At the kitchen sink,
raw hands scrubbed clean
of associations, the untraceable
scent of you overwhelmed me.
Its subtlety was disarming,
trawling nights of salty tongues
and toothpasted underbrush,
of bundled mornings
and the Führer’s glassy eye,
bright blue. Of wan starlight
gleaming on placid lake
and raucous beer-spiked nights
across the water. That light
presaged different things for both of us.

But that night you lingered close
on air, edging the doorjambs wedged
with year-old hesitations,
the driftwould crumbling
the threaden footfalls between
your house and mine.

I crawled away from you
The way a dog deserts its pack to die
And you all
Watched me make my slow progress across the floor
Inch
By
Inch
And you did nothing.
You saw, and I saw you see
And you saw me see you pretend to know nothing.
And now I am alive again
Awake and able.
The shadows of my suffering still follow at my heels, trying to trip me as I walk, and scurry behind doorjambs and under tablecloths when I turn to catch them but,
I no longer crawl.
I no longer struggle.
And as I have woken and made my weary way back to humanity
I have found that my complete transformation
My journey into hell and through the fires-
The torment that forged me into something utterly new,
I find that you look past it
Let your eyes slide over me like you used to
Unwilling to ask,
Unwilling to know and yet your false knowing sets off bombs
The ones I walk so lightly over
Grenades buried beneath the tender green new grass
Which covers the battlefield where I fought for my life, for my status as a human being, for my place in this world,
And you say "We all fight."
"Everyone struggles."
Of course
To hurt is to be human. Everybody does-
But not everyone
Sits back and watches another crumble to dust,
Not everyone says
Well
It isn't my problem if they can't cope,
Not everyone looks with eyes
So cold
Upon a bleeding, broken thing
And concludes that because it bleeds when beaten it invites its wounds.
And as you look past me
As you name me by a word I no longer recognize
All I can think is that
I fought
I won
At a cost
And I am still not fully healed,
And yet I am the same to you
Either way
You who are supposed to see
You who are supposed to be
Observers
Of the human condition-
Observers, not bystanders!
Nowhere is it written that you must take notes--
'Oh yes, see how her lip trembles as she cries
See how she fights for breath.'
Nowhere is it set down in stone that you can't
Get up and at least pretend to be like they are
These people you look at
And study
And pin to your pages like butterflies catalogued.
Can you feel? Did you
Feel?
Did you look into my eyes and see me
Decimated
And blame me? And never ask me the truth? And create your own?
Did you really think I could forget being
In the center of a circle
Of lies I had to agree with to survive
Shredding my pride for the sake of my place?
My place, indeed,
In a place where emotions are bought and sold
But never owned or treasured.
You watched me fight
Life or death
You, whose arms I've fallen into when I could have hit the floor,
You who I am supposed to trust with my soul and its dark wounded parts
You who I am supposed to grow with.
You watched me and
You let me
Fight
Alone.

1.
Your love was words written in snow, and they melted into me, not a trace left in the morning as our bodies turned to fire beneath a thin sheet.
The waning heat as night fell returned with a palm to my cheek
And bruises on my throat
Colors that reminisced about sunset cigarettes
And fallen petals from roses cut off at the neck.
I wanted you to sever me in the same way.

2.
Head buried in the sand, I hoped my skin would absorb its hue.
Remember when we made dresses of leaves for cigarette **** dolls?
Those ******* were my friends.
You said that's why you didn't finish the last inch of your beers so I washed them back and watched you take miles and miles
Bottles breaking in quivering hands.

3.
I never minded the taste of blood, so I licked our wounds clean.
I'm beginning to question what "self-inflicted" actually means.

You should have brought me to the hospital that night
Instead you took me and I took another bottle of pills to try to better know that ever elusive quiet.
But quiet is a **** tease and you're meaningless to me.

4.
Silence and quiet are twins
Infantile in their ways
Two drunks stumbling through mounds of glitter from some winter parade.
Streetlights reflecting in their pale eyes
Frostbitten fingers itching at half-turned locks
Their sighs slip through doorjambs whispering of kisses and comfort
Weaving images of abandoned bathtubs into dreams of a lone child sleeping upstairs.
One who longs to be known, yet forgotten.