My stomach and head
Are boiling with sadness
And my internal organs
Are steamed from
The inside out
Love doesn't exist
For me
Curled up in the fetal
Position I ask for
Help from anyone
And all I get
Are ghosts of friends
Whisps of smoke
Gone in a flash
I'm like a tornado
Of emotion and I
Destroy everything in sight
When people see me
Coming at them
They evacuate and I'm
Left to
Rampage all alone

I tell myself to snap out of it
But I can only think of the way you would snap at me when I did something wrong
But your eyes would soften and you would gently grab my face and say
"I'm sorry"
Over and over.

We weren't perfect.
We weren't even close.
But you gave me something I had never thought could be long to me
You gave me stability
When my world would spin round and around
backwards and forwards,
my head spinning with it.
Nothing making sense.
My knees trembling
and my ears ringing.
There was you.
The steady rock in the never ending tornado.
You were there for me in a way I could never be for you.
And maybe that's why you picked yourself up
And moved onto some other storm
One that would calm down for you.
I'm sorry I never could.
I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry.

Our love a Tornado
A force of nature
leaving only destruction
of our pasts in its wake
Cleansing the hurt
the anger
the pain
Bringing new life
Bringing new rain
After every Storm
There is a silver lining
A path of life
A way to love
Come join my Storm
Come lose yourself with me
Let the winds of our love
Carry us high
Higher Into the sky
Lets touch the stars
and make them fall
Lets pluck the moon
From its eternal orbit
Let our love be eternal
and as sure as the earth
turns on its axis
And definite as Seasons change.
Love me.
Love us.

I've scheduled an appointment about 3 different times but, cancelled for each.
I didn't think there was any purpose in laying down the voices in my head for a stranger
When I've spent so much time building cement walls of silence between anyone who has ever gotten too close to me.
I have spent this lifetime creating sound proof dream catchers of my screams.
I am not known to grab hold of clingy hearts
Because, it's hard to hold on to things that are trying to do more than grasp me.
I say goodbye or pass them along as often as the tide comes into the shore.
But, I do not come back as it does.
But, the voices in my head do.
The doubts they hit me like teeth to concrete
The anxiety hits me like 10 ft deep waters with no air to breathe in
And I am not the swimming kind.
I am a runner, so it is hard for me to live in water deep enough to drown in.
I have created water deep enough to drown in.
I have become so controlled that I am numb to hands
And I fall to words so easily.
I scare me
My voice scares me
My thoughts scare me .
Night hits like the sun after a storm
And I can't figure out which one I am or which I want to be.
I have created a tornado of this mind
A wildfire of this heart
And a tomb of this body
And I don't know if I have self-shattered too profusely
And too quietly to fix it.
So I am here now,
You ask me why,
                              And I am here because now
The broken pieces can't be ignored anymore,
It's not getting easier in the morning anymore.
It's getting harder to wake
And I don't know how many more days I can be here
Like this...
This is my last chance to fix it
                                          fix her
                                          fix me.

Black and white photo of horror in color
From a safe distance of many years
I luridly recall your details.

At the airport, I see your fearsome construction
I marvel at how it came together
And struggle to understand how and why, because
I couldn’t help then and I failed to help now.
Regret draws me closer.

Trespassing through a farm, stealing the earth
Late for work and malicious at birth
A hungry wind with a green sky calling card.
Darkening danger almost on top of us,
as dad watches from the garage
and we play in the front yard.
“Open the windows. . . get in the car!”

Only a few seconds to gain enough distance.

Our school, our home, our hands and voices
Couldn’t hold on or offer enough resistance
against the finger of God.

I couldn’t help then and what am I doing now?
Regret sweeps me away.

Heartbreak, isn't as easy as it looks.
You took my heart,
Put it on hooks,
And butchered
Whatever remained.
Now it will never work the same.

Yet still I see your name
And that heart ache becomes,
A mobile destructive vortex
Of violently rotating winds
A funnel-shaped cloud
Attached to a large storm system.

Yes, heartbreak is like a tornado,
That spirals within me,
Each time I think of you,
Tearing and ripping,
And pulling me through.
Nothing could prepare me for this weather.
Yet I can't imagine anything better,
I prefer to face this tornado everyday,
It will,
Remind me,
Of you,
Forever.

When you tell your daughter that your life has been a series of near car crashes
Forgive her for mistaking the gloss behind your eyes - as nostalgia for a wreck that could have been
Forgive her for clawing her skin with the intent of stirring a tornado so violent she could match your presence
You taught her to see you as a fatality; too late to be saved, too proud to be held

Remember that an animal licking it's wound does so out of self-preservation, not self-pity
Remember that saline is salt water and tears need to be shed and that humans are capable of healing

Remember to feel
Teach her to pummel her fists
Teach her to shout down the boys

Remember the hollow below your heart that echoes like an abandoned house
When ivy grows out from her chest cavity and encapsulates all around you
Remember that she is not unruly
She merely sees within you a potency to create beauty

And consider her ability to grow and grow and grow
Encourage her to expand
Be mindful that little girls should never need permission to occupy space
Be humble - she may even teach you a thing or two