you haven't a clue;(f)
               I came in 2nd to you?!!?"(f)

I said, "It takes a simple mind to learn(g)
Simply, therefore you were not beaten(h)
By me: but rather by Arrogance, Hern."(g)


    What does that  mean,  asked  she.

Ihopeby now Hern has figured how
  A writer obsessed in each class, Recess,
At Lunch, on the Cheese Wagon a bunch,
Won Spelling Bees -Still stuck on studies.

You asked me my name in your first remark
We sat on opposite ends of a question mark
You were dashing - made me pause,
me, this independent clause
standing alone,
I made sense on my own
But I answered you anyway.

Ellipses.

Now you are the verb in my heart’s contraction
I am the subject and you are the action
An Interrogative with a Declarative reaction
An Exclamatory and then an Imperative attraction

Ellipses.

Your lips ease
Me, the direct object of your affection,
but never sentenced to an apostrophe’s possession
perhaps more true- a plural “s” suggestion
and the excitement behind an exclamation point’s inflection

The semi-colon understands
We can be on our own, but we want to stand
together
where our letters
aren’t fetters,
but the typesetter’s
better measure
of linguistic pleasure.

We communicate through metaphors and similes
Like the birds and the bees
We speak across homophone lines
to keep a census of our senses at all times
Because words said aloud have allowed
us to find meaning behind the utterance of sound-
mere words and phrases
jumping off of pages
into brain and heart and soul
when the parts become a whole

And with the syntax, punctuation, grammar, and usage
I’m a hopeless semantic always trying to ****** it
Language- yours I understand through the myriad.
Words can’t capture you. Period.

look,
she will never tell you her deepest secrets or kiss you quite long enough to feel whole. and some nights she will sneak out of bed and yell when you follow her, because there are nights when she needs to breathe and there have been too many fires too close to her throat lately.
let her go. tell her you know about thunderstorms, about storms so rough you seem to topple over at the thought of them—tell her, you too, have felt the earth shake beneath the soles of your feet a few times too many to stay still.
you don’t have to kiss her scars. you just have to kiss her.
boy, on good days, take her by her bruised hands and lead her to a place where you have always found sanctuary. kiss her then. she will trace your bones with her tongue and lay her hand on your chest to check if you’re hollow. kiss her then. sometimes she will smoke to fill herself with something else than pain. kiss her then.
look: when she trembles so loud you can hear her empty bones rattle, place one hand in her hair and one on her hip and kiss her. kiss her until she stills. being an avalanche like her is exhausting, but sometimes she just won’t know how to stop it.
when she falls asleep on the couch again, know that she is not avoiding you. she’s avoiding the emptiness of having you so close she doesn’t know if she’s allowed to touch yet. she doesn’t know if she earned it yet. and when you see her do her workout routine twice, it’s because the couch is giving her trouble sleeping—even more than the bed did. she hopes she will be too tired to care this way.
take her by the hand again. take her to bed. place her head on your chest. show her it’s alright to touch.
when she tells you she’s been counting the cracks in the ceiling because her head is filled with ideas of death and despair, repaint it. tell her this is a new colour for new thoughts and new beginnings. cover her eyes. kiss her eyelids. tell her they don’t always filter light but they don’t have to. tell her it’s alright to be an avalanche. tell her it’s alright to be an avalanche.
but remember this: when you are ready to fall to your knees, she will be there. when you feel the earth tremble beneath your feet, she will be there. and when your hands shake so much you don’t think you can hold her anymore, she will be there.
there is so much more to her than just something to hold. she’s not just this anger, she’s not just this closeness in her veins that makes you forget the way home, she is so much more than just gritting teeth and letting it go.
when you are ready to fall, she will always be there to catch you. remember: she knows the ripple of hurt that tears through your body so violently—she knows how it feels. she has felt it herself. when you tremble, she will make you still. when you tremble, she will make you still.
this is not just about her. this is about you, too. about the cracks in your ceiling. about your avalanche. realise that she understands. when you lay your head on her chest to check if she is hollow, realise she knows exactly what you’re doing. when you ask her to pass the cigarette, realise that she too, knows how it feels to fill yourself with something besides pain.
oh sweetheart, when the vastness of her love makes you agoraphobic, she will take you to the place she loves most and kiss you. she will kiss you breathless. don’t you know it’s in her blood to take care of you?