In the silence now is where
I must struggle to remember again.
The galaxies on my arms
and your tiger stripes will
exist as testaments to the
strength we almost learned to
lose (close your eyes and
hold my hand again).

You laugh has slipped into
every cup of coffee I make and
the slivers of my eyes;
I am stuck now, again, wanting

My words are stale from
overuse, but how else could I
convince you that you are
jewels to me? Stale, again,
again, and soft, and here
again I am left risking
everything for the safe delivery
of one more miracle

Drugs are the cure for reality
  An escape from your problems and pain
    But in excess, too much of a good thing
       Will still leave you unkempt and insane

I laugh at myself
How was I so naive?
To fool my own body
Just so it would breathe...
Now it thinks I'm alive
And yet, how could that be...
When my soul surely died
Whence it knew you'd left me

Words catch in my throat.
A thousand fears chew at my fingertips.
Terror... Valour.... Loneliness.
It all amounts to shadows on the river.
Lights play over living currents,
Her fluid movement
Shifts the gleam across the waves.
Courage is a trembling lip,
A denial of self,
A strangulation of excess emotion;
Amidst temptation...
Amidst the tempest...
Amidst self doubt.
Somewhere the steel of your jaw
becomes more than a daydream.
Morphine can't even ease this pain.
I lose my breathe.
I wait for death.
And yet, somehow, I wake again.

i. You told me you wanted me,
but after several hours of chasing
you grew tired. All things are impossible,
but you are an exception.

ii. I had my chest stuffed
the other day with a bird, a feather
thing that beats faster than my
heart at the end of the day.

iii. My heart pulses to the hurricanes
on the other side of the planet and
you, when you heard my bones breaking
you told me to hush.

iv. I could care less about
the seasons or perfect planets. All I
see from this spot in the tower is
a meadow of many waters.

v. I misled you into thinking that
this poem would be about love and
instead now it is about birds that
chirp inside the hearts of weaklings.

vi. Pretend if you can that I am a
rhapsodic and warm human, with blushing
girl-flesh. I am not, though. Just
a hard-scaled arthropodic night terror.

vii. Yesterday we were an easy
bike ride to the corner store to buy
candy. Today Mother knows better than
to let me leave the house with you.