Hole

There's a hole

It feels impossible to cover
Mostly because it is

It's in my chest and I've been trying to fill it
Asking people to stop noticing it

I stopped looking in the mirror.
I don't look in the mirror because it looks back at me
And I see exactly how incomplete my life has come to be

I grew up thinking that with age I would find more things to fill my life with
More things to make life full
To make it happy
But I've been shedding
Leaving pieces of myself behind and I didn't notice
Until my entire chest seemed to die
I don't look in mirrors


I want cold climates
I want shirts and sweaters and jackets and things
To cover my chest

I have been looking for things to make me whole
Looking for a man to tell me that I'm complete
Even though I'm not
I wouldn't mind filling my life with people who could lie to me

I have been dating to find my daughter
I have been working to pretend like I would have been a good mother
I am incomplete
And the only person I really want can't be with me

I don't know how I live on this earth anymore
How to tell myself that with so much of it missing
I can still stand.

I'm tired of surviving.

My Memory

I have a memory like bullets on a Sunday morning

I can't get dressed

My memory is ill timed and relentless

Every painful touch of that knit scarf reminds me of how often my ring used to get tangled in it
Every dress is not clothing but a date
A conversation
Holding my hand
Reminds me that I knew what it was like to feel safe
Even for a moment before I threw my dreams away
I am haunted my the feels of my fabric

I told myself that love and security are not the same thing
But I can't for the life of me remember why I believed one to be better

I can't find anything in my life that I want more than what I gave up
And for that I have all my options
And can't for the life of me manage to do anything

My memory is shards of class on the highway
It is chaos and broken and in a million pieces yet they are still all there
Waiting for ill timing to cut me
They are the fragmented voice in my head
They are the reminder that I now know it is like to feel

... Regret

Best Thing

I am afraid of my room

Afraid of my bed

Exhausted but afraid that if I lay down I won't sleep but think
With nothing to distract my mind
I'll lay wondering what I've done
What I've given up
If the day will ever come when I don't choose to run

I'm exhausted but even when I sleep there is no rest to be found
My feet are dragging
And I am reaching for anything to distract me from thinking ...

That you might have actually been the best thing that ever happened to me

War

The closest I've ever been to war
Is the cushioned seat of a movie theatre
The comfort of my own bed
The why can't we have peace mentality in the middle of a hostile world

I don't know what it's like to hope for peace
To literally save my life
Hanging onto every breath of a man in a suit
Putting people's lives down with a pen
I don't know

I've watched clips of soldiers with whiskey and cigarettes
Felt sympathy for women passed around like consolation prizes
To dead men

I am naive
Numb to the death around me
Consumed with my own feelings
So caught up in my own lack of peace
That sometimes I feel like I also might by dying
Feel like God put on a suit today
And placed my life at the end of a ink pen

I understand what it's like to reach outside myself for comfort
To find moments of forgetfullness in whiskey and cigarettes
To not care how many people have been with the person in my bed
Because it's a few moments outside my mind
A minute of the closest thing to peace I can find

There is war going on in my mind
Blinding me to life
To the happiness I knew
To having felt protected from the bombs

I need a third chance
A truce
A fortress from my weary mind

Liar

Your eyes were introduced to mine as lairs

They were the bed of a committed lover
And I was the other woman

Your eyes reminded me to keep my distance
To not get involved in their bullshit

I knew that outside our weekends those eyes were lovingly looking at another woman
You have the eyes of a liar
Introduced to mine as a disappointing father
And for so long your eyes were the worst mistake of my life

But now I know that in a way they look just like mine

I know why you can't find the truth in my eyes