I wish I could skip across time like a stone over water, skimming across the surface until I settled gracefully into the future, into a distant tomorrow where I’ve forgotten what it felt like to lose you.

I wish I could close my eyes and dream until this sadness has run its course through my body, like a disease, like a breaking fever.  I wish I could wake up one morning drenched in the sweat of a fading sickness, knowing the worst was over and that I would soon feel okay again. Every time I lay my head down, I hope to wake up feeling okay again.

I wish I could sink below the surface of time and swim through yesterday like a clear, still pool. I would float into the past, to the place where you told me “I could never be with her. I want you.” I would tread water there, lazily, believing every word, drinking in the feeling of being yours, of being your only. I would not come to the surface until my chest caved in and my body grew weak, until the line between living and dead blurred like ink clouding a full glass. Maybe not even then – maybe there, in the slow stillness of the past, I could close my eyes and allow myself to sink, to lie quietly in the happiest place I've ever been, in the place where you told me “You are the only one I love” and I believed you. I could have died then.

I will stay afloat until calmer currents come. I can see stillness somewhere on the horizon, brewing and boiling like the catharsis of cracking thunder just beyond tomorrow, just there, out at sea. Please let it come soon.

Empty days with hours to think
and I still haven't decided yet,
because remembering burns from the inside out
but it's impossible to forget.

Body heat cannot un-thaw,
so I am stilled in frosted glass.
I am waiting for you to save me again,
to tell me, softly, "this will pass".

Sores behind my teeth from biting my tongue
because 56 and 3 and 4 never really added up.
You changed the math behind the whole equation
so I could keep my composure without remaining untainted.

I drew a picture of us, all teeth and anger
the hand that fed me, spurned.
You will be a chapter all your own
in the book of things I've learned.

I'm supposed to spend my whole life waiting
for love's embrace to come and save me.
Who can tell me what love looks like,
so I will know him when he comes?
Because if love is perfect, if love is the only thing that can save me,
love has to be able
to withstand me.
And so far nothing can.
I imagine love to be made of iron.
I imagine love is tall, a stack of metal and bolts,
made all of hinges and corners and welding seams.
I imagine one day I will find love,
hidden somewhere,
and I will climb inside its heavy doors.
I will clank them shut behind me, letting the latch close.
Love will hide me, protect me.
I will be alone in love, but I will be safe.
That must be love, then.
To be alone but not to feel. This is how I imagine love.
I hope I find it soon.

I have a funeral to go to.
I missed the last one.
They're all dying off, one by one.
Had to happen eventually, I guess.
Everyone has to die sometime, you know?
Everyone and everything.
No matter how much it hurts,
and no matter who killed them.
Everything ends.

I think the biblical flood washed the love out of the world. I think God decided we didn't deserve something so pure, so he washed it off the face of the earth and left us here to try and fill its void, to remember the world with all the cracks full of love and wonder why we can't seem to keep anything standing. The world is dusty now, covered in rubble from all the things that we built, hoping love would hold them strong. We hoped for love, we dreamed of it.

falling
            hurt

                              just

         like

                               I
                                         knew
                                                      it
                           would.

Out of the frying pan
into the fire.
From one prying hand,
to another entire.
The whole of the universe, chanting together,
*burn it down,
burn it down.

The child inside me awakens first.
She's too excited to sleep any longer.
She sees the light crack through the blinds
and a glimmer of excitement begins to flicker inside her.
A new day already?

But the adult in me soon follows, swinging heavy feet over the edge of the bed,
rubbing bleary eyes.
The child drags her along, pointing to the morning sun,
telling her,
Look, look! Another day, another day!
She looks, humors the kid.
Seeing the sun again makes her nauseous.
The adult in me yawns, makes the coffee,
stares in the mirror for a bit too long. Considers getting back into bed.

The child in me wonders every night, what good will tomorrow bring?
The adult in me does not wonder. Stopped wondering long ago.
She knows exactly what tomorrow will bring.

The child wishes all the time that she could be awake.
The adult begs all the time for the world to let her sleep.
They are both crying this morning.
We are both crying this morning,
because today is exactly what half of me
expected it to be.

Fight twice,
it's even harder the second time.
And you win nothing
either time.
It just hurts.
Both times.
Fight twice,
just so you can finally know
what it feels like to lose
everything.