I say I know you, but perhaps I only know
What you want me to see
Or what I hope you are as you bend here
And twist there to conform what you can
To what you think I want.

And I bend the tunnels of my reason to fit your contortions
So I may fit them to the conclusion that I know you.

You do this for me, too.

So we live, an accommodation each to the other;
A compromise born from knowledge we learned
From those we knew who could not learn,
Who could never know either of us.

And in the moments we are close I must touch you
In ways I could never do before or will again
Because the force that gives us strength to blend
Is that over used word that means
We have built of ourselves a home that we will never leave.

When time becomes like a vapour,
The shape of one's self changes,
Lights that became burnt and warped,
Are an optimistic memory, angled at the future.
Hope, a vision still in sight,
But so blinkered in this vortex,
A maze so difficult to find footing or navigate,
But so delightful to ignore an easy to become marooned.

In a dream I was asked to be dismissed
from the prestigious group I belonged to at the
university.
Somehow,
they had discovered by true personality.
I begged and pleaded to continue attending the meetings
and receiving the free merchandise.
They acted haughtily toward me.
They said they would still allow me to room in the same
dormitory as the other members but that was it.

In a second dream, a road was blocked by semi-trucks
that tote Ford trucks.
I tried to swerve around them in my parent's SUV,
but I missed the road entirely and my car slowly
dropped into a sewer ditch.
In my head, I thought, get your cell phone.
Luckily, I didn't.
Weight became semi-irrelevant in the water
and I could lift half of the car out of the ditch with my foot.
Only half though, because once it emerged from the water,
weight was relevant.
You know what I mean?
A woman I knew in grade-school pulled me out by my arm pits
and we called my mom.

I woke up and itched mercilessly at the poison ivy on my legs.
Weeks earlier, I had talked at length about how I wasn't allergic to poison ivy.
Weeks earlier, I had been going with two guys.
Now I was painfully lonely and painfully itchy.

I wait
I wonder why
the life
       blood
has stopped
flowing from my
hands

I am a sapling in winter
stunted
frozen
brittle

I miss this
the photosynthesis

the static whisper
between paper
and finger

smudges
scorches

come spring
come forth

and I am a tree

Every night she sits upon the rocks,
Her eyes gazing upon the moon.
The dark woods, they creep all around her,
As she wonders and wishes upon the stars.
The soft trickle of the stream rings in her ear,
All else is the silent whisper of the wind blowing,
As the calm night soothes her soul,
She wonders, alone.

she spent so much time looking in the mirror
that she forgot what she looked like