I see lines of you in the silhouettes of the scurf of a world without you
I hear your voice calling my name:
In empty hallways,
Serenades,
And odes written on deathbeds,
Declaring that your final words should "I love you"
And as I lie dow unfamiliarly in a bed without you,
I curl up and imagine that you are here,
And as I drive back to you-- home, across dark landscapes,
The headlights of the oncoming traffic reflect off my glasses and beam through dark air,
And your voice calls my name one final time in the lonely hotel room behind me

And in the morning when the dawn breaks,
My hearts stops breaking with it.
And the only thing left that isn't shattered is the silence
And the mirror
Where the rapists go to look at themselves before they sleep at night. And I walk across the brokenness with holy bare feet,
Sacred because he didn't touch them,
Thinking that I'm a pebble thrown at a double-pane glass house.
I bounce off and fall down.
And one day someone will pick me up
And hold me in soft hands
And carry me home.

I'm sitting across from her,
My mom,
And she's standing across this concrete field,
Talking about it,
Talking about that time she got drunk and how he ***** her,
And she's so far away,
She looks smaller than my world when I was five,

And I can't tell if she shaking or I'm cold,
But then I think that "if I was cold, my tears wouldn't be so warm"
And then I realize I'm crying
And I realize that I can never tell her
I can't tell her because I can see how much pain she's in
And I can feel how much it's hurting me
And I know I can never tell her that it happened to me, too

And the little girl inside me that cried when it happened
Is screaming that IT ISN'T FAIR
But I haven't been that little girl in so long
That I forget how she saw the world
Forget what it was like before
"Have to wear pants, no skirts, and don't let them see cleavage"

My body is a secret I won't tell
Even at a slumber party after the lights are out
And we should all be in bed
But they'll justify it
By telling me that even if my clothes stayed quiet
And I stayed sober
My body was asking for it with hips and lips an *******

But I don't see a question mark,
All I see are marks that turn to scars,
That turn to sitting in a dim room with my therapist
Wondering how to untie the knots in my stomach
And the knots in my tongue

But even though my knots are impeccable
I could never be a boy scout
Because I was never prepared for this
And I was never prepared for this
And I was never prepared to listen to the **** stories
Ans I never prepared to tell my own

They say write a poem in ten words,
And I think that I can’t pour out my soul in such a small space
I think that my mind is worth 15 words at least
But I think
And I try
I crumble up paper like it’s love letters from the people I hate
And I write a poem
Write my heart and soul out in thin black ink
And then I pick the ten words that I can’t set free
And they are: small, trees, alone, forest, love, flashlight on a broken sea
And I sigh
Because I was never good with stories

I love looking at highways from aeroplanes,
They snake across the blotchy, flat earth
And slither into the endless blue haze,

I wonder what they find there,
Is it love or death?
Or old friends?
Or happiness?

Perhaps, their happiness
Is in the curly-q designs
They scrawl like ancient script

I trace it,
Running my fingers over three-pane glass,
Until they disappear

And the clouds look like fingers and hands,
Reaching out to touch me,
Expanding with every breath I take,
Calling me down to the river,
Calling me down to the trees

But my happiness is in the single, breathless moment of take-off,
The moment I feel my heart lurch,
And bang into the something inside me pushing me forward,
Into the illusory blue

It’s funny:
I came home from the hospital two days post operation
After open heart surgery to put it all back together.
And I died of an infected wound.

I'm driving past the school I went back to for
Five
Six
Seven years straight,
The place that grew up around me like a desert oasis--
Or Rapunzel's tower,
I wonder if I should stop and put my hands on the old white bricks,
Like maybe touching the school will be like touching my childhood,
And it will heal my broken heart,
But I'm already past the turn off, going 45 miles per hour,
So I turn my wandering eyes back to the road.

And at the green light ahead,
My unrequited love is riding a bicycle across the street one-handed,
And smoking a cigarette,
Wearing a shirt that says "Please hit me with your car, so that I can just stop feeling".