you keep taking until my hands are empty,
and then you take my hands.
if I start to cross your mind,
let me keep walking.

you don't get to be both
the shipwreck and the lifeboat.
you don't get to be both
the storm and the disaster relief.
the hurting used to come in waves,
but it won't pull me under anymore.

your apologies died behind your teeth.
you're just spitting out the remains.
somewhere there was once sincerity,
but I'm done being the archeologist
digging through excuses to find it.

I don't miss the person I thought you were,
or the person you could have been,
because at their core,
they are both
still you.

the flesh covers the bone
and they put a mind
in there and
sometimes a soul,
and the women break
vases against the walls
and the men drink too
much
and nobody finds the
one
but keep
looking
crawling in and out
of beds.
flesh covers
the bone and the
flesh searches
for more than
flesh.

there's no chance
at all:
we are all trapped
by a singular
fate.

nobody ever finds
the one.

the city dumps fill
the junkyards fill
the madhouses fill
the hospitals fill
the graveyards fill

nothing else
fills.

Death rolled in again, rippling waves in my calmed brain.
They said he almost made it to the door, but bled out on the kitchen floor.

I think of you, and him, and him, and the others who kissed the hand of whatever god.
They're not real anymore, but we're they Ever anyway.

The gold Lockett cracked, and the speaker blew out. The casket finally closed, the family guests walked out.

I push everyone away, so I don't see them die. The burdens too great, the risk of goodbye.

Alone for now, and alone forever, because every season ends, and I barley make it through December.

Every year repeats, the variables appear, "y" equals me and "X"isn't there

Don't cry for the song, cheer to remember. I'll see you in the summer, then I'll die in December

I am standing at a funeral
reading my depression's suicide note
in front of a crowd that is smiling.
it does not feel right.

this is my own death.
this procession is for me.
the person in the casket is dressed in guilt
—an outfit she grew out of long ago,
but still wore everywhere.
one hand is intertwined with pills,
the other is still trying to find
something else to hold on to.

when the sky becomes overcast
and begins taunting me with rain,
I contemplate digging her back up.
there is a moment where
I want to resuscitate her.
I have never been able to survive
a storm without becoming a part of it.

I will not take shelter in that body again.
I will not wear her skin as a raincoat.
I remind myself that she is where
she always wanted to be,
and so am I.

She was fascinated,
hooked as if a fish out of water.
Whenever death
was splurged across the television
she’d sit upright,
the sofa would creak,
her eyes gorging all
like globs of kitchen roll.
Two per second.
She thought she’d solve them,
bust the case wide open
or some other cliché.
Reams of unresolved stories,
of women splayed
at American roadsides
with a missing molar
or red rings around the wrist.
There had to be an answer, she’d say.
Everything has answers
because everyone asks questions.
A human doesn’t go missing,
someone always sees, apparently.
She’d talk about dying
as if she welcomed it,
as if it was a real person
with bones and a voice.
One day she sliced her finger
and just let it bleed,
the thin line then the bloom
of crimson that wept
into the sink.
Two per second she’d remind me.
I scrambled in the drawer
for a plaster.

Anxious.
Like the attachment style.
Becoming involved,
and over-thinking everything.
That's what you called that, right?
Over-thinking
these old insecurities that I can
never seem to
quite push
away
for good
while my pen bears its ink
down into and past the current
page because all my muscles
are tight
and my stomach is
sick
and my mind
is distracted.

You. You. You.

She'll pick you up,
put you down
once she's read your pages
and harvested your words.
Is it true?

I've been discarded before.

Tried to trap the bird,
what a foolish mistake,
and it flew away
leaving my hands full
of ashes.
I've pushed too hard
and clung too tightly
and lost it all
many times.

I get nervous, but I know my center.

I see your wings,
a magnificent ocean blue
which have been carved
through years of struggle.
Never think that I do not.
I would never deign
to clip them.
I would never make that mistake again.

But I, too, have my share of books
which I have picked up,
read fully,
or half-way,
and put down,
discarded.
I have lifted from branches
and flown further
when I've been trapped,
clipped.

I get nervous.

I want to stay,
more than anything,
but there is fire in my wings,
and fire in yours too.
We are certainly
birds of a feather,
so I wonder,
can we not,
could we not,
should we not,
fly together?