She's in love with a bird but she doesn't even know how to fly. Five times in persistence I gave fingertips and fingertips, thousands of eyelashes, more than 700 changes of the guard. Three years of talking about the flowers in the post, the letters on the dresser, and a firm ruler over the top of our hands. Death's saliva plagues us thru the night. Into morning, the rain soaked our mattress and pillows, my lips are chapped, peeling like chipped paint off a 20th Century bathtubs' feet. I tip over the hourglass but the time does not reset. Our sisters become even more valuable than ever. Each year adds one more invisible number to the rest, and still we don't know how fast the train moves.

Pleasure dwellers and Jeep keepers. Relics of the 90s still left in cardboard boxes. It's the drugs that make time tolerable, but Tylenol sadly doesn't qualm the ails of an inevitably ending world. We ate pizza, drank wine, and kissed all the time. As time would tell, I don't actually have dibs over your left breast, but I really would've liked to, though I'm not sure where I'd put it.

I got a tattoo of the bird put onto a branch, it didn't seem right to take it's friends away, after all it had been through, I couldn't bring myself to say there'd be no more songs coming. A little empty house, with just a table, one nest, and some sunflower seeds in the cupboard. That might be something that would have been offered to someone nicer, more sweetly, less confusing. Instead, I don't have trouble sleeping, it's just getting myself completely into bed, otherwise I'd just wait around outside waiting for the other shoe to need restitching. An unfamiliar sound shapes the mouth, something unfamiliar but quite refreshing. All the people who hear it first repeat it, but no one is exactly the same, each person certainly acts a variety of ways in what seems true according to the early ones who felt it. Was it a disease or a way to forgive, maybe uncertainty will challenge those who find it to face forgiveness. Turn the heat up on both knobs. Target the marker and sink the submarine. Silent summer steps buried into the summer wind. Laughter's cackle resumes again.

2013 was made of bus stops and ABC gum
while you garnered a habit
of chewing your lips in the corner of every room you entered
sinking into the cushions as easily as if you were the stitching
running your hands over the stitching in the cushions so many times
over the course of a single conversation, that you could easily
have become the stitching.
2013 was made of boys who left holes all over you
when they pulled out each careful seam
you restitching it every time and spitting
oh well, your loss

new years resolution:
stop allowing yourself to be turned into an object
because you're afraid to be a person

2013 was made of barely fun nights
of screaming sweaty 'cool' people packed into much more interesting rooms
and you, happy to be with friends
wondering who all these other angry people are
and why you never end up surrounded by a crowd
of happy people, who don't find any space taken
that isn't consumed by them, to be offensive

you say cool like it's an insult today
you say cool with a bitterness that can only come
from a markedly uncool person
someone who doesn't laugh at damaging jokes
who makes space for others in conversations
doesn't linger on the bottle of whiskey that is not theirs
their unwillingness to share reminding you of
greedy grubby fingered five year olds
clinging to snack packaged oreos
their eyes darting around as if someone might just
notice their selfishness
you see them, your tongue pinched between your teeth

new years resolution:
share more, even with greedy people
what is taken with bad intention can never be fully enjoyed
you know that well
bacchus could drink every ounce of wine in greece
but without a reason to count his blessings, he is just drowning.

2013 made you into someone different than you used to be
someone who thinks too much and is too harsh
too much instead of too little, always too much
who has learned how to stand but not yet how to bend to get
the best result out of holding their ground
who can be cool like their peers for maybe half an hour
before feeling the pull of a tidy bud of green
and a pen and paper, an archive of sounds and thoughts
that don't talk back. you feel weak. and yet
you feel so ******* strong

because 2013 has made you someone
who runs to help the drunk ***
tripping over the curb outside of your house at 4 am
even though your mother is reprieving you in your head
as you take his weathered hand, sleeve soaked with beer spilling onto the curb
and pull him carefully to his feet, asking if he is hurt
and despite your concern he regards your sunken female figure with discomfort
as if regretting that he couldn't have fallen in front of
a more ****, beautiful girl that is full of vitality and life
and nurses poor sad men back to health

and as he is having a moment of realization, you have it too
he is realizing that a man in shambles
can only ever hope for a woman in shambles to understand
no ****** mary will ever grace his worn soul
only a faded chain smoking insomniac waif
the world is not that magical
this reminds you once more that not only are you not cool
for caring about others, but you are not welcome
because you yourself are a social *****
and that's not the love they were looking for
when they asked for it
but you will give it anyways

new years resolution:
even when they burn you and cut you
even when they hurt you and steal you
even when they bag you up in pieces
and sell your respect in jokes
you still have it and just like the bitterness
it will never stop bleeding and beating
and you can handle it
even if they can't

you are strong in a messy way
a way that stinks and sops past memories
out of every pore when you are courageous
and if that is considered an uncool way to be
then that's the coolest thing you've
ever done
so don't give out on me now

I held you in high regard,
your regard my deepest desire.

I wanted nothing but that spark of approval in your eyes
So I removed mine, blind to your faults,
And broke my bones, reattached them where you pleased,
mutated myself into a response to your needs.

I bent over backwards trying to make myself worthy of you,
worthy of a two second glance, of a slight uptick of lips,
when it struck me,
like a lightning bolt;
an epiphany.

I am not a contortionist.

I am not a mound of clay
to be moulded according to your expectations.

I am not water in a receptacle,
assuming the shape of it,
spreading myself thin or shrinking myself to fit.

I am the sea, the ocean, wild and free
and a little bit tempestuous,
a little bit uncertain,
a little bit blue,
but mostly,
not tamed by you-
not tempered by your desires-
not contained in your claustrophobic boundaries.

No more this simpering shadow of myself,
No more the swallowing of my words, choking on my laughter,
No more this false tittering at your behest,
No more the unravelling of my identity like a spool of thread,
No more the restitching of my being to be your best, not mine.
No more you, anymore,
Only more me.