i can't recall ever feeling so afraid
deaf from silence that won't keep quiet
living in a bed of cold sheets from open windows and spilt coffee
caged in days old clothes
and skin that won't stop sweating.

i am tired.

i am so tired.

i can't recall ever feeling so dead
and i don't know if it’s my shallow breath afraid to stir,
or my tired bones filled with weight, held down by your continual expected self,

but i used to think
in the middle of empty streets
where cars only crept by every hour or so
that my life is just shadows of already told stories, fixed into cracked brick walls
and they don't move, they just stand still

so i stand still too

wondering how far my feet could take me if i let them.


but god, when does it stop hurting?
because my heart doesn't beat as it used to
it just pounds against a crystallized chest
like how your fists used to pound against your own skin
trying to shake yourself out of days old dreams that kept destroying you.

i should have spoken to you
but i was scared what I said might’ve shattered the both of us
but you really should have known that i thought you were wonderful

and important

and maybe i loved you

and maybe i still do

and maybe that's something worth being ruined over.

it was nice knowing you’d break your bones for me
but i’d already broken my own so you wouldn’t have to.

i wish i knew how to stop feeling so afraid
but losing you wasn’t like losing myself
because my skin still knows how to stretch itself around my spine-stuffed back
and it knows the grooves hidden behind each rib, each piercing wrist bone;
and it hasn’t reached its point of defeatedness
like how you reached yours with a knife.

“tell my mother i love her,”
2:34 a.m
the last words you ever spun into my ear,

I wish they sounded like music or something lyrically moving,
but they sounded like thunder, and storms that wouldn't let up.

2:34 a.m
the burning echoed sound of a dial tone branded in places i could never reach -
why didn't you say you loved me back?

outside the snow lurks
a cold dew kissing warm birk
and inside our house
the tealight candles will melt
a flame will flutter
against a fogged window pane.

oh how my breath stills
captured there in bright beauty

shore born

black sand

bleeding colors of

a shaking sun, cascading in ripples against a

falling shadow of grey

like

her flapping hair in the wind

stained with age

and her

milk washed skin,

and her bare feet

bare self

uncowering to the rising tides.

My mind could not conjure up the notion that the word, the name, meant something. A-n-n-a. I looked. I looked: she stared back the same. Unknowing, unfamiliar. I wanted to remember, I wanted to.



7 a.m, in the crawlspace underneath the house, flashlight grasped in my hand, sweat from my forehead plastering my hair against it. It smelled like dust. I inched forward on my stomach, writhing as a worm. My body seizing against dirt and webs. I yelled out her name. Just to see. Just to test if my mouth still knew how to speak.



Anna.



Anna.



There. In the corner. I flicked my light against a box with tape on the side and her name written on over it in marker. I whispered it to make sure. Anna. One more time. Anna. I sunk my face into the ground. My breath, soft from my lips but coarse in form, disrupt the filth, made me cough. I crawled over to her with ease, as if the bones in my body were pushing me, the muscles guiding me; these pulsing veins, telling me.



When I opened the box, the first thing I saw was her, smiling back at me in the form of a memory. July 1996, our wedding framed around sanded wood, with splinters etching at the sides, aching for a hold on them. And I cradled her, despite this. Despite my skin giving in.



Anna.



I almost forgot.



My head was hurting again. I blamed it on the suffocating of the casket underground enveloping me, not the staples buried into the skin of my skull, not the remembrance that underneath piles of dirt, her body was just a stack of old bones with only a stone to tag her as proof she was once living.



Anna. My Anna. I cradled the picture against my chest. I clung to her.



My light began to flicker, a spider crawled across my finger. Anna was diminishing, like a ghost, like a gentle sweep of navigating headlights turning a corner, creeping away, and suddenly gone.



Anna. A-n-n-a. I shut my eyes. I could finally remember.

Post is anonymous
mystery of this piece
written bout 1530


It aches with
loneliness and
longing and is short
but unforgettable


I came across this last week
to be precise 8/15/2018
something about it keeps
pulling be back to read
it every day ..


He or she ( me ) sat still
silent my heart aching
bittersweet intensity
longing for you

The sky was lit
by the splendor of the moon

So powerful
I fell to the ground

Your love
has made me sure

I am ready to forsake
this worldly life
and surrender
to the magnificence
of your Being

A friend asked me
how to be a writer.
I wanted to say,
lock yourself in a room,
scream until you have
a poem and no voice.
Open your veins and bleed
until you know that your bones
are pure words and sorrow.
Act as if you slit your own throat
and all you can bleed
are your own regrets
and all of the darkness
you boxed up for inspiration.
Write your mom a letter,
tell her you're leaving
and you won't be back for awhile
Because being a writer is traveling
through all seven layers of Hell
and denying anything is wrong.
Forget loving yourself
when all you have is a pen and paper
fused to your wrist
and Jesus is tapping at your skull
saying turn back now.
Warn the neighbors that if they smell burning
It's just your soul
clawing at the front door trying to get in.
Learn how to be alone.
Learn how to lose everything you have
in order to feel release,
learn how to only feel deceased
from now on.
A friend asked me
how to be a writer.
All I said was
don't