You asked if I was going to stay, I nodded,
but I'm just waiting here until your coffee cools,
until your feet go numb from sitting on them
so you have to switch positions, until the letters
magnetized to your fridge stop twisting themselves
into "sorry." Until I feel better about not calling you later.

Last night you asked if I liked Bon Iver,
I nodded, but I only did that in hopes that I could see
what the rest of your bra looked like, because
the strap was barely falling off your shoulder,
and I know you tried to tuck it neatly
under the straps of your dress, but darling,
I want to love you like a disaster. I want to tear
into your skin like your bones are a present,
it's Christmas morning, and I'm that little kid
sitting on the stairs, peaking. I want to line up
my heart with yours like they are those fridge magnets
with the thinest of barriers between them, your chest
a tiny cage that I have the key to, hidden
underneath my tongue. I want to rock you to that song
your telling me is your favorite that I promise
I'm not going to remember the name of. I want your sheets
curled between your toes as you breathe into my neck,
into my mouth, into my brain. I want to use your ribs
like a guitar, stroke them in a rhythm only I know,
only the two of us can hear the sound.
I want to come this close to falling
for you before I have to break free.

You asked if I really had to go, I nodded,
but in my mind I'm leaving you clues:
footprints on your carpet, my belt on the dresser,
my smile as I watched you through
the crack of light between the bathroom door
try to put your hair up ten different times
before you came to bed, just so you can find
my heart between the pillow cases
as I pull my car out of the driveway.

heart permanently broken
tears constantly rolling
creativity consistently flowing
but i don't want this
i had walked away from this
taken the back roads hoping to get lost
so i'd never have to return here
i left no note
or clothes behind
i was gone from here
i know you're wondering why
but even though the fruit is the sweetest
the air is the thinest here
and the juice just aint worth the squeeze
i know plenty that have thrived from here
living a life that was truly derived from here
media loves it
tales from rags to riches
triumph out of the slums and depression and despair
but i didn't want to come back here
here my heart rate slows do to lack of love and happiness
here my eyes swell and are red from forcing out my bitterness
here my mouth utters the most profound words of expression
here i write
not about some roller coaster life
but a constant decline
where i am only anticipating the splat that follows whistling
misery loves company
but i fight it
because to pull you down here
is a crab culture of which i cant participate
i dont want to be here
i dont want to write
but if i discard my pen and paper
then i will only exist here
it will consume me
restrict me from showing love
and creating a smile
it will **** me
so i write
hoping to get to a place where i have nothing to say
a place where i wont need to escape
i allowed you to bring me back here
i walked behind you on a path that i thought would only take me further from here
i gave up my control
covered my eyes
and listened only to your voice
and i followed
and when i know longer could here you speaking i opened my mouth
calling out your name
yelling my regret
voicing my fear
and then i opened my eyes
stained ink on white paper
fighting for each breath
i was here again

"we could, we could..."


this kept me running up and down
that dreaded staircase for hours
on end and i held you so tightly
but you were always so far away




there wasn't a chance for me to show you who i was at all;

i could only be the girl that brushed past your side in a hurry
the girl who always bit her bottom lip and turned the other way
the girl who held her breath every time you shared the same air
the girl who thrived on smiles meant for someone else entirely





and
i kept
climbing
that same
staircase in
my mind up and
down over and over
again and prayed that
something much stronger
than myself would send me
toppling to the very bottom





  you didn't care when the rain carried me briskly down sidewalks,
crumbling my skin to an ash-like texture that could be compared
to my hopelessness or forgetfulness
  you weren't burdened with haunting thoughts of me every night,
like the way your voice always seems to bleed in my brain and
wander through my unconscious soul
  you didn't seem phased when i hiccuped your name in the softest
of voices in that dark place, my hands blindly searching for yours
even though you were merely steps away
  you weren't paying attention when i screamed into the storms
that i needed you, so loud that my lungs seemed to scratch at
my insides with the thought of us



i suffocated myself with these unsealed promises
that maybe, one day,
    we could,
  we could...




there was nothing separating us any longer -
not the thinest layer of fear or hesitance,
or the thickest layer of painful longing

we were wide open and free to break each others
bones and souls as much as we wanted to, but
there had never been a single imaginary string of
connection to hold our misguided hearts together,
so we fell apart before we even began.







  people keep telling me
      we could, we could...


so i quickly reversed back into my old habits of self-loathing
and inhaling gaping holes of doubt and holding onto things
that simply didn't want me as much as i wanted them

these things came so naturally; tugging at my insides in
ways i wasn't sure how to deal with anymore because they
were asking questions that i didn't know the answer to

then my bookshelf collapsed quicker than i could ask how you
were feeling that day so the question was never asked at all
but i knew all the things you didn't want me to know already

i needed a lampshade big enough to hide the possibility of us
under, because it illuminated my endeavored nights and i don't
know if i wanted you to know about that just then

things suddenly changed for me when my throat closed up
and i couldn't speak and my headaches became studded with
all of these memories that barely even existed for us

my arms wanted you more than my heart ever did, but the more
i tried to ignore them the more twisted and unforgiving my arms
became, giving out in the most inconvenient of times





i can finally see that
you could never see
anything in someone like
me,





we never
could

There is a line
the thinest hair of difference
between heartbreak and euphoria

Like the border that splits
two countries
that are constantly at war

But they say, you can still respect those
whom you are fighting

There's admiration
even in the face of its contradictions

There are realms
i feel i pass through
often daily
often a tender struggle
between where I am and where I'm not

A prophet once said
that the thought of paradise is paradise itself

Well I guess i don't possess
a great imagination

OFF THE COAST OF WRANGEL ISLAND

The room was a frozen
block of silence

the out-of-love lovers
like two hairy mammoths

trapped in the ice
of their shared hatred.

Thousand of years had passed
since they had last talked.

Preserved like two rare
artifacts in a museum.

This the "invisible land"
an island of mists and fogs.

They looked like bad
caricatures of who

they used to be
and who

they could never ever
be again.

*

Wrangel Island is an island in the Arctic Ocean, between the Chukchi Sea and East Siberian Sea.It lies astride the 180° meridian. The International Date Line is displaced eastwards at this latitude to avoid the island. Wrangel Island may have been the last place on earth where mammoths survived.

The island is subjected to "cyclonic" episodes characterised by rapid circular winds. It is also an island of mists and fogs and is known as the "invisible land."  In literature Jules Verne has his characters trapped on a floating iceberg near here and Cassandra Clare makes it  the seat of all the world's wards, the spells that protected the globe from demons and demon invasion.

She was as it happened was reading Jules Verne's novel 'César Cascabel" whilst he as it happened was reading Cassandra Clare's "Mortal Instruments: City of Heavenly Fir", both entirely different books but both featuring Wrangel Island. I delight in such happenstance and synchronicity. I only knew of it because of the mammoth found there with hair and muscle tissue and blood intact. I was fascinated with photos of it and there was one where a scientist was bending down looking at it on a bench and they were nose to trunk as if having a chat about the years in between that separated them. When I originally wrote the poem I was looking at them in the mirror of their big fat room with the thinest of windows when they thought they weren't being observed and it looked as if the mirror had painted their emotional state and that time hung suspended forever in that one moment. They both could dispute angrily or peevishly about their state whether it be in the voice or even in silent thought. I called them THE WRANGLERS after the mirror's painting of them. Or indeed THE WANGLERS because of their persistent arguing or manoeuvering the other into the worse position so that the other could take the lowish of moral high ground. It was a bit like observing trench warfare back in WW1.

And so it was through all this happenstance that I placed them off the emotional coast of a stormy isolated island...in some limbo "invisible land."

And as to the right or wrong of my two too human artifacts where right or wrong are not all that easy to place? As Michael Pollan puts it "… morality is an artifact of human culture, devised to help us negotiate social relations."

All I knew is that I sure as hell wouldn't want to be in their peculiar shoes or that particular hell.

The room was a frozen
block of silence

the out-of-love lovers
like two hairy mammoths

trapped in the ice
of their shared hatred.

Thousand of years had passed
since they had last talked.

Preserved like two rare
artifacts in a museum.

This the "invisible land"
an island of mists and fogs.

They looked like bad
caricatures of who

they used to be
and who

they could never ever
be again.

They were designed to help
Used for a reminder
Aid for circulation
In the thinest parts of a body

But the strap to secure
So small
Just hooks and latches
Some elastic to wrap around
It is simple and easy to use

And yet
All I can feel
Is shackles on my wrists
To remind me
How I'm not normal anymore