sweater
sweet
"you taste it"
sweet
I feel it with you
as I am enveloped in this sweater that
smells
feels
tastes
breathes
like you
comforting and warm, like you
woven and fragile, like you
itchy and scratchy, like you
like
you
if I could wear this sweater forever I would
to be held by the very fabric that has hugged your person that has hugged me
that I long for
that I think of as I remember that this is the first thing I put on after you felt me
all of me, with you
that this was the first thing you let me have, and take
that this was what you trusted me with
your Christmas sweater
what I put on for reassurance
that you want me and need me
what I put on for safety
when I feel like I'm losing it
I'm falling now though
in this sweater
backwards into that ocean
and I'm scared, sweater
that as days pass he loses me
that his image of me fades and drifts away
that he forgets the sound of my voice
that my touch on his body has evaporated
sweater, I want to hold him as he does me
this image in my mind of his smirk
his lanky but grand stature
his sturdy hands and brittle nails
his smell of Old Spice
his blonde bed head
I want to hold it all
and I want to hear it all, sweater
how he used to light everything in his path on fire as a child
how he owns a mug with his face on it as a little boy
how he lost it all to one person, like me
sweater I can feel myself falling
I'm losing my balance
I can't stand
I'm trying to protect my heart because I'm afraid to let it go
but a part of me fears I already have
and it's lost
in his arms
bare and bleeding
and yet here I am
wearing his sweater
alone and yearning.

A little picture frame fell
Full of innocence, youth, ignorance, bliss
It’s me in the millennium
I wasn’t
Too Tall
Yet
While in my clatter it crashed from the mantle
Why is it even here?
Wasn’t that yesterday?

The past will never go away
The past will never go away

But only a dream, a conscious façade
A memory is only a faulty tape
And we find we recall love not time
The things that child left behind
Were mended by grace
And cast the lines from his face
The future grieves, what is mine?
What's time but a coffin of sin
Yet I heave the shining frame to the mantle again,
Hoping to gain a childlike grin
It’s not about the past or future
It’s not about misplaced winnings
It’s the chance a man has for a new beginning

The sad part is that most of us, writers,
are almost ashamed to say it out loud.
We do it like a bad habit we can't escape.
****** junkies with the leash around our necks.
Treat it like a disfigurement; our
malignant entries spread like cancer from
under our pathetic, hypocritical hands.
We're sad.
Depressed.
"Heart broken".
Angst ridden.
Jaded.
Coping.
Coping.
Learning to cope,
but often failing.
Stepping on each other;
a sea of cadavers with
no bottom, surface, or center.
Full of brilliance/ brighter than the sun.
Collectively, we are a diamond made from ****.
A uselessly expensive commercial good,
nonetheless.
The next Bukowski will be a child molester,
or a sociopathic spree killer. Too bad
no one wants to be the great writer of course.
What greater shame could there be?
What bigger embarrassment could exist?
What insult and tragedy is more than being
a writer?

We write to reach out
to anyone
who is close enough
to read the words
that spill from our minds
Trying
without gain
for those that stop
to make them see
to make them stay
If only long enough to feel again
but as is the way of things
they linger for just a moment
then continue on their way
as the world stops for no one
and surely not for the troubled writer
lost in isolation
and ever searching
for a friend

Be confident. Know that now is only a moment, and that if today is as bad as it gets, understand that by tomorrow, today will have ended. Be gracious. Accept each extended hand offered, to pull you back from the somewhere you cannot escape. Be diligent. Scrape the gray sky clean. Realize every dark cloud is a smoke screen meant to blind us from the truth, and the truth is whether we see them or not - the sun and moon are still there and always there is light. Be forthright. Despite your instinct to say "it's alright, I'm okay" - be honest. Say how you feel without fear or guilt, without remorse or complexity. Be lucid in your explanation, be sterling in your oppose. If you think for one second no one knows what you've been going through; be accepting of the fact that you are wrong, that the long drawn and heavy breaths of despair have at times been felt by everyone - that pain is part of the human condition and that alone makes you a legion. We hungry underdogs, we risers with dawn, we dissmisser's of odds, we blesser's of on – we will station ourselves to the calm. We will hold ourselves to the steady, be ready player one. Life is going to come at you armed with hard times and tough choices, your voice is your weapon, your thoughts ammunition – there are no free extra men, be aware that as the instant now passes, it exists now as then.
Be forgiving. Living with the burden of anger, is not living. Giving your focus to wrath will leave your entire self absent of what you need. Love and hate are beasts and the one that grows is the one you feed.

It’s traumatic not knowing what to type
It’s that edgy feeling till your thoughts ripe

Its difficult to sleep in peace
I place a variety of words on a leash

I sit with a cup of coffee
With my laptop glaring at me

My mind is weakened
My soul is vacant

My cursor is blinking impatiently
And I am deleting each line repeatedly

My hearts not burning with sorrow
My heart is happy but hollow

I don’t feel anything extreme
I don’t feel generous or mean

My mind is at peace
My thoughts are at ease

And until an artist can’t feel
Their thoughts are concealed

So I need to dig in deep
And let this moderate feeling seep.

-Zainab Attari