you say you know pain
i have never known before
what do you know about it?

i tell you what i know
about my own pain
when it is sitting with us

between the spaces of our fingers
between where you stand and i
shift

between my mattress and my bed
my pillow and my head
between the flickers of the light bulb
and the flick of a switch

the spaces you start to think you are better off filling
because at least you'll know what you're filling it with

instead of this enemy you cannot declare persona non grata
to ban it you have to know it
and to know it would be even more pain

like those viruses that trick your immunity
over and over again

you take a shot, you try to help your body recognize it, you get a response
you think you've had its disguise all figured out
until they shape shift again

so you say i know shape shifting pain
so i'm sure you know a pain that cannot hold still
that cannot get its fill
that gnaws and claws
subtly enough that
no one believes you even have pain

you say you know pain
but you don't know a pain that does not qualify, justify, speak for itself
you know a pain with a name you can grab off the shelf
you know pain that society boxes as a grievance, or a loss,
or a disability, an inability, or just don't come to work the next day!

i'll call and i'll get your tone.
but i think you'll find
my pain is the kind of pain that i cannot say over the phone.

you can't speak because all the worries would come spilling out.
overflowing nightmare realities borne of anxiety-fuelled doubt.
and every time you look at me
i get an urge to shout.
but i can't, so i don't, because i don't want all the worries
to come roaring out.

but if i could
oh, i would
tell you with a glance
instead of having my eyes do that familiar yet uncontrollable dance
because i admit to myself (admit to you)
that this is all a little too much

i'd say a little too much more than that, too

and when you're me, and you're like this,
you can't really smile.
because stress pins your lips
into a single file.

(all the worry going: hack - hack - hack)

you submit to it, like we do in the city
when tasked with its defeaning
construction sounds.
opening the blinds, thinking: urbane visionary pretty

and here labor and its fruits align.
  the beauty. the skyline.
that withstanding pain
allowed you to feel

and here you know it's real.
the work on the skyscraper is part of the landscape.

the scraping at my nerves: this is part of my landscape.
the worries that sit inside, that dance outside,
that pinch themselves in between.

the roaring, the dancing, the hacking. telling me
always what i'm lacking.
having me wish i could get packing, abandon myself, leave myself, teach myself, show myself, throw myself,

all this makes up the architecture of my mind.
our gray and white matter contents.
because i chose today to define and anchor this existence
as much in its function as it is by construction.

i choose to be a work in progress
over self destruction

i stand around like freedom in the doorway
lending a sense of urgency to the air
if you take me now, you will find out sooner
the paths you could take, if you dare


but i don't hang around the doorway long enough for you to take me
because to be taken at my challenge would have given me a scare
and i know the next time i look to find you
you and i won't truly be there

it followed me around
like a rumor
until one day, lost its wings
fell into a ditch
and i looked down upon it
eye-to-eye, with its lifeless face
and i could not face it with the same bitterness i had for it
this whole time


i picked up some dirt
and rubbed it on my hands
and let traces of me mixed into the dirt fall onto it
in a way i could not let it go,
at my wit's end, or a dead-end

and even i could see that there was no use pretending we were not intertwined, from life to death

Years ago l swore off writing because it was getting in the way of my story. Some sort of observer's paradox where the perception broke into a dam of longer restrained introspection, and as we all know spelt a recipe for interception. When things were bad, this effect, though consciously not intended, was a welcome source of scarcely-had agency. It was a veil from reality despite its best attempts to portray simultaneous events and tame them all the same. To begin to tell the story was a matter of literary teething, foretelling a survival and endurance of the narrator that carries beyond the events themselves. However sharp those teeth, the experience came with soreness. I longed to write like a teething infant longs to chew, an instinct, a balm to the pain that is so tangible viscerally. And yet I felt stabbed by my own unsheathed pen: first when I touched my own emotional bruises with it, and then when it began to carve marks into the story itself. When writing, it felt as though I had been deployed as a spy: using all of what I know and witnessed, against myself.

i run to you
finding you fallen like a feather
lost from my softest pillow
an object of comfort, when i most needed most to have my arms around something
around anything, to hold me still, to anchor me to this sea of an earth, this oxymoronic existence filled with nothingness and everything all the same.
when my arms sunk into it i felt a connectedness that kept me from floating away

i say this to try and get at what you used to provide me with
it was no easy feat, grounding someone who had their hands perpetually in the sky, always grasping for something beyond and out of reach

but now that i look down, i see you are a fragment of your old self
barely a full sentence, physically but a feather, light enough you could float on air, light enough you could be here and barely be there, light enough that
i can barely see you! barely feel you!
when you are your most bare self you are barely even there.
it makes me wonder how many layers you wore. if being you without the role of comforting me rendered you imperceptible.

i used to love you when you were tangible

but i lost because you are frangible... diffrangible...
diffracted into so many waves

i could find you. i could see you. as one ocean. but you need to have got yourself together. otherwise you are fractions of yourself

because i refuse to love a wave.

it was just like him to slip into her dream
to not quite meet her gaze, and begin to apologize
not because he was sorry, but because he had felt he had suffered enough time
without her forgiveness

he asked her if she was done being angry
and she asked him if he was done being blind

he turned away from her and opened a window she was startled to see. when he was in her dreams it was often tunnel vision.

but today there were details blooming in the peripheries. she felt herself expand from within as the exit naturally showed itself, like a thief of air showing itself out.

he jumped out
and she woke before the thud

like i know a blind spot,
like i know it's there,
like i know it's real
      but i can't see it to believe it

that's how i know you


when the pain catches us
at the foot of the year
i start to believe
in a feeling

and let it grow inside me

when we realize what happened
that we can really see each other now

we are startled,
And let go.

And start to begin,

and end all the same.

i began to lose myself very much like a thunderstorm
that wasn't in the forecast
that came unannounced
but in hindsight, all the people around it would say
"we were due one anyway"

i saw myself in the sudden downpour, in the grayness that
so quickly consumed the atmosphere

i saw myself in the headaches that came as the pressure dropped
in the ache of pre-emptively, and unconsciously adjusting to imminent change, even in the moments before it seems to show up

when the wind of change reaches us, it is how we brace ourselves before we even feel it, that knocks us down first

i saw myself in weary window watching. i saw myself in changes of plans. i saw myself in interrupted growth, in uprootedness, in the disheveled and crooked sprouts that i call attempts for stability.

i saw myself in the rush of people scrambling for shelter
trying to get out of the misery of having their clothes wet

mostly, i saw myself in the panic with which they scatter, in all directions
and i see myself, too, in the people who couldn't get out in time

nowadays, i resign myself as a passive recipient to the storm before it begins. i will likely get caught in it, and i accept that fate for myself now

when i found myself one morning gazing upon the city, noting
the lack of gray clouds, thinking i had found myself a respite in the
middle of the rainiest season i'd ever had

i would feel a sense of longing, for days when i could enjoy them for the fact that they are so beautiful, rather than the fact that they represent a brief culmination to the most recent torrent of storms.

when the leaves started to lose their colour
this year
i felt a sense of softness for them. because they seem to hang on so much better through so many kinds of weather. and they turn all the same.

perhaps i believed my resistance and my surrendering could never go hand in hand. but i see myself when i see change now

and i am turning all the same.

nowadays
it is like trying to breathe air
from the same room
you've been in for months.

it is like needing something
to stop the feeling
of lightness in your hands
and lightness in your step
and heaviness in your head.
but finding every breath
even less satisfying than the one before it
when every breath, no matter how wanted,
feels laboured
and void of relief

as i try and shrug off
the way this hill of
unsatisfying breaths
has rolled far too long along this coastline
that we call a timeline

but time hasn't moved in a line for me in months.

when it feels like walking in molasses
when it feels like someone has been pulling threads out of your head.
when you can't place a memory to a place, or tie together details anymore. when the names of objects you use daily just seem to escape you.

when you talk to your grandma and you complain of the same ailments. when you talk to a cancer survivor and you feel heard. when you hurt, and you hurt, and you hurt.


these days i find myself nursing myself.
and i am trying to be the most patient patient.

but the words to soothe myself escape me. the actions to self-care exhaust me. getting up to feed myself is fatiguing. picking up the phone to call a friend is mentally exerting.

when you become your own sanctuary, because you feel sicker trying to keep up with the world around you.

when you try and forget even breathing reminds you of what has changed. people offer distractions as though your body will let you escape.

nowadays,  in these hardest days,
i am both hurting and healing

what I did!
and what you did!
then, what I did!
then, what you did!

this is how we go! this is how we keep up the
charade! this bed that we made.

this is how we
fight into the night! this is our grand scheme at its height!

this is how you
rob me of sleep! this is how i
keep you from peace!
this is how we
intertwine. until there is no more me or mine.
  
until the only way i seem to know you iswhen the anger hits your bones.
and i lose all sense of cool. guess you could call me love's fool.
i just have no sense of chill. i try to hold still.
but i can't hold still

so, i don't, and i spill out, and
i cough out, and i
run out
of ways to say
how deeply i have started to despise you

how to come clean, of all these thoughts, that sully my brain?
unless i share my pain?
what's the saying about fighting fire with fire?
but you called me a liar!


so i finally wanted it out
i just wanted to have it out on the table
and there you go again you call me unstable

but i'm honestly just tired.
i just need to sleep first,
and i'll call you when i wake up

sometimes you ask the right questions
but you still don't get the right answers

and sometimes the right questions escape you
and you find yourself knocking on doors
you didn't want to open

this is called a body scan
one, two, three
chest rise, hold...
now imagine your breath
going through every part of you
find where you have tension
and relax it...

so I find my hands
over my eyes, hiding the sun
blocking the light
so subtle I almost don’t realize it
and I force them to come down.

i have to open my eyes, to open my eyes
i want to look and see as far as it goes
i worried before, felt sore ahead
a feeling of dread
pushing me to look away  

But this time I have all I need
what I don’t have, I have learned to ask for
and when it is denied to me,
I have learned to be grateful
and to let that feeling take over
my visual field

so that it is always
what is on my mind
that is in my view

so that I see
what I want to see more of.

inhale, exhale
one glance at a time.

i wish i could bring you back
to the form that you once held
as it fit so nicely
into my head

but instead, i find you now
in the the form you take

and i look at you
and i see familiarity
faded by the years, faded by the hurt
faded by the ridge growing between us...

and i begin to wonder if i would care to lose you
and i know just by the fact that i am engaging in this
once-absurd, now-regular line of questioning
that i have lost you

and i check in with myself at this point... if i care about what is happening?
but it is too much like hearing a dial tone

and feeling no urge to call back.

so, i put my hand on your face
in a wave of wanting closeness,
in a wave of resisting fear
and it washed over me
and passed us by
as if it was hardly ever there

i had my hand on your face
and thought: this is vulnerability

and thought: i will hurt you

and thought: i will hurt you

and thought: i will hurt you


and i could not stop it. i could not stop the thought.

and i waited for the wave of bravery, of resilience, of belief in the greater good to wash over me.

but it was like waiting for a train that never came

I asked her how many more times?

she stares at me for a long time

eyes about to change. this is the answer before the answer.

she inhaled, and the little trust I had left in her begins to fade.

I know the answer, before she exhales.

again and again and again

that’s how many

I slip my hand into yours to tell you
my voice is back,
my voice is back

nervous excitement crawling up my back
put my internal mic on, no more lack


I sit in her spot to tell you
she’s gone,
long gone

the space between us fills me with
so much wait

that ironically, I don’t dare say another thing.

if all i ever wrote, was a mountain of hurt
well, it would be a tall mountain indeed

i would climb it to the top, the point
and the point would tell me all along there had been a point

and at this point, where there had been a point,
i would give my hurt away. to see all there is to see
and just let it be

No, you don't know
what it feels like for me
to sink in water
because water is easy enough to tread in/
or so you say.

And how much
farther on a limp do I have to go
before you tell me
it's not too far
from here now.

I said hold me
I'm sinking
and you kept
trying to teach me to swim

hold me
I'm sinking
stop
teaching
stop
teaching
I'm sinking
I'm sinking

bet to bet
fuse to fuse
a couple of hearts
running loose

running

a loose cannon, far away
clear as day


start a tally keep a score
run our mouths

how many more
can we afford to lose?



playing time
wondering when this ends
whether we'll be winners
or just "good" "friends"

she collects me in a room
i am thin like paper
i am too busy being sad to be hungry
i am too busy being sorry to be hungry
i am too busy being an outcast to be hungry

the more i want to feel like myself the less i feel like myself
the more i start to think this is for the best
the more i start to think there is no best
that i never really liked myself, that i was the worst for myself
that this is my body giving me what i deserved

was my body doing this to be nice to me? separating me from me? was she doing this so i didn't have to carry her weight anymore
or was this punishment, for never taking care of me
back when me felt like me
instead of a boiling core

i am thin like paper and i am crumpled like tissue
like the collection of tissues
collecting like cobwebs in a garage on the bedside table

i am spending most nights crying
some nights i rage so much i knock myself out
others i rage so much i sleep for half an hour
and spend the rest of the week
running off this anger

there are only two constants in my life at this point
I only tell one of them because I am afraid of losing both at the same time

the other senses it anyway
my mother friend my big sister friend my protector friend
she saved me once from dying and she was here again to stop me again

let's put up a fight (like we always do, she noted)

I am tired I remark. I am tired, and heavy, I am lightheaded, I don't eat anymore, stop feeding me, where's your Advil
Where's your Advil?
You're out? You're out?

This is your fifth one in two hours you need to slow down

Don't tell me to slow down

My life is depending on bursts of energy and motivation to get through it and I am so terrified of the slowness and the aloneness and the being engulfed in myself and I need a stupid Advil because food is the last thing on my mind today

Okay


Get in the car

she said: Get in the Car
and this was her way of telling me she loved me
this was her way of saying she as so tired of everything I'd said to her that day but she was still there
as always, still willing to be there
still willing to take me home, willing to tuck me into bed, willing to be stronger for me
willing to be the pillar, willing to be the brick and mortar, the
standalone shop of all the support i could ever ask for


she said get in the car,
i will love you more once we get home, i will put you in the shower, i will show you when you cry you can always get cleaned right back up, i will show you broken is never broken because i will always show up, and all your pieces are something i know how to put all back together. i've seen you all put back together. i've been the one putting you back together for years now. a decade and a half now, how could i not know where they go? you're my baby you're my baby

she said get in the car and it was her way of showing up to be the best friend I always felt I needed but did not deserve

i put my heart gently upon the water
        she usually grazes softly against each wave,
with the silence of a church nave
     mimicking that gentle pry  
of prayer-filled halls.

i unroll her scripture
   making sure to lay her out completely,
allowing her to speak at ease
because
she is fluent in its ebb and flow
and it is rude to interrupt
      
   i listen with curiosity, and some intent
hidden to myself
      
      i watch her agitation bubble and build
the  anger become apparent,
        her anger becomes a parent
kicking and
        
starting
what they call the ripple effect

     of heavy breathing
or in other words, a young heart's teething

she ***** about, makes a scene,
      holds her breath
dives
before
pouring into a voluminous body of water

the  endless volumes

of my body of     water

she pours in proclamation
this is all
my body
and all
my water

our emotional waters, out to sea
out to see

    the big chain of space

between our beings

keep in mind, or in heart
that if you
hold me closer
at some point
i promise
i will let go

to see what mark you left on me, i look back into the corner of my mind.
dust-filled, nothing swept, it's a mess in here.

i once devoted much of my thought to you. put you in the main floor, dragged you to the bedroom.

today you're an attic of my mind
where i keep old memories, faded, dulled, no edges like the days they stem from
where i let she who was me but no longer is sleep.

i flip through her thoughts, they used to be mine/
can i call them that still?

crying into your bed
gripped sheets, bitter is the taste of defeats
a fist mark in the mattress
beneath the wings of your pillow
day's tears all over your blanket
(the one we used to hide under)
(and it was safe)

there, a picture burns in my mind, a picture of you sinking into a memory foam mattress that just won't‪ Forget
just won’t
relent

when you throw your breath into the pillow. you are face down, eyes closed, tears falling. the bed is looking at you like there is no comfort for it to introduce you to
it is helpless.

my bed is safety, my bed is refuge.

your bed is a war zone, your bed is a construction zone, your bed is a witness to the crime of your pain

when I found you my heart sunk to my feet. I remember my gut pushing me to your bed and I remember touching the tear stained sheets thinking I was not meant for this, thinking I was not built for this. I remember breathing and breathing and breathing and never feeling like it made a difference at all. being by you felt like the death I didn’t know how to tell no. so i stayed, contemplated a bunk bed, contemplated a queen size bed.
I learned the hard way
I cannot make anyone else's bed
I cannot be the one to lie in it.

i watch her pouring water out my only window
i worry if she hadn't gotten here in time
i would have been gone
i think to myself it must be hard not to drown
in such a funny shaped town

i see you. those remarkable features tucked in by the structure i crave. i love your face. but it contains that expression of yours that i can't trust.

if i tell you to tell me what's wrong, will i regret it?
because your expression now tends to look like the last page in a book i fell into, got dizzied by, and lost myself into

and my heart sinks to ground me back and hold me closer to the reality around me. once i finish reading you it's back to it now

i can't force myself to finish reading your face
if i finalize the dawn of this nightmare, and fully enter this cue to leave and put down this book
i accept the aftermath. tonight's energy will be an all-consuming emptiness
tonight i will feel nothing else but this
tonight i will cry to fill the hours because nothing else feels right
but mourning, mourning, and more of the mourning
all the way till morning! all the way till night!

then tomorrow i will call in sick at work.
i know i will not get up to shower, or throw away tear-stained tissues (of which there will be at least 53)
i know i will have a few missed calls from my mom and a lot of from my grandmother. i know my brother will drop by to tell me to call them back - someone, anyone. i know i will send him back there and he will hate me for the way i am. he will tell me this and i will use it as fuel to cry some more.
i know my best friend will leave me a few texts. i know some people, probably on the other side of the world, will remember they haven't checked up on me in a while and will probably decide to do so. i know they expect me to tell them i'm doing well (it's the polite thing to say), i know it would surprise them if i told them how i was really doing.

i know the world is busy and it will not stop because my world has.
i know this, and i know this, and i know this.
i see you, and i've read too many books about these kinds of endings, so somehow i have a good inclination as to what might follow. but i am a hopeless romantic -- at least, i am a hopeless literary, i am the girl who believes real life is ugly but real life in poetry can be beautiful.

so i hope, in the midst of the real life ugliness, that i can write some real life poetic beauty.

after i've finished crying tonight.

heavy paper won't float in the wind
or drown in the water
or give me papercuts like
thin paper does

i have never put my trust in a thing as much as i did my moleskin. her heavy paper called me to come clean and divulge within.

heavy paper looks me in the eye and swears to listen
heavy paper's blankness glistens

and won't i hurt her less tonight? give her less truth? give her less feeling? more imagination too?

heaviness, she's more like sturdiness, she doesn't crumple under my weight
she doesn't mind at all
that i don't know how to start a blank slate

she keeps me in her. my stories, my fears, my secrets.
i owe her all my gratitude.

but sometimes
the more she knows the more i remember the more
i need to tear her up to forget

did it work?
I give a useless tug on my skin, done to reassure me
instead it reaffirms to me:

I am, again, inconsolable.

is the mask I wear today sealed on tight? too tight?
does it hurt to pretend so much?

does it seem clear to anyone else that there are loose ends I've yet to tend to? backdoors I've overlooked?
transparencies?    can they see through me?

I bare my teeth. canines, canines from the days of carnivores.
am I that carnivore? in my genes I am.

and in practice?

inconsolable, uncontrollable
barely a threat in her form.

this question comes to me under many guises:
an old man asking me: are you that of practice or are you that of genes?
a professor lecturing: are you that of cultivated identity or that of inherited form?

my concerned friends crying:
who are you?
is your mask anything like you?

and then i wake.
it's a terror turned nightly chorus.
recurring nightmares, doctors offer.

i admit i know the content of my dreams to be unfounded:
in life there are no physical masks that do the jobs my terrors depict.
no veil to hide the contours of each flawed personality, no mask to others, just me, weeping-in-the-bathroom, never-myself me

and those attempted favours to be like one another
i'll be like you so you'll like me
i'll like you because i'm like you

so the body charges on in this society like a mirror
cross your left leg when she crosses her right, fold your arms when she's folded hers, raise your hand to say hello, raise your hand to say goodbye

a kiss on the right cheek, a kiss on the left, one more on the left
this is how you show love and a greeting all at once

fold your arms over each other, this is sympathy, this is greeting, do you take comfort in this too?

so you learn to speak with your arms, and you learn to speak with your legs, and you learn to speak with your face, and you learn to speak with your head.

soon your eyes are apprentices of acquaintances, learning to borrow looks like library books, take on others' stories like they've read them end to end.

so in the middle of this process you learn to effectively say:
i see you, i hear you, i perceive you.

and in these attempted favours, at the end of your night terrors, is the parrot that they want to see. the parrot that you argue, can't really be me.

i looked into you
familiar now, your glowing face, now that we've spent 35 summer days in each other's space
if i left now, every part of me would contain a trace
and no red flags i see
i say this
as hard as i believed

i confess i am still learning
every day about the nuances
what you like to do, what you don't like to do, what you used to like to do
but don't like to do anymore

and how i can be one of those things that you like to do
as hard as i believe

She traces her finger across my palm, her eyes not on my hands but on me. How does she know where to go?

Line by line. I read you line by line.

I have never been felt like I am felt by you.
What exactly do you call this? I ask

Discovering you, she answers. Unearthing you.

What about my fault lines?

What about your fault lines? She keeps tracing.

Are you avoiding them?

No, she says.

I am not scared of fault lines. I am not scared of a single earthquake originating from you. As long as it's yours, I am the world ready to be shaken to her core.

You're stupid for that.
I am keeping a lot from you.
You won't love me.
You will hurt. Stop unearthing.

She says she knows, on all counts. And I am not to worry, on all counts.

And like this she dismisses my concerns methodologically. And in this way I trust her.

And in this way my trust comes to a head, and I tell her something that she wouldn't have otherwise have known.

I felt you today.

I wish I could be felt by you everyday, she answers.

So I trace my hands on her face, not avoiding anything, trying intentionally to get to the fault line, trying to get an earthquake to start in her.

But nothing shakes.

my heart came to me to tell me she was on the verge of a realization
i was in my favorite state my state of bliss held together by the seams of denial i stitched myself. so i turned her away and told her to come back a year later
she agreed and said she would find me on the edge of myself

at which point i told her i would not be there if she looked for me. i would not be there on the edge of myself. i will have no more edges, i will have sanded all of them away
you will find my doors closed, and locked, and you need not enter.

i said come back a year later and you will not recognize me
come back a year later and you will not find me in a crowd of all the old mes

come back a year later and i will not be who you presume me to be
who you underestimated me to be

who you so sorely held onto the belief that i was.

if i got my revenge i would have broken all the windows in your house. to show you how violated i felt. this is how violated i felt.
like i was naked in my own spaces, like i was exposed in all the worst places, like i couldn't breathe without feeling a threat of a death on me. you said it would be on me if i left.

over coffee
telling this story
      i do this for myself
i write them out of my story
but telling it with all their pieces snipped out feels unedged
like a lost point
so i write them back in
capture more of what is to be said
to salvage this story, to salvage my story
they are the antagonists in this version
and i hyper-fixate on all the bad
so i end up crying in the middle of this story
and telling it does not feel that much better
when i wake up with pity cornering me against the wall
and she is not motherly, and she is not sweet
she gets me to curl into a ball and not leave my room for a week

but i tell pity off once i find my strength
and i tell rose-coloured glasses off too
to tell them both, that i am facing my reality
yes this is my reality
would you like another coffee while i tell version two?
the version where i am trying, and they are trying, and we are good in our fullest of good intentions, in our fullest of tried and true ways

not in what we did, or who we were, or how we behaved, or how we made it seem, or how it really seemed but wasn't.

everything is different
sad
nothing is where i left it
the corners of my head feel rummaged
the drawers containing all
the things i used to reminisce about
emptied


nothing is where i planted it
my old thoughts, where are they now?
my old feelings?
where did they go?
i've come to reap what i used to sow

i meet her eyes glaring in moonlight glow
if my life was a broken car i knew her to be its tow

savior status, writer hiatus

i hear her tongue click
before
she chucks me a brick
right through the windows of my old house

the windows shatter
the voice in me begins to scatter

she swears to me then that my old thoughts were weeds in my head
so we ripped them all out for you
she said

we ripped them all

out
for you


i almost had nothing to say. i could not defend the person i used to be. i could not defend her because she stole her from me so stealthily i hardly remember her. she was suffocated in herself but at least she felt somewhat an iota of self. and today i am her ghost town.

today i am drifting in the empty drawers, today i am drifting in the windowless house, today i am making no sense, today i am making cents, today i am who i am.

i trust her enough to keep going. so i do

before the hinges of the doors that I built
    to block naught else but
     all else
loosened

i thought of sturdiness and i felt its bliss
but weren't, they weren't, weren't, they weren't

in the come of a whisper
arrived in darkness, no wind to tell the direction
a good sound carrier to me
or a benevolent earsore

come sound warn to watch
as door hinge slid in and gave all out
and all  panic   that  what thought let subside
except  a foreign trust
well hold this foreign trust I have no familiar trust
let defense begin  let offense ******


but sustenance and fragile beginning
soft creak creep
like novice
chimney sweep
as dulled threat lay awaiting
in alternate entry
in wind rolling
in snow freezing
but staying all the same

oh, here's a feeling
we're going to draw it out from the middle
it'll feel new it'll feel new
give it time
it'll feel new

when the heat gets too high it starts to feel cold
well, that's what you ought to wait for when things start to get old
if you want to unknow what you already do so well
if you want to unlearn what you could be blind and still spell

then give it time
it'll feel new

at times I want to thank paper
for her good listening skills
and other days
i want to tear her up
for letting me talk like this

the water doesn't always spill
it doesn't always soak
it doesn't always drown sometimes it is lovely and i like to put myself under the shower head to feel my problems come down with it
down the drain and i am no longer drained or worn
in fact i am washed and brand new car clean and pure and no longer what i was

‪SHE GOES AHEAD, TELLS ME SHE DOESNT HATE ME SO I STAND THERE KNEES BUCKLING WISHING I COULD SOMEHOW FACT CHECK EVERY WORD SHE SAYS‬

‪SHE GOES AHEAD AND BRUSHES THE ‬SOLITUDE RIGHT OUT OF MY CHEST HERE SHE IS BREATHING WORDS INTO MY EAR TELLING ME WHAT SOUNDS LIKE MY SLOW REVIVAL.

I AM FILLED WITH IT AND FOR ONCE THE IT BEARS NO GRINCH TO MY HEART'S FLIGHT
DOESNT PROMISE ME AN END TO PAIN BUT PROMISES ME AN END WITHOUT PAIN

SHE GOES AHEAD AND TELLS ME I CAN SEE HER AGAIN AT THE END OF THE PASSAGE IN THE BOOK OF ALL THE STORIES I USED TO TELL MYSELF

SWEAR TO ME I AM PRAYING FOR ME
I AM PRAYING FOR YOU SHE IS BELTING
PANTING
CAPPING ALL THE MORE

I MAKE EYE CONTACT SHE TAKES MY HAND AND LEADS ME TO THE MIDDLE GROUND SHE SAYS HERE THERE ARE NO FIGHTERS HERE THERE IS NO WAR

I FEEL HER STEPS IN MY OWN

HERE I AM GROWN
A PLANT WITH HER WATER, A TREE WITH HER ROOTS

some days I pretend carry no change in them
I pretend in the twenty four hours elapsed, nothing consequential has happened

I pretend that my recovery is unthreatened,
I pretend therapy will work
I pretend nothing inside me has broken
(at least, not beyond repair)

other days, willingly or unwillingly, I remember
change change change
comes back to me like a fire from the past
feeling hotter than it might've back then
here i am drawing it back from what i feared it would feel like
and never really let myself feel
so how am i to know it would've hurt like this back then?
only a guess i suppose
but I go with it, embrace it
reflection is a memory and I think about her once I see her all day
can't bear to look at any new one, the one I might call myself today
the one I need to recognize as myself
but can't bring myself to

here's a confession for no ears, about the bad years
about the longing that so strongly defines my days

i suffocate every few days, lose myself every few hours
then decide to keep going.

this, at least in theory, is a nice thought.
a year ago i never thought to believe i had it in me to live any sort of life, have any kind of continuity.

the latter is still true. i still don't know how to keep going in a straight line. my best friend tells me healing is not linear. so i've embraced it

learned to go up and down and be okay with it

I don't always know how to be there for you
I look at you
I wonder where to start

How to begin comforting?
When to begin holding?
Where to begin speaking at all?

This is when my silence begins to feel less like understanding and more like dread
Like a steaming whistle from the boiling thoughts in my head

I try to remember words said before
Only to realize if they had worked
We would not be here again

puddles in parquet
litres and litres of substance
over substance

the pail in the corner of my bedroom
collecting
collector
ask it what it keeps

it keeps the warm hope coming
in through the holes in the roof

it keeps it like rainwater

and i always dream of hope
filling the bucket so heavily
it overflows off the sides

I scratch the words into my skin
etching in everything about this moment
and i don't cry while doing this
because i trust it to last

he takes the pen out of my hands
this feels like a jolt of bad electricity
my circuit is broken
i have too much signal in me

he said what are you doing
stop

i say  stop
i want to remember this exactly as it is
i want to remember this forever
i'll go back to this
all the time

he says then be here
be here now
be here with me

your brain will do the rest

i said you could never understand
i could never remember this as it is
by morning
something will feel off
and the reel you think i have of this moment
will be so tangled
it no longer plays

he is getting mad
i can tell
i go back to the signal my circuitry
wants me to not break
i go back to etching

i can feel him sighing

i raise my fist i want to hit him
i roll up my sleeve as far as it goes
19 days ago i'd etched that i loved him

and so i don't

today it is love that i have redrafted
today it is a feeling that i have re-envisioned
and let myself for the first time to feel and fill

today it is slowly filling inkwells, going backwards somehow
to refill, to have voice once more

today it is being enveloped, today it is being postmarked
today it is being posted
and let so gently go

say it like a prayer you said. hold it in your breath you said hold it like this is the only thing left to hang onto. like this is the last hope for you in life and I would never wish that onto you you said but I find myself often at this point. and I've been saved by that light I've been saved by a prayer after exhausting all the other things I begged from every one and every other. on knees and palms gathering all the things I've wished for in words in the shape of a prayer. so pray so I do, praying apologetically and it feels like repentance. but fight fire with fire. (turns out there's quite a few.) I'm gonna have to apologize and the first apology to is you. so I did, so I do. (and I'm mad with myself too) so I hold my breath in for a long time, hold it in till I turn myself all the angry shades of blue. i'm turning into him and i'm turning into you. I’ve been doing this to me and I’ve been doing this to you.  I've been depriving myself this whole time, I only have apologies here and they're bad excuses for air but who cares when I'm still gasping. I'm tight ****** and I'm loose willed. all purpose without meaning and meaning without purpose. what do you make of yourself, what do you yourself make. I'll do all the asking you say, you do all the praying, we need to pretend they're not one and the same. no absolute answers and no absolution. you want absolution and I'm sorry but we don't have anyone with us anymore. the hell is gonna give that to you? who the hell is going to hand you the knife you stabbed them with back? and say all's forgiven? I want you to know the feeling on the top of your head in the weight of your tread in the back of your throat I want you to promise me you're going to forget redemption and forget your pride and say your prayers and come back to us inside.

And you think this is ironic, don't you? Or you think it's funny, or that it makes sense. And it does in a way, I'm trying to agree with you enough to say. It does make sense, but in a way that disappoints me, because to have it make sense would mean certain conditions were fulfilled. And thinking of fulfillment gets me thinking of filling and I'm filled and I'm empty all at once. And it's because I've got all these hopes and all these promises, all these leads to nowhere– and I know deep down how good the somewhere I'm heading to without you is, I know, but I really hoped there was some way to make this journey we had seem like a trip I'd want to look back on, seem like a trip I'd want to keep an album of photos from, like an album I'd hide all the concert tickets and gas station receipts from and all the hugs all the stupid hugs I got from you, I'd still feel the warmth from. But it's not like that, I guess I spent my time in nowhere, and I guess that's where I'll have to admit I stayed. And I'm somewhere else now, somewhere good, and it isn't funny, and it isn't ironic. Ironic is talking to someone who is no one to me now. Ironic is in that space that used to be filled with something else and now it's nothing else but space, space, space. I want space from the space. I want a belief to hold me in my place. You can't give me what I need, but I've been thanking God anyways for what I have, and I'm getting by just fine.

hold you like a wake
hold you like a funeral
rolling in your sleep, mourning on your part
good night tonight, kiss you good
bad night as well

wake up, bad knight
back to screaming, wrong or right
break a switch, unfix
get your fix, learn your tricks
i wish magic could fix us too

instead i crack open a ringing nightmare
dragging me in ear and hair


hold me like a martyr hold me everywhere
fold me like i'm dying for you
   don't you see i'm dying with you?

but good times never last

run my mouth, break my cast
run my secrets, like i ask
bathwater never tasted or felt so blue
i'm going crazy! because of you!

i hate to love! i hate you too!
hold you, feel you, learn you, heavy
i'm going heavy
drowning in rain, drowning
in lightness

darkness without option for brightness
hug me till i'm good and dead
till i forget what's now in my head

and i wish you would come for me! like i come for you!
like i do for you! like i am to you! but i'm nothing to you!
and you're nothing to me! and you're dead to me! and i'm dead to me!

and no one is ever sorry! everyone is always swearing to be clean
you're not clean! there's blood on me, there's blood on you
past is past but future's gone too
and i'm sorry about this although not specifically about you
i've gone into myself
as refuge now