I got a new nickname it was
Pretty Fire and I felt my cheeks burning
when you said it
So I reached out to hold your hand and realized
All of you was burning

I should've realised you didn't call me warm, or bright
I was a pretty fire
forcing the world into an unfair fight

Not an offer they had the choice to refuse
The kind of fight they'd have to lose

Playing with fire never hurts the fire

Every day I burn too
trying to tell you that's not true
When you hurt
My skin turns blue

I have to fight though
everyone. i'm sorry that it includes you

people fight fires all the time and
i need to fight them too. they hate me
i'm trying to prove to you
they hate me
and i hate me too

but none of that was ever enough to scare them away
when there's stupid firefighters trying to put people out everyday

i'm blamed anyways
i'm blamed for when i have a fit
when you ignored it
FOR SO LONG

so don't call me fire because I know now what you you were trying to say
I am a fire and I hurt everyone in my way

I was a fire and to be me I had to damage
I was a fire and it was so much baggage
I was a fire and it hurt to look at me

so you gotta go where you think you'll be free
so good, go, and leave. let me be

Cause I know what I didn't mean to be

I didn't mean to be the retrograde
To make you
turn around and meet the friend I've made
I like to call her really late
I like to call her the Me I Hate

I like to call her
I used to like to call you
Call me sometime soon

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.

when i felt it change it
turned over to look at me  one last time
    the stars gave out their last summer sugar light
kissed both of us sweet good night. sweet good fall.
sweet good winter. till the very next spring
hear the leaves crinkle
then here the leaves grow
in the distance
i heard the dying croon
of our favorite old moon.

it never makes sense to stay up with these feelings but i find myself doing it just the same as if one word is eventually going to catch fire and burn this whole poem out of existence again cause that's what it feels like after i'm done writing cause there's tension between me and this ground i've been trying to live on and the tension lights sparks which light sparkling fires greater than anything you've ever experienced before

6) i am not stubborn
i am not stuck
i am not doomed
i am not cursed
i am not powerless in the face of others

5) i will not be bitter about the cards that i have been dealt
i will not assume
i will give
i will take
i will be

4) i can still live without the things that are important to me
i can still change
i can still dream
i can still accept others into my life

3) i am willing to make amends with those i have hurt
i am willing to move forward from damaging experiences
i am willing to try different solutions

2) i am constantly learning
i am constantly changing

1) no one is out to get me

no sinking! you said
no sinking! in each other
no sinking! in yourself
take all the water out
and pour it in the cup on our shelf

hold my hand
while i'm listening
tears on my face still glistening
i'm gonna take the water out
i'm gonna bury it now
ditch the old grudge corpses in the sand
get these grim haunt planes to land

don't leave, don't leave, and don't make me beg
i could stand on two feet but only trust a leg
so i'll say it in words i'll say it in art
i need you so much! for this ugly part
and you said okay! don't worry! i'm here! okay!
so i buried the worry in my brain
and the scratching in my heart
i said again: please don't leave / please don't leave
i can't! bear! to do this apart!

and yet i knew in advance of the leave to come
soon you'd walk and later you'd run

so i'd prefer to do this as though it was simple fun
with my eyes closed, here's a gun

now, i can't see but you're still here. i hope
i've got a pail. and i've got some rope
and i'm gonna start taking this water out to cope

and  if you decide to leave then you need to shoot me before
cause with you gone i'm gonna feel ugly dead and more

anyways the water is all out of me now
the water went below me somehow
i wanted to ask you are you proud?
but i felt the vapor rise and i felt the form of a cloud
and i know it's gonna come down now
soon

so now i'm tipping the edge and i'm looking down
looking onto the days when the water was a crown
for every glory day i made it through, not for me but for you
and i'm close but i hold onto your oath
well, i'm not gonna drown
really, i'm not gonna drown
though my own words are heavy
and it's getting hard to hold steady
and the rain's acidic and
the water pooling below me is so ******* brown

these ugly words, let me tell you, it's not that easy shove them down
cause they burn holes in my chest
i wished
that they weren't holes from my head
cause it would've been so much easier to explain the toxicity in my lungs
if i'd been just a smoker instead

and i confused it for a dream to finally be able to step away
because like a dream it was intimate and yet far away

and i'm forgetting already

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

quick fire: midnight,
I call it an ember.
I pretend blackened remains
are remainders that are at peace
with the past.

back when i could write like that i remember i could stand my voice sometimes for as long as you would stay

and it made me feel better that somehow i was getting two in one. that i was convincing you and myself. and it was so nice to have that feeling stay for as long as it did

you call yourself the starriest gazer
sharpest blade on a razor

pull apart skin pull apart

faster

the starriest gazer, sharper taser

come apart faster now

sit on the grass
this afternoon- minds lazing
this afternoon- cows grazing
all gnawing on thought
all knowing of thought

but can you really know

and does this grass ever regrow

here i hear of home
here i hear of home and it is a twisted old melody
   humming back at me
who's humming back at me

in this deep-seated parental regard
will you look at me like i'm smart
about to take a scholarship from juillard

for the instrument of pulling apart
for the compositions of tearing heart
for the rendition of dizzy art

Tell me it doesn't mean anything
that I'm still cleaning up an act from years ago
that I'm still healing from wounds
that I got catching fire.
He was fire-safe, he never told me
      wanted to see what I'd do for him
wanted to see if I'd burn.
Baby, I'm sorry
I'm sorry if I let you think I wasn't the kind
to do anything for you. Yes, this is my fault
Yes, oh my God, yes, I'm so sorry
Why are you crying, baby?
Baby?
Baby?
I didn't think you'd do it
I didn't think you'd do it

required home this was our required home
we decided
this was a place we couldn't let go
we decided
this was a place we'd bend
and crack
hack like a lumberjack
till pores erupted in the wood
and we filled this place we couldn't let go
with moonlight glow
seeping in the most
standing on the edge of the moment like a ghost
at the very last hour in the very first night
when we began to call the wood with us in it a home
our dearest home when we
recognized the need for home when we
recognized the need for a place to shelter
when we recognized the heat the swell and the swelter
when we laid in concentrated comfort
in morning sun
baby this is the unloading of a spiritual gun
and you said it could be the most fun. if we stayed
if we prayed. if we
let go of each other.
and then like you said in the script
you started to talk about departure and leave
and you said you had to take yours
but before you did
you said your hands need a place to stay and here
is the place i promised
and here i am not sad to leave you in this world.
and here you can't be in a rush to leave.
and then you took my hands out of yours and placed them on the tree
and then i turned around
and it was only me

she looked at me and I could tell
it got harder for her to breathe thinking
about what she was about to say before
she just closed her eyes and took the deepest breath and said
please
if there's ever a thing that you do     that isn't about being on a whim
or getting your thoughts away from him
        then let it be that you are the you that you are in that second
for longer than a second

   she put her hand out and laid it on my cheek
she said please, i know you don't like this
        but just hold still
she said hold still
because there's holes in me that i've been absolutely dying to ask you to fill
          and it's not that you gave me nothing it's more that i've been
trying to paint a picture of you     but i can't
       even decide what you look like
      because light seems to fall on you differently every time

she said you're mad at me
     but i don't care
    i'm still trying to memorize the little things you've told me
still here holding pieces of you that you swore
         would be in my hands temporarily
you should know
i'm used to the weight now and
i don't want you to take them back
because i'm going to be so empty without them

and honestly
after the pieces
my hands got stronger
and i want to be this strong     forever.

please don't change me and
then leave.

but how many times did we count days
      apart
only to forget
what day it really is
when we're together

         that's scary to me.

is my life wasting away      
     merging into space
                  am i losing touch
with what i used to
           believe was my destiny.

how many times did we find ourselves
producing more
                out of less
and less out of more
what little frustration we had
        pounded into its older cousin
anger
what little jealousy we felt
                      poured over fights that
boiled out of nothing
that stirred
out of a lot of love
            and bitterness
but mostly                  strong
unapologetic love
that blurred
a thousand nights
      together
as one
as        one.

but i wanted myself
as a whole field
    i wanted myself
in my entirety
i       wanted myself
wholly me

                   not some passing field
on this destination of
                                     forever together
not some
                phase of life before we blossomed into one
not losing one to become one.

the day comes in and the day comes out
with all nighttime live and let live, it used to promise me
it used to promise me and i wasn't always this naive but
i used to believe in its potential and it used to probably believe in mine
and what gave me away finally was time

who knew a man could change who knew a girl could too
under that guidance and i always wished that back then i too knew
but vines don't wither vines grow up
and if i had learned one thing it's that people don't shut up

or they do and you make them talk again
before sympathy gives and
they let you in
halfway back in
but who's letting me in isn't in essence letting me win
and you're not the same person who kicked me out
and that's who i wanted to love me

and i know there's some part of you shutting yourself up

i know there's some part of you.

glass window
cold glass window
people out look bitty
my hands are on the city
and they're on the glass window

hell to all the windows
cause they block out the good city sound
that blocks my thinking when you aren't around
and i promise To God
i'll stay here before i ask you around
so this is the only way to you that I'll be bound
so to these windows i'll be bound

and you're around
outside probably
walking probably
taking that crisp winter walk
remember when we used to talk

i always liked it when we went on those
just to talk

if they go roll we go rock
if they go hip we go hop
just listening to the sound of the city stalk
just listening to the sound of the city block

by then we'd been going further each and every time
laying down the feet with feet like our own little rhyme

and you had that sweet conversation that you'd pour down my throat
and i had that sweet salvation of the words i bent down and wrote


on the glass window with my fingers on the fog
on the glass window with my tongue in the bog

i knew this and i knew this
i knew this
and i knew this

we walked through october in its falling rain
until a bad day in november came
to fill our december and make a dimming bright light quickly wane
and run wax down our fingertips till we learned each other's achy pain
stupid bad day
made me need to go away

and my january and my february screamed
happy **** birthday to me
happy **** birthday to you
happy valentines day, too.

let me scratch the window i wanna ******* hurt the window
but instead i stand by the window pane
cause i knew this pain and i loved
it anyway

city glass i'm seeing your face pass
church window i still see you at mass

here's the lecture you always skip
here's the professor you like to trip
here's the girl you used to like
once upon a time i poked holes in her bike

but i'm gonna go buy her a sundae today
and i'm gonna get her to teach me about the day
it all went away
as if it was always gonna go away

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

the sun always hung lower in september
        but high stayed the moon
      the tug of war of steady and ready    
that was to precede the fall to come soon

the lower it hung  
the higher it rose
telling me it'll fall soon
like i'll fall, soon

sweet chandelier sun beautiful and rising and painting my sky in her light
thank you for the fight you put up every night
     mixing yolky colors with the darkness ahead
and i stare at you till the sorry in me is dead
    and it feels so good to have sleep in my eyes with you singing to me in fading lullabies  
                    telling me in september
every tomorrow is our own reprise

     but it hung low, i admit
and stifling, too
too low for my own good
and i was holding a sticky sorrow in my hands
knowing about the fall soon

and the days went on with the sun over my head
   with me  trying to  stop  staring over it and ahead
i was done with it i said
   i was done with it

i can't believe i used to
think    it lingered close
because it loved me

it's been a while since I had it in me to stop talking to someone like this
probably things stopped making sense, and that's what makes sense now
I know it seems abrupt but I'm finding other things more disjointed than that
Like there's a space between what I expect to find when I turn to look at it
and what I actually find staring at me back
and I'm uncomfortable, I'm really really uneasy, but it feels easy to
call it home and be done with it. But people remind me
how good it is to forget. Funny how they think, that forgetting is escaping
when history repeats itself and I'm going to
be shocked again and I don't want to do that anymore.

falling into stars, arms
they look like stars when i'm like this
they feel like bars when i'm like this
hanging onto to the ridges
like your edges are bridges
can you tell
i'm wishing upon this

so i'm desperate, and i'm pathetic, and i'm strong, and i'm a fighter
and i'm weak in my place
but i'll crawl and i'll crawl if it's gonna help me save face
and to say it finally, that i need a retreat
from this wavering woven-reality-illusion intersection is bittersweet
cause i love my broken home
called gilded illusion
but i hate my broken home
called burdensome conclusion
and i know there's a fire inside but i wanna knock on this door and say i'm home
and i don't wanna be living in thoughts alone

but burdensome conclusion hear me come hear me speak
why yes these burdens are here, safe arrived, i'm a burden, i'm a burden to be bore
i'll need a little safety security rock hard solid promise yes
and if you have some then i'll need a little more
and i'm gonna lay my head on some starry shoulder
wanna move this ugly reality boulder
just to feel the intoxication of peace again

dangling from these happy heights
no more reality centered "this isn't real" and "i can't feel to feel sorry" fights
i am sick and tired
i am sick and tired
that these loose strands want me so badly tangled in reality

so i'm going to force my hands back into my illusion once again
you know if you were a page then this time i'm gonna hang tight to the pen
feel myself trying to hold onto this chapter of the book i left lying open

thinking well, i didn't need some spells unbroken
thinking well, you ain't going to leave details like those unspoken
thinking i had been literate all my life
before i met the people whose minds were sharper than a knife

and they cut into me and i felt transition from want to need
i felt so sure that the book i was writing was one i wanted to read
until i started to bleed and bleed

and security wasn't just a blanket or a dream
it was
what i needed from now on

i see you leave
before you go

i see
you
leave
before
you
go

lean forward
time to learn
here is your story
here is my hand
here is our journey
faraway band
faraway land
telling a story
music playing backwards now

and he looks at me to tell me
you will know the taste of stubbornness
too much like a shape you used to trace in the sand
too much like a shape
you used to trace in the sand

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.

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

he said I've never been one to swear when I'm mad
but I'll call you what you are
if I need to.

he said I come up with names for people that run forever
he said I'm calling you an aberration.
               if that's what you are
and if it is,
then that's the worst thing I'll call you.

but how is that the worst thing he'd call me?

when he called me
a painful love? and
when he called it
painstaking adoration

stupidity in the form of infatuation
he said be with me
but leave in the morning
cause after this i don't ever want to see you again

and then he called me to say i was an aberration
but his words felt like they meant to say that i was not quite the aberration but
    the  everything  that had gone   wrong
that was now getting what it had coming
and melting, coming in as purple flurries of
a sad sad sad till  it all  finally
  became the       red of the moon on the day i last saw you
and there was nothing more to mourn after that
        but the   hopeless, formless, blobulous
aberrations that line up like stars
that he calls consolations (you were a consolation)
not constellations

and the days i existed before i knew i was and wasn't one.

and i guess it's all too easy to say i
appreciate your honesty but harder when
i'm here on this rooftop
trying to balance old equations
       that don't have numbers to them
trying to
take these pieces  and pretend they're from
the same puzzle.
        taking one stupid piece after another
of myself hoping to
draw myself together into a
redemption
against him  
and i'm sure this is fair because
love is an emotional minefield and he knows how to play *****.

no one asked us to draw each other
but it happened as though someone did.

just doing what we usually did
and loved to do
or so we did
or so we do

this time we don’t hide that we want to stay longer

which in the nighttime especially
wasn't the easiest thing
to stop from wanting to be doing.
so i can't complain

when we were on the grass
with no shoes.
you look at an old star i
think of the old swear jar
in the kitchen,
i was barefoot then too

but silence took ahold of time
or so it reached for it
in a way that said to us that every moment here in peace was stolen
and undeserved

but you say don't worry
we could do this forever
we could do anything forever.

time was hungry but time got its fill
and our honest wanting channelled into a still

we look at the other wanting to turn faces into stills too
hold onto cheeks smudging in a glow
coming from the moon
a moment cast from ghost of stronger love past
asking us to lift the mask

so raise brush, so i do
so raise brush, so do you
to lift the mask, transference task
from moment to leave to moment to stay
forgive the days we went away
i forgive the days you went away
but more there's more i want to say
so took hold of hands they were yours
and spoke to you of emotional cores

knowing  eyes drift
and eyes implore
and you look at me like you did once before
you say be with me. be with me like we used to be
before
but this time it'll be less like this i promise and more like more

so i paint. and again, no one asked me to. but i wanted to
if i had a brush i could
somehow conjure a scene that feels enough
like putting down the mast
here i promise you it'll be safe to walk over it at last
past past
backs back

no one asked me to compose but i
wanted to listen to it again


to feel like i've finally sent aging grudges into spaces
alleys and other dark places

you asked me to do one thing and it was to sew
something i wasn't even sure i would really know
when i thought of us broken but in my hands a needle and thread
it felt like you were right here instead of just in my head
and like this i understood what you meant
if i could just fix us instead

wish i had a pill for the memory and a pill for the pain and a pill for the bitterness and i just want it all to be numb for once instead of the weakness i feel instead.

when you die in your head
you only think about the things you once said
not
the things you are saying not the things you are doing
not the way you are being not the things you are seeing
it is about the old days on rewind
chapters folding unfolding refolding
always on your mind
always on your mind
but you lost it long ago
so why is there an ache where there used to be thought
why is there an ache where there is supposed to be no feeling at all
why is it light and heavy all at once
foggy light still clear enough to blind you with
and you thought you were staring at a savior
but you were staring at a thing that would prolong your longing
to go back to the old days
this time you're blind this time you're dizzier
this time you don't know any better
but you can remember that you once did.
isn't it weird to make a mistake you used to know to avoid
is it a mistake if it's intentional
is it a mistake if it's intentional
is it a mistake if it's intentional

she said the irony in tracing back the roots is
in going back
you set yourself further from where you want to be.

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

good morning from the north coast
where i ran a hurricane through the wash
and hung it up to dry
before i chased a fever down a battered thermostat
to sneak a swap between its truth to my lie

welcome to the north coast
where all the older all the golder
even if it was once nightmare black
we here do have a habit of missing what we lack

where i stretched to touch the morning, to find it so closely out of reach
and did the laundry once more
drowned the daytime dark with bleach

with another voice, seasoned, worn, hurricane-ripped but not tornado-torn
fidget still in my fingers, sore still in my head, still
beginning upon a realization, only further away

drift, so it drifts, the push is a blessing
till sore turns to burn and fidget becomes seizure shake
till all good things worn out with season-anticipated break

and no break is a good break, no efficiency is deficiency, deficiency is lack
lack is no good and no good is evil

and evil is darkness and darkness was meant to be bleached
if all good-really-but-bad-really things could be survived
as lessons but to teach

and how many more? till my voice loses hold again?
till all hope comes loose? cog in the machine and the machine hates itself too?

till chapter begins with over till book reads end

till i found myself another war to tend. till the summer thins and the fall rains begin to pour

once more, it's flooding out my door

and door keeps evil but not from coming in
keeps my own mercilessness trapped deep within

and within leaves room for thought but fall leaves fall

and drown in my admission, or don't bother trying to make it out at all

and delusion is my saviour and delusion is her crown

till all my good promises became people to let down

and i love you my baby, i love you with good will
and good intention. and all the seams i tried to sew

but there was so much more you did not know

can we go back to the days when white seemed too grey can we go back to the days when happiness was more than just a conceptual name can we go back to the days when the old people in the old world come about again hoping screaming and hoping, wishing well, wishing well, all these good tides washing upon us. we were hoping for a different kind of frosty night but this is what ended up happening and we ran with it. ran as our feet pattered the floor ran as our hands tackled the door and this is our makeshift guess for reality's sake.

before i roll on my back and say
do you miss it already
the quiet and the empty
the light without the heavy
the move without the levy
are we going to ever go back

You never told me what you thought about me, you were always scared of reducing these feelings into words.
I never knew what you thought about me, I was always scared of knowing those feelings you say are bigger than words.

rain gets carried away when
I pray a new kinda gray
into my life the
one where all the black kinda faded away
but stuck around in the residue, stuck around
behind everything I do
she screamed about the holy and I told her it wasn't the right day
to ask me again to pray to ask me again to pray to ask me again to get closer when I was the closest I've ever been in a while and none of it was something I'd ever tell
none of it was something I'd ever tell but I got hurt the last time
that I fell so I told her in pieces about
the peace I was trying to know

how about you play with my hair one more time
and tell me about what we're going to do
when the world falls apart
and it's just us two

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.

I'm the sun if it makes you feel better
I'm a rising tide washing away
too much of today
too much of yesterday
how many shores did you land on before you landed on this one here?
how many feelings did you run through before you decided to let go of fear?
how many faces did you memorize for hours and they still disappeared?
I'm feeling so much today baby
but do you think it's all about you?

in the corner she put her  hand on my face.
and stared at me for the longest time before
she put the other one too. i wasn't sure where this was going
she had cupped my face and pushed it up a little

before she took a deep breath and said you are a baby right now
i told her i was thirteen
but she said it doesn't matter
growing up is painful
the future is painful
the past is painful
the world suffers every day from
a thousand afflictions, baby.

i said don't call me that
i'm not.
she said you don't know anything
i said i do. i know this.

she said the world suffers every day
every week every hour
even things we can't bear to think, the world endures persistently.
the world overcomes.

she said you need to wait this out.
it gets worse and then it gets better
      i said how long
she said it doesn't matter

you're going to grow up and it's going to hurt
and there's not a thing you can do about it.

i told her to watch me
she said she will. from a strait jacket.

and that's when she told.

i hated how all her advice was useless in this way
and how she always ******* me over in the end anyhow

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.

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.

empty

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

you and me have our own sense of time
a night is the day's wait to turn it all off

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

please don't
i won't

please don't
i won't

please don't
this time i can't
stay

i'm sorry i'm sorry
come back

hold onto this

hold onto this

i can't
then don't.

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?

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