She heard once that some men have hands like oceans
Pushing and pulling so long as you remain to withstand the current

There was a time in her life during which she found it beautiful, the way the ocean refused to stop kissing the shoreline
The older she got, the more she started to believe that the ocean was just filling a void

The metaphor sort of doesn’t work when the ocean breaks in and out of high tide, but the shoreline has nowhere to go

She learned that love is not one sided
And that apathy cannot be a way of life
So she thought she might learn to surf the waves
And mix up the metaphor

Some men walk around broken
With shards of glass souls cutting anything and anyone brave enough to get too close

She has an open wound that won’t quit bleeding
Doused in the perfume of iron
She is getting used to wearing her new scent

She has a pile of empty wine bottles
A pride fragmented into pieces of bitterness and regret scattered across her kitchen floor
A mind seeking silence

And she has a notebook full of beautiful words woven together
Layers of prose make up the patchwork from which she sews meaning out of the pain

She drinks up words like an elixir meant to pump life back into her aorta
Her pulse beats with ambivalence
She envies the electrical current moving throughout her

But they are only words
And she’s nothing much of an alchemist

She was always used to being a little bit not able to breathe well
She was never quite suffocating
But an albuterol inhaler and a really awkward nebulizer helped her through some rough nights

And it’s an odd metaphor for loneliness
Like suffocating just a little, but breathing well enough to get by
Was her way of life

She always envied those girls who knew how to make them smile
Without suffocating
Without breaking out into hives

She can’t help but
Wish that she were one of those girls

But she takes a slow breathe
Remembers that her life is hers to define
And that loneliness sometimes looks like suffocating
But sometimes
It looks like endurance
In a life she wasn’t meant for

And suddenly she is grateful for missed breaths
And for a man
She perhaps hasn’t met yet
Because in the meantime
She has had to learn to be her own life line

He got by with bumps of ******* and molly
Metaphorically of course
For most of his life
But then he met heroine
Introduced her into his life like a bump cut with flour
Thinking the effects would be minimal
Assuming he could plot out a course of manipulation
Beautifully
Simply
Like he always did
But she was always a step ahead

And his addiction changed form
Became complicated
Frustratingly so
Making the reward that much more satiating

She finally figured out the answer to “why”
Her body and not her mind was his prize
There was a layer of depth she couldn’t quite reach in her understanding
Her body in itself was a bump of *******
Her ability to see through his facade of ******* transformed her into heroine

She faced a choice
Cut him with a ***** needle and watch him bleed
Or be tactfully helpful
She is inclined toward the latter
Because we all need healing
Some of us just need a little more than others

My least favorite moments
Are the ones during which my body folds into your body
Skin against skin
Friction generating warmth
Your breathe
The sweetest silence

I hate the way this feeling is fleeting
Leaving behind it
Cold sheets
Lingering regret
An unquenchable thirst

My least favorite memories
Are the ones
In which I can’t unsee the amorous way you look at me
As if my body was made to fit into yours

I hate the way you make
Retrograde amnesia
Sound like a cure

I hate the way that
It will never be enough

Beneath the low light of some hanging bar lamps
She gazes cautiously at her lipstick stained wine glass
Searching for silence against a backdrop of tumult reverberating between brick walls
Her heart beats with ambivalence to the sound of his muffled words
Enveloped by the cries of joy that surround
Vacillating between no and maybe, she was fading fast

Assiduously
She presses pen to paper
Hoping to bleed out the ink
As if she might bleed out all the pain she has been harboring for far too long

She knows these men
The ones whom have held her hand in evenings spent in inebriation
In fleeting instances of attention mistaken for affection

She knows men like this are cut from fabric too weak to lend itself to depth
And yet she’s as guilty as they come
Filling a void with
Big words and lost hope

She thinks that broken hearts are for those whom are willing to admit they have hearts
Because in a society driven by ******* framed as success
We benefit from acting apathetic

She wonders if it might be true
How everyone warns her that someday some man will win her heart

But she’s not keen on fairytales
And no matter how much Rumi she fills her beautiful brain with
She knows that another can only meet us as deeply as they have met themselves

So she pauses
Places her pen carefully on the counter
Takes a deep breath

And says “I love you. Always.”
And she remembers that loneliness is a far off island
When you love yourself enough
To say it out loud

She has broken her own heart in seeking love from those incapable of offering it enough times to know
That the only person worth being broken hearted over is oneself

So she lays her head gently against her pillow
And she is grateful for old philosophy
And for a life lived in self love

And her open heart is at peace
If only for another night

There was something beautiful
Almost hopeful
About the way he shared her forthright demeanor and cutting edge passion for countering *******

You see, there’s a lot of *******
Far and wide and deeply embedded

And on certain days she’s convinced that we’re all sort of caged inside a big bubble of the ******* spinning like rodents
Mindless
and in circles

But today
She wonders what the juxtaposition of their thoughts might look like

And she thinks
That they likely aren’t that dialectically opposed after all

And she wonders if that’s what makes up love
Complexity
And pain

One shred of understanding buried under piles of all the **** they’ve dumped in far off corners of desolate lots

Waiting

She likes the way cold rain feels as it falls upon her face

She thinks his manipulations are just the ******* children of storm clouds
He’s afraid of you
The possibility that your honesty might actually be the CO2 to the atmosphere of his vulnerability
Exposing it increasingly to the Sun

The warming of the space between the two of you fueling hurricane like winds
His eyes are the center of her storm
Her words create friction but without the force required to keep them in motion

So the rain falls heavily on their potential energy
But he will never get it

Because we say whatever we have to say and we do whatever we have to do to protect our vulnerability