The flowers blooming in Antarctica
Will be on our graves
We have loved the earth
The way most men love women
Not much at all
Not willing to listen or change
We **** her
With greed
For our short satisfaction

Tell me
Please
You find something divine
In my familiarity
As I find peace
In yours

I’m just a girl
I love her
I love moving my body
I love music
No one
Can care for me
Like myself

I saw myself in a old photo today
I don’t have that outfit anymore
I remember the piece of tissue
Stuck to my shoe from the toilet water
The last thing I remember tasting
Was black, and mild, and sober
I smoked it on the cold ground
In the alley behind the bar
That seemed the safest place
I took my clothes off when I got home
Bagged them twice
Placed them in the garage bin
I sat under the scalding shower water
Praying it would burn you out of me
Feeling the storm inside
Wanting lightning to come down
Strike you from me
Wishing I had the strength
To scrub you off me
Knowing naked would never be the same
A layer of comfort peeled away

I saw myself in a photo today
The day you made me sick
Remembering laying lifeless
In my bed
Unable to move, sweating
The fever did not cleanse me
You readied me
For trials
I did not know I would endure
You weakened me
For burdens
I was not meant to bear

It was a week before he came
Separate from you
Soon to be the same
In my fevered thoughts
I thought my shining knight
Was here to comfort me
He drew his sword
Stabbing the wound you opened
His armor
Protected only him
Who will pull the sword
From the stone
I am too weak

Picture me now
Wearing this scar
I waited for it to fade
To heal

Grief is my religion
And oh, how earnestly I worship

Cosmic dust
Is coming together again
Arranging
Bones
Skin
Body
I write of her
With cold hands
Perhaps these cells
Have been someone else
Perhaps another body
Another mind
One that called out
Into the beyond
Asking if they were alone
Will I answer their question
Or simply repeat it
Let it linger in the cosmos
Suspended
Between heaven
And earth

If I told you
I wanted to rip my skin off
I don’t know
How you would look at me
I can be naked
Not vulnerable
Know that when I say this
I have already
Been tearing myself into little pieces
It seems I have been trying
To get the words out
For a thousand years
My throat is full
Of all the things I did not say before
I sit here at the bottom
Of a hundred mountains
I will never climb
A hundred birds come and tell me
Of the beauty on the other side
I ache for something I will never see
I am too tired for the journey
My feet too weary for the path
My bones will not hollow themselves out
I am still empty
What a weight it is

Tell me what it is like
To have a father
One who comes when you call
One who’s voice you recognize
At whisper and not anger
Tell me what it is like
To be sheltered by strong hands
Before you go out into the world
Tell me what it is like
To learn strength from example
And not necessity

I do not know you
Because of who you are
Rather, the parts of you
I see in myself
If they were not so familiar
I would tear them out

I wish you had healed, for yourself
And for me
But there are no shooting stars
No second chances

I am further from you now
It doesn’t not matter
If we are a thousand leagues apart
When under the same roof
I was as inconsequential
Blood and strangers
Father and daughter

Tell me what it is like
To carry a burden
That weighs nothing to you
Tell me what it is like
Not to stumble
Under the shadow
Of your heavy fist

I do not care
If you are proud of me in secret
You do not know me
I do not care to be know

Do you remember when I was little?
I had a nightmare the whole house
Came down around us
It was terribly dark in the rubble
Once.
You comforted me
Once.

I am not dreaming now
The house has come down
Not from the rafters
From the foundation
It was not strong
Not solid
Not able

Tell me what it is like
To pour your anger out
Like water into the cups of children
Tell me what it is like
When you cannot quench their thirst
Tell me you will change
Tell me you are sorry
Tell me you can do better
Tell me I was worth being good for
Every time I counted my pennies
I come up short changed

I would not know
The man who says these things
He is not my father.

Our shower talks
Remind me of confession
Someone behind the curtain, listening
The other speaking
Vulnerable
Trying to get clean
Feeling the heat
The pressure
Letting it wash away

The woman made of bones
Stood in front of the oak door
‘Do you want to feel safe or happy?’
She challenged

I closed my mouth and turned away

After the sun went down
I thought about your face
And who you are
I remembered when
We were first in the dessert
Then the mountains
You were the same
We are home now
I am home
Because I am with you

This is all that I am
The child I was
Is dead and buried
Why so I hear her
Crying from the grave
My mother never tucked me in
My ghost
Makes her dirt bed every morning
Day Lilies kiss my forehead
A headstone headboard

The stars are singing
Their first song tonight
Again, the hum of the universe
Rings out into space

Celestial bodies
Stars like bells
Heavens choir
Beyond where light can touch

Will you listen
Turn your head to me
Let me sing you
Our song of creation

Up, from the back of my throat
Comes our genesis
Lean in to her
Let her
It will not be 7 days
Or 40 years
It is milk and honey
It is music

Sad because,
The people I want a better life with
Don’t want a better life with me

Sad, because

Open your mouth
Call up the demons
My expiration draws near
A dead one
That has long been buried
Is being necromanced
Let her sleep, she is tired
You are not one to let sleeping dogs lay
We cannot let ******* sleep
Are we the sun
Or the rooster
We both wake you
One more gentle than the other

I look for your body
In a bed you do not sleep in
I long for you
As spring does
For summer to follow
I look for you
Constellations in a night sky
You waited for me
I am wise now

There are children inside of me
I must set them free
I feel disconnected from this body
From my body
Who is living here

I watch your back
Glisten in the sun
Building my church
Laying a strong foundation
For my temple
It is a labor of love

I am waiting now
To teach you my gospel
Did you see my scripture
Ink saturating scrolls
So it is written
So it is done

We are still in the middle
Unfurl me
Tender fern in spring
They are singing our chorus
Beyond the hill
Playing stringed instruments
Fiddlehead
I am not god
Or angel
Figurehead

I am the woman at the well
Bow your head
Drink from my cupped hands
Communion
This is my body
This is my bread
Sit at my table
Feast as if judgement day is here
Last supper

I will wash your feet
With tenderness
With tears
With perfume and oil
There is no shame in these 4 walls
At the alter
I say my prayers of thanksgiving
That I am no longer 40 years in the desert
Burn my offering with sweet oil
As the aroma wafts into heaven
They will know
The prophecy is fulfilled
Sins atoned
Covenant not broken

We cleanse our selves
Before we enter in
Into the holy of holies
Make our evening bed
This curtain was never torn.
Not for the dark day
Not for the cross
Not for sins since the beginning of time
Not for the body in the tomb
Not for the wailing women
Not for the spirits fading in the womb
Not for the lamb

You wash my back
With holy water
I wash yours
In the Jordan
Today’s baptism renews us
This is our small kingdom
Bathed in righteousness
We are clean in the eyes of God

Lover, it is just you and I
Way up here, in the sky
When I look at you
I am not afraid
Of how high we are
If you feel fear, my love
You do not show it
If you are sad darling, cry
They are praying for rain below
And we have found no gods here

Take me back
To the secret garden
I have been here too long
I am shape shifting
Fog passed through me
This morning
We dissipate
It is always this way
When the sun rises
When your skin warms
I am not against it
I am not permanent
Simply here
Weeds peek
Through brick walkway
Not shy
Simply there
Stone walls close around me
A child castle
A world apart
Can we not name the shelters we built as children, home?
Tell me the difference
Between place and memory
Cut into bark of a tree
It is wick
It is green
We were young once too
Before I knew what permanence was
When things were simple
Small yellow blossoms
Freckle green grass
Growing natures way
Reaching for the sun
Aching for her rays
We long too
For what warms us
Do not name me
A dying sun
I’m an evening candle
Nothing more
Simply there

Ask me
Where I was before
I do not remember
Do not ask me
What I am afraid of
I do not know
The fear will not tell me
All I know is she is the hunter
And I the prey
And I do pray
But God is not in heaven
He does not hear me

The weight of the world
Sits different on my shoulders
When my head
Is resting on your chest
My ribs beg to split open
To scream, my soft prayers
My devotion, into your ears
Somehow, when I whisper
I love you
I hope you hear me

You have a way with words darling
What a way to say
I am the love of a life not worth living

I don’t want you to see me like this
I don’t want to experience it, first hand, either
I cannot change it
I am vulnerable
And it has not bode well for me before

Last night I was hurting
I felt six years old, again
No matter how loud the music plays
How hard I cover my ears
I cannot change
The way my mothers voice sounds
It echoes from the inside

I do not remember you
You are a strange man
A nightmare
When you crawl into my bed
Your touch all too familiar
I am a mute
To your headless horseman
We are both ghosts
You, passing through my body
Haunting, screaming, possessing
And I, a detached soul
Slipping from a warm body

I ask myself
Maybe my father never knew love
That is why he cannot show it
I turn to look at my youngest brother
I never knew love either
But to him
I cannot help but show it

Run me back
To the house on the hill
To where the trees grow thicker
Perhaps that is where I get my skin from
Today, it will not hold my rage
Still, I feel contained

Here I am
Standing on the edge
This thought
Binds my feet to the ledge

If I jump
The pain won’t fall with me
And, somehow the heaviest
Weight on my shoulders
Is weightless

I know
If I took that step
It’s not right
To leave you what’s left

I can’t burden you with it
There’s no where
In your soft body
To hold my hurt
I can’t burden you with it
There’s no where
In your soft body
To hold my hurt

The space you made to love me
I could never let my pain
Take its place
So when I think of fast falling
When the edge is calling
I see your face

I know you’d go with me
On the way down, down
Told me once
I’d never feel alone, alone
But, I know at the bottom
We’d go our separate ways, way
Because heaven is for angels
And those who know how to pray, pray

I stop to think
Sway a little in the wind
Kick some gravel from the edge
My ancestors are dust
My hopes are ashes
I think of you
Of the flowers we picked
In the summer fields
Every memory of you
Fills the honeycombs of my mind
With sweet, sweet syrup

I can’t burden you with it
There’s no where
In your soft body
To hold my hurt
I can’t burden you with it
There’s no where
In your soft body
To hold my hurt

And I turn away from the edge
Light as pollen in the wind
Weightless
Weightless

I read your writings
You said “God was a woman,
But she was not mine.”
And when they say; “my God”
I did not know we were speaking
Of property
Of ownership
Are they truly a God
If they belong

Will you not tell me
Of your longing instead
Not of your wishes
For her to open her pearly gates
I know you tasted heaven once
I know you licked golden honey
From the fountain of life

It seems you will always thirst
For the juice, of forbidden fruit

I am not my body
But it is my house
A hundred years from now
When it is a vacant home
Will you rummage through my rubble
Sift through my fallen shingles
I fear to be plundered
As men often do
As sinners often joke
Of renting women’s bodies
Yet, they do not pay the price
I am a haunting house
I am not an open door
Will you not respect my frame
For the soul it once contained
Or is the time after I part with life
Squatters rights

I close my eyes
The devils choir is humming
They will drown out
The swell of the storm
Tune out
The crash of the oceans
Clear through it all
I hear your voice

The natives said, the earth is our mother
And if mine is a chasm, open wide
If she is a barren land
She is a Grand Canyon
My mother wound splits me open
Soil cracking from womb to sternum
If she does not know me
How does she wound me so

I have a heart
Like a child’s skinned knees
You may ground me
But the pavement
Makes me bleed
There is no memory
Behind my glass eyes
They are hollow
Empty, and void

You never should of shown me
Who you are
I saw right through you once
I can never claim blindness again

Save yourself.

I must tell you
While I am sober
I must tell you
Before it gets dark
I have to say it
Before we are making it
I am compelled
The words make a spring nest
In my mouth
Behind my teeth
It is a summer home
To the house I have built
For you in my heart
You are welcome here

We must push through

It is all I have ever known
I place my palms against the drywall
Again
And again, and again
It is not finished
The powder fills the cracks in my skin
Nestles under my nails
My brow sweats
Still, I push
There is always resistance
After this wall
There will be another
As if my will power
Is trying to climb parallel
Through every floor
Of a skyscraper

Keep pushing

Parasite to my peace
Shadow man
Sinking his teeth
Into my solid living
He is liquid in memory
I, semi-permeable in my strength
Do not let me slip
Pull me from the edge

It does not matter how I got here
Only that I cannot leave

You asked me what I wanted
A soft life, I replied
You poured me another glass of red
In an iridescent cup
When I press it to my lips
It is sweet
I have lived
Through enough bitterness
A soft life. You promised.

Climb into my bed
Warm skin on gray sheets
I tilt my head back
One more kiss
Before the moon
Takes over for the sun
One more kiss

I feel you
Like the sweet relief of pain
When you have been numb
For so long

Come home with me
Back to the woods
To the village
To the house
On the side of the hill
To the sound of the birds
After the silent screams
To the snow falling
To the ground where it settles

I hope you see why I love it
I hope you see why I left

My soul has an echo
Even when I say nothing
When I do not call out
To demons
In the darkness
Perhaps only when
Rocks from the precipice
From poorly shodden cliffs
Shoot into the abyss
It is your name
That calls back to me
It is you who resides
In my deepest depths
My soul has an echo
The wanderings of my heart
Have made you their muse
No matter my song
You are my melody

Darling I am sorry
If I ever make loving you
Sound like a chore
It is a job
I have begged for
Labored for
I will sweat my brow
For just one of your kisses
There is no labor of love
Too large
Take my hours
My rough hands
It is not too much
You could never be
More than enough

I cannot ask for love
But the question sits
Like a loaded gun
Behind my teeth

I will memorize my memories of you
Like a scholar of scriptures
Say your name like an amen
My dreams of you are like prayers
That I beg god to make reality
Let me place my kisses
On your forehead
Like a wax seal
That I may seep
Into your thoughts

This is my love
My love

You did so well
With the lot you were given
Quenched your thirst
On a hundred short straws

She took it
A minute at a time
So that now
I can enjoy hours, days, moments

I have shed this carcass a thousand times
When I dig my nails into my skin
It is thicker than before
I tear away at her
Until I am raw
Open me up
So that I may pour out
It is the only way

You lay next to me
While I go to the bottom of my mind
Breathe in helium, oxygen, moonlight
My consciousness floats to the ceiling
I am dreaming, lucid
When I am watching the world
In third person, in black and gray
Small matters of the mind
Busy bodies following little patterns
Mouths reciting scripts
It is mundane
When I looking through the glass
Of my own mind
First person
That is when I see the horrors
Technicolor
I bare it as badly as if it were gospel
These nightmares an unholy conquest
Against my consciousness

I am living in this body still
I do not remember what she was like
Before the bombs
When she was a beautiful city
All I know now is the ash in the soil
The stumps of the trees
The basements exposed
There is beauty in it to be sure
She will never be
What she was before

I cannot say I am sorry for her
Because I do not know her
She is only a distant memory
Like the sun on the fading horizon

We have been rebuilding
I did not know
It would be so difficult
To build new buildings
On an old foundation
So raw, so vulnerable, so exposed
I am not the one at war
I am the village after the raid
I am the city after the bombs
I am the one who prayed
That I would see the lighthouse
Before my stern kissed the shoals

Perhaps the bombs will come again
There is no warning

I am a house
That has been broken into
A hundred times

My windows smashed
Doors ripped from there hinges
Gutted
Ransacked

But I am not a house
I am human

Still paying the mortgage
For a property
That others strip of its value
Any chance they can get