I loved You

I loved you

The way I was afraid that I would 

The kind you get lost in, drowns you

Digs up bits and pieces I never knew were there

I loved you

Between the floor boards

And wood and bricks and sand 

And a world I always wanted

I wasn’t prepared

I was afraid of this love

Since the first time I lost myself 

Never really to be found again

I didn’t know all the things that can come to the surface

All the holes I’d dug in my heart

And left uncovered

I loved you

And that love made the holes look much deeper

I tried to put your love into them

Swore this would make me whole

You did not fit

And I blamed you for not being

What you were never meant to be

But my love left me exposed

Showed me just how many people left their belongings in my life

Took bits and pieces of me and left memories for the lonely nights

Made me more fragile than I wanted to admit

More afraid 

I loved you

Almost as much as I loved feeling strong

Being  untouchable is a drug of its own

And much more appealing

Than the vulnerability that sprang up inside of me

You were supposed to fix me

I needed your love to fix me

Too grown for my own good

More naive than I meant to be

I left your love 

For a sunshine

That was burning me 

But looked much like the biggest hole inside of me

Maybe this love will fit the hole… 

Maybe the next love won’t hurt so bad…

Maybe my eyes are just opening to broken things

That can not be fixed

Maybe in this world

The hardest part is learning

Some pains we just have to life with

Colors

You may call me coward 

Blind, or self obsessed 

You may call me a depth I’m afraid to reach into 

A force among complacency 

Never meant to blend 

But dying to all the same 

I walked through shrapnel 

Let my feet snag on objects that once were 

Filed through my list of things, people who I wanted to fit holes 

But they were never the right size

Never looked right 

Changed me in ways I did not like 

I am a chameleon blaming the world for my change in color 

Setting bombs in my life

It is easier to walk away from things that can not be fixed  

Train in The City

The train had too many stops 

Life begins on one of them

She is sure

This can not be it

It is at one of those stops

The lights pass each time the train door opens

She clutches the bottom of her seat saying

… maybe there is something better on the next one 

Waiting for a sign 

Something bright 

Saying this is it 

This is where your life starts 

The years keep passing

Like reminders of wasted opportunity 

Of things built and discarded 

The increasing gray on the roads

Looking for bright lights 

Wearing a ring from the men who was going to give her children

A shirt from the one she met last night

A little hope that there is a love she won’t break

The city is lonely 

But the further she gets out the more it smells like death

Like wasting away

Hanging yourself on a picket fence 

Waiting for the bright lights to save her again

I Forgot

She is pale

Has not seen light in so long, she burns easily

She thinks we are still in love with that boy from the 7th grade

I forgot to tell her he didn’t feel the same way

Kept it to myself 

Kept her safe

She was wrapped up in a corner

With the last of my beautiful things 

I forgot to warn her before you found me

To tell her that since we last met

That I finally found myself beautiful 

A few times

And it as much a curse as a blessing

The boy we thought we would meet

Never traveled the world with us

Or told us we were more beautiful 

Than all the statues and monuments 

But he still loves us

Even though he doesn’t know how

Couldn’t find her in the corner

Or his own

Buried under all he is sill afraid to dream

While she were gone 

I forgot to be gentle 

Lost my soft footing

And started kicking rocks

I told her that’s why she’s been gone so long

I’m clumsy

Didn’t know how to hold something beautiful

Without dropping it

I don’t know how to stop lying

That is who I became when she was hiding 

I did not tell her how many people searched for her

With broken pieces and empty words

I knew she was still naive

She would try to lean on them 

And when she fell

She’d get hurt 

I forgot to tell her I needed her

Forgot that she is strong 

Because she isn’t afraid to dream

I pulled my heart out of the last stack of beautiful things

Told her I’m lonely 

And she’s still so young

She believes she can fix things

I Can't Remember

The ring felt heavy at first
Like a burden

Now I wish my finger could forget it's weight
Not feel so empty

I wish I could remember you
What I loved about your hands
The way you made me feel safe

I wish I wasn't so good at forgetting
And letting love go to waste

At not remembering

Still a Shadow

The distance makes the heart grow fonder

If this is you than I miss not knowing you
Or knowing a you that looks more like who you would have been
Had you not given on dreams
That will never look like a reality

Sometimes I still wish...

That you were still a shadow cast over the darkness in my life

"if" in my memoirs

A regret on my list

Human

I took the most sacred parts of myself
And placed them inside of you

Burried my secrets in your open arms
And believed them to be kept safe in your tears

Forgot my heart was too fragile to place in another human's arms
That perfection was required to break it's fall

... and you
Were just human

Skipping Beats

My heart still skips a beat

All these years later...

My heart still knows that when you are around it is supposed to be dancing

... but it still skips a beat

 

Your name appears on my phone like a memory

Dragging me back to everything I dreamed we could be... night after night

All those years

While my heart was skipping beats

 

 

I called my dad two days after I met you and said,

"I found him. He's the one."

 

My heart was skipping beats

Ready to be the first one out on the floor dancing

Ready to rediscover the woman I was meant to be

Skipping beats

 

I taught my heart to dance to a count

To stay in line

To keep me living

 

The first time you touched your guitar to sing to me

My heart was ready to fear

Showing you how human I am

Skipping a beat

 

 

So, I let you in

Cracked open my chest

Said, "I've been using this skin as a distraction."

And let you watch my heart beat a little differently...

 

The first time you grabbed my hand and asked me to dance

My heart fell into yours

 

I stayed

Long after closing hours

After I realized that you had my heart

Without knowing how to hold it

That your fingers were spread too wide to catch all the pieces

To realize how fragile the glue was that held me together

To know that you were the only one

I ever let in that space

Ever took my distraction off for

Was within five minutes of arrest

And cracked my chest wide open

 

It was only you

Who made my heart skip a beat...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sickest

The sickest parts of me feed on you
Grow and stay ill
Bury the cough in your chest hoping to raddle your rib cage
... And break free

I wanted to believe that you were not the poison
But with everything else gone
You are still killing me
Slowly feeding my delravity
Throwing treats to my self hatred

I am going to save what is left of me

One Line of Poetry

You stole the sparkle out of my eye

You took my big dreams
Shoved them into a box and told me how little I'd done

People tell me I think big, like its a compliment
Only because they never saw the giants that used to be my thoughts
Before you strung your "can'ts" together, made a rope and brought my giant to the ground
Now only a shadow of what it once was

You stole my wings and taught me how to walk
Taught me to think I'm better for not flying so high
There's so much less pressure if you stay on the ground, right

I wish I had known how afraid you were
How I could handle failure but you were more afraid to think of the possibility
Than to let me try
And sometimes I swear you want me to say thank you
You look my disgraces in the eye and say
 "Aren't you glad that was a big fuck up instead of a giant?"

I should be flying
Should be letting my giants free
Shouldn't be blaming you because I let you get to me

I shouldn't be putting my fear into strings of words
Hoping they can pull down the walls of my heart
One line of poetry at a time

My Pride

I ran over my pride

With my car

Repeatedly

I cleaned my tires

I ran over my pride again

Repeatedly....

I took it to the backyard, threw it in the swimming pool. A few hours later I went back out, fished my soggy, beaten up, useless pride out of the pool...

I hung that useless shit up to dry.

I'm finding new things to build my life on.
And it's terrible.

Time Doesn't Change

I wrote a poem 7 years ago

It was titled "Contradiction"

I'm partially embarrassed that there isn't one word in there that isn't true today
I guess there's only so much time can change

I am still a 18 year old girl
Freshly broken and bruised and ice
With sarcasm that can shame a grown man
Hoping that there are more beautiful things that what she can see
Laughing loudly trying to freighten her own ghosts

Believing that she was made for more
Than the life she's living

Painting

Lifetimes are paintings

And sometimes I feel like my scenery was chosen for me
That these colors swirled into a battlefield before I was done cleaning my brushes
And mixing my colors
Imagining a life that I knew I could have
... if I just reached far enough
Kept my arms open wide enough to suffer the pain and catch the love

Because they're never too far apart

I knew my life wasn't going to be easy
That no one was going to give me anything
That like everything else my love would be found dodging bullets
And that the most important relationships would be lived stepping over landmines

Because someone taught me to distrust everyone
Before I realized it and there were moments when that felt like a fortress
Like the only protection in my painting

But now
It pisses me off

I have been fighting for a lifetime
I am hiding behind things too tired to think of offense
I'll settle for this hole
Where I tried to dig enough space to heal from the last bullet

War is confliction

It is uniform and chaos and freezing between episodes of being trigger happy
It is fear and panic and unbreakable bonds

And I am all these things

I am uniform
I am fear and panic and unbreakable bonds
I am excitement and laughs because I might be dead by the morning
I am love and hope even when that mostly looks like devistation
I am bullets and knives and trying not to break

I am so many jagged edges that everyone who gets close to me snags their life
Or gets a wound that may never heal
I am sharing my shards under pretty dresses and flitatious smiles

I am still hoping to throw this all away and paint a new life.

Separated

By the time I realized that I've had too many lovers 

It was too late to take it back

There's a reason that my most intimate relationships have been lived in celibacy 

Because there is a canyon between my heart and my body 

Nothing reminds me of the distance more than hands on my skin 

Speaking of the distance it takes to get to my heart

The barriers between my body and the whole of me 

I couldn't stomach the thought of the first two being the only people

Swirling around that place in my life

I found 3 in a haze hoping he could at least take a third of the space 

Give me something else to think about 

The same way I felt with 4 and 5 and 6....

Until I realized that stacking blazed disappointed on top of tragedy 

Doesn't make anything better 

It just makes it harder to think 

Gives more pieces to sort

And further separates me heart from my body

Sorted

I carefully stacked the thoughts in my head
Afraid that they would climb the walls, seep into the paint, and start moving closer
That they wouldn't have a home

And it's getting cold outside

I carefully stacked the thoughts in my head
I laid out a plan
A 12 step program to stay away from Lexipro
And I was on task
Minus a few people I didn't know where to put
Or dreams I didn't know if I could believe in anymore ...

A few kinks to work out
A few smaller piles to sort
It felt manageable
... Like I might know a few things I want for the first time in
Forever it seems

I perfectly stacked my dreams
Most important on the bottom
I'll get to it later if I think I can handle disappointment again

I stacked people
Sorted more like
Into piles with labels
Future and Past
Closer to who I need to be
And keeping me down

I moved people between positive and negativity and asked myself
... How much more if this can I take

I'm trying to live intentionally
To love unafraid for the first time
In forever it seems

But your surname broke me

My life is not sorted quite as well as I want it to be

Seat Belt

My heart is walking the line between numb and bad days

I can't bring myself to wear a seat belt
I'm tired of walking or crawling from these collisions
With but mere bruises ... and bumps... and what appear to be surface wounds

Because it really does get easier
Not to feel
But I fear my apathy most because there lies no future
No hope
Which seems to take the most energy and I have none
I'm at the end of my rope and I can't figure out what I spent it all on
Or if I just don't know how to take care of myself

I do not know if you also vacillate between need and apathy

Skeptic

I never intended to love your laugh
It all happened by accident
And your eyes are the fear that drives me mad

I didn't mean to forget the world when I'm with you
But I did
And realized I didn't want to come back down to earth
Never wanted to think through my doubt
But just get caught up in the moment when I realized how your arms force me to relax
Give me rest I've been looking for
And with you it was impossible to fight back
And fighting is the only thing I've ever claimed to be good at

I don't know how to combat the unpredictability of your love

I don't know how to live day to day with you and not lose myself

I don't know how to trust the heart of a skeptic
I don't even know how to trust mine

I Knew You

You taste like salty kisses
It was the first line of the first poem I ever tried to write for you
Thinking I would look back on you fondly ...

The salty kisses used to remind me of the past
I always remember the way that your sweat felt on the palm of my hands
While I touched your back as you lay on top of me
The years went by and I still remembered
The salty kisses on your shoulder while you lay on top of me
Unknowingly symbolizing most of my life...

I know your skin like prickling discomfort and fleeting pleasure
I knew you as a predictable lover and a temporary drug

I knew you as death and forgetfullness

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

Halloween

It's the onto night of the year that everyone's in my costume but me 

I've mourned more than one life that night 

Caught the wind of what could have been 

And when they walked in on me I deflected off the masks 

Told them that like everyone else tonight 

I am pretending 

Myself

I hid my flaws under furniture
And I hoped you would move in before you found them

I painted the pictures on our walls
I called them my life
And asked you only to see the brightness

I took myself
Covered the little girl with makeup
And I put my bet on the fact that you'd never wonder why I don't take it off

I called myself Christian and pagen in the same sentence
And I knew you were too in love to point it out

I've known lovers
And future husbands but they never embody the same person

I put myself on opposite sides of the room
And let you think you were insane when you wondered
Why you can ever seem to hold all of me

I am too old for my age
I'm too young for my life

I've made people pick teams and play tug of war with my arms
And then sat around
In the middle of the night wondering why I'm almost in two perfect halves
And for all of my accomplishments
I don't who I'm becoming

I lost myself in planning for the next thing

Diamond

I wish I'd known the weight of a diamond 

The distraction of the way it winks at me so flirtatiously as I go about my day 

I wish I'd known the cost of a different life 

A love 

14 grams of gold and I've been walking sideways 

And Im too young to be so tired 

Too smart to give away my time 

Too selfish to have a love of my life 

And too dumb to understand 

The weight of a diamond 

Remember

I have to remember to look at you

As a person
And less of a window

Now and not three years ago

I'm going to remember to look at you

To see your skin as your own and not next to mine
Not on a child with half of your chromosomes and the paleness of mine

I'll try not to be disillusioned by the feel of your hands

I'm going to look at you
To look at you
I'm looking at you
And not through you...

Not following the strings of all the ways I've known you right into the past

Where everything smells of baby powder, and lonliness, and freightening new dreams

I am telling myself that if I love you it's for the flesh in front of me
Not for being half of the love of my life...
I grab your flesh to remind myself that you are human and flesh and now

I remember
I remember your eyes
Only because I prepared myself to look at them everyday
To send them to preschool
To send them to daycare
To rock them to sleep
I remember your eyes

Demon

She told me someone would have to cast out this demon
Apparently the same way they did from her the first time someone touched that little girl and she realized what shame feels like when it's not yours to carry but sits with you and picks at you all the same...

She said it's not me and not him and there's nothing to be done
Except cast out the demon

And I wanted to ask her what the demons name was
Statutory rape?
Home wrecker?
Can't beat them off with a stick?

But even under her Sunday school clothes I could see that she was too fragile for my off color jokes so I didn't ask.

She said,
"It's not what you look like or what you say or even what you do, it's the demon."

A Christianish justification for the first man who unfastened her pants and the next and the next and...

She said its a demon

I wanted to ask...
Is the demon in his early 40's because that's the age most the men who listen seem to be and I'm just trying to make sense of this...?

I was 12, at camp, and she said it's a demon that draws married men to you.

Then as politely as possible, I told her to fuck off.

I hope her justification still holds up.

Honestly

I used to write

But I'm afraid of the page
Of the truth
That maybe if I spell it out it won't look right
And I won't know to do with that...

Because honesty has always looked more clear in black and white
And I'm afraid

Ink

There's an ink stain on my dress

It reminds me of when your pen broke for seemingly no reason
I was washing ink off my hands for days

Much like you
It won't seem to go away

Crosses

I started wearing crosses on my jewelry 

Like saying that it would be alright to wear a shirt of a gas chamber with a bucket of acid on my shoes. Like all tragedies become public statements shouted by good intentioned teens with no foot to stand on. Everything loses it's steam after time after the story becomes just a story and no one remembers that war touches everyone and most of us most of the time don't have a leg to stand on...

The reality behind sacrifice is lost in moments. 

I started wearing crosses on my shirts

I saw that crosses were in this season, and it's all about the season when I'm clinging to my youth and this isn't personal. 

It's never personal. 

I've been looking for a life of conviction. I've been looking for a reason to live because I know that it's so easy to die these days. 

Conviction is sewn into my clothing. A symbol on the side of my shoes that I might look at one day and ask myself what weight my faith carries because I've plastered my salvation on my shoes and they carry me just fine. 

My salvation looks like misplaced sticks 

And I often wonder why it doesn't feel real, why I can't seem to think of the cross when I stare my sin the face and decide to repent later. 

The gravity of my salvation fades away like a memory, like a story that used to make me cry and now I tell perfectly. 

I don't want tragedy to be the only door to the reality of a cross where life was given for me. 

I want to find the cross, find love, and sit there until it sinks in and I understand.

I want to understand. 

Chill

It's a chill
That sits in my bones laying dormant

The feeling attached itself to my body when I was 12. He said he really like me, until he stopped answering as I dialed and tried to reclaim my dignity in each number ... each ring...

I have often wondered what side effects of this earth will follow my soul
When does this earth stitch itself into my being permanently?
What kind of damage can't be undone...

I've tried to patch my wound with
The effects of a fallen world
Tried to say that eventually
All these feelings go away
Prayed at night that if I can't take this chill from my bones
At least it could be less frequent
That the spaces be fewer and farther between

That love actually conquer all

Humility

There's been a prayer 

Embedded on my heart since before I knew to look there

Etched in fine print

Lacking secret and longing 

There is a purpose 

Posing as a prayer for the moments when I would beg for something to pray

To care 

To feel like I was meant to and brought to my knees with a calling 

It's been waiting

I grew up like most girls who lack simplicity 

I weaved through years looking for answers like they were hiding

Looking for meaning like it was meant for me 

Thought my mind could contain a solutions to the injustice around me

Humility... 

Absent from my existence since the day I was born 

Weaved onto a prayer etched on my being 

I saw tears as a problem until I realized that I was made for mourning 

That suffering was stitched into my skin 

Like a bond between me and humanity stretching to God 

And there was only ever one road leading to where I was meant to be

Paved with suffering and lined with grace

If only my feet would reach for the pavement

My heart would stop bracing for the fall

Let the fall be my salvation

And live a life of suffering

Bleeding purpose into lifeless bodies

It's in the prayer

In the middle of my room where I sit with my ghosts

I've asked God what to pray

It occurred to me that I could be asking for all the wrong things

He told me to come along side suffering 

To join Him in this journey

That humility is in existing in the middle of the most human part of humanity

Our ghosts

Our pain 

Our calling

Names

I name everything and everyone.


I've even named my compulsive need to name.

I call it a "human condition." It felt only fitting that it be named the same as so many other things we can't quite put our fingers on but they feel uniquely... human. Cliche.

It's the first box.
The primary label
The "Oh, now-I-know-where-to-put-that-in-my-head."

Like a skeleton of the first construct that serves to make things... make sense.
... Speaking of a human condition


Everything has a place
It all makes sense
It works
There are even patterns in a shuffle

And then I was born...

It's a human condition.

It's where nature and nurture make a pact and settle for confusing us all.
Taught like a shelter against evil
Like bad things don't happen to good people
And we're all good people...

... I've composed these thoughts of large boxes containing smaller boxes and still smaller boxes.
I've sorted out ways to keep everything where it belongs.
I built walls like a rosery
Half prayer and half superstition

At the end of the day maybe I'm just looking for protection
Just trying to understand
As if I could

And somewhere I feel like God is sitting wondering why I insist on insulting his intelligence with mine

Understanding. Making sense. Boxes. Names.

None of it makes sense...

I Wish That I Had Been Brave

I wish that your white hair never reminded me of tombstones and goodbyes

I wish that when I held your hand

The folds in your skin did not look like God releasing your body from your soul

So it would be easier to fly home

I wish that your laugh did not sound just like my dad

I wish that I had been brave

I wish that I had not been to so many funerals

Was not so well acquainted with cadavers 

Who looked like people I loved

Had  not been so young

And so familiar with death

That I could feel him in your walk 

Sinister smile standing over my shoulder

Coming for us all

I wish that I had been brave

I wish that I had loved stronger than death

That I had brushed your white hair while you fell asleep

Because it was the only way you could sleep in the end

Wish I had told you that your face has been in every memory since I can first remember

And that I have often wondered if I was the legacy you intended to leave

I wish that I had been brave

I wish that at least

I could have told you that it was not you

It was the ground beckoning me

It was all the pieces of me that I been buried 6 feet under in coffins

Holding bodies that used to hold me

It was the fear of losing

Again

And again

And again

It was the look in your blue eyes

That look just like mine

Reminding me that I am afraid on dying

It was the "Other" section of my resume

Where I put a bullet point for "Saying goodbye"

It was the cold feeling of hands that used to warm mine

Nothing lasts forever

I wish that I had been brave

 

Love Never Fails

So near that I felt Your pain in moments

Your love is a mystery

So close that it creeps up next to me

Asking me how much I believe

Your love in an alien

Nothing like anything on this mass of green and blue

It's an invasion

And I'm ready

This place was never home

Everything here

Is so... temporary

For so long I tried to fit Your love into boxes

Places marked "my mind"

Never grabbing

Or jumping with blind faith

Knowing You were the only lover who would ever catch me

Fear found me in my sleep

Seeping into my dreams

Convincing me that unconditional love was something I wanted

But would never be fore me

Fear was the nail

Keeping my feet planted on this earth

Telling me that this place is safe

That salvation was something for people a little more perfect

A little more worthy

Love never fails

I needed rest from this earth

I was drowning in the ocean

And the ground could not hold my feet

And I was gasping

Fear left me gasping

To breathe

Love never fails

Leading me straight

The arms of Christ

Where love found me

And rest took me

Where all the fear that kept me bound

Was set free

And You hold me so sweetly

The only arms to ever carry me

Love never failed me

I Still Can't Pronounce Your Last Name

The park sign glared back through water logged lenses

Blades of grass looked as familiar as family and old friends

Bending together making beds

Where once our fingers lay playing Twister

And your thumb ran back and forth across the top of my hand

Reminding me that you were still learning the bends of my body

The sun shown like warm blankets and happy ending

Whispering promises

Your hands were home

More like home than any four walls or skylines that fell familiar upon me

I sunk under your embrace

Wondering if I could jump in arms strong enough to break my fall

I drove by your place

Burned like the sinner I am

Remembering how you treated me

While hiding under the blanket that you named "god"

And I can not help but wonder if it was us or the timing

I told myself it was the right thing to do

Walking away

Walking and driving

And shouting profanity into the memories as if I could scare them away

You were supposed to have the last hands I would ever hold

The last body in my bed

The baby was supposed to be yours

And we were supposed to be living proof of happily ever after

That park sign

So dark and it's raining

Nothing like the moments we spent resting on it's land

Daydreaming

And I started thinking that maybe dating would stop looking like cheap prostitution

Right before you cast me back to the streets

Right after getting off on my leg

And telling me that I was too dirty to be your first kiss

I read books between the cushions

And I screamed for it to stop

The pain of us ending

Was in the force of your body holding me against the bed

As you took the promises back that you gave me

Go back to church

Pretend like last night didn't happen

And maybe the music will drown out my screams

And I will fade back into the darkness

Back onto the streets

I never meant to love you

I was meant to love fiercely

When I met you I was drowning in an ocean of fear

When I left you it was an ocean of ice

My prayer if for a bright sun

A sharp burn to melt me

Fear is my chain

And some part of me still wishes to love like the earth were shaking

But the only thing shaking now

Is me

Be Near Me

I pulled away from Your love

Clung to my hurt

Made a bed for my pain

I stopped speaking to You

And found solace with my fear

Forgot how tenderly You hold me

Holding fast to my adulatory

My shame called me foolish for believing

That You could love a sinner like me

I started living in closets

And under beds

I thought of God as the one pushed on me midst measured skirts-to-the-middle-of-the-knees, two buttons on a polo shirt. Look good and no one will know you're hurting kind of god. He was looking over my shoulder waiting to find a reason to punish me.

A god made by fearful hands

And human minds

He's big, distant, and constantly disappointed in me

He was found right where I left him

Laying in a basket of broken dolls, razors, tube tops, and dirty jeans

The thought was lurking

Waiting for the past to find me

The god of my childhood found me again

With whip and chains

And the crushing sense of disappointment

Kept me hurting

Kept me wanting

I do not know where one died

And the Other was born

I believed it to be in coffee shops with books and prayers. It may have been on my knees, but I have a sense that God has been fighting with mine to set me free.

I forgot how You love to hold me

Clung to what I imaged you should be

And I am on my knees

My prayer is simple

Be near me

Death Has a Smell

Death has a smell

It dwelled between his fingers

In the toxic smoke resembling his breath

And out of his gaping wounds

Infected and bleeding onto my skin seeping dreams

Dreams leaking from glands built from baby dolls and tea parties

His hands were pinecones

Taking my skin as they pulled down my side

Rejected by the forest

Forsaken by nature

And what once harbored seeds for the ground

Is planting his destruction inside of my womb

His eyes

They stay with me

Speaking my name

In hoarse painful tones

Justice found disgust in his eyes

Turned a back to them

In the form of empty words

Buried under the tortured thought

Words remain… useless…

Sounds paint sympathy lightly

On heavy eyes crushing

The second finishing what the first left behind

They lay on my chest

Buried under my skin

Making their way to my heart

My perspective floated

Years have pushed me back… slowly

What am I seeing

After time

Floating, I saw his hands digging into my thighs

They broke like branches

And he tore my skin where he left depravity

The courage of a soldier

The bravery of martyrs

Begged fear to be cast aside

To look in those eyes

Laying frozen

Time had not healed my wounds

Time left all things behind

Moving selfishly

Telling me I could pick up the pieces

If my heart ever came to mean that much to me

Again

A phantom feeling

Taking years of pictures of the world

And painting them over

Darker and out of control

Always dangerously balancing between

I can control this…

And I can not control anything…

Constantly searching for

A point

The point ends with the words

Bastard remains quaint

Son of a bitch takes your spotlight and shifts

No, he will burn under spotlight

Skin dripping

Rape has been turned into poetry

Needles and Fire

Your voice is a pit of needles

I've been falling in for years now

And the last burn is the letting go

We were loving in a burn town

Trying in a hopeless world

And I've held out

Like a father waiting for his prodigal son

I always saw the best in you

I dug up who you were meant to be

And handed it to the girl you will marry

I was the best in you

And now I am buried

So she will never know

The boy you used to be

Give him back to me

Riding

I tucked courage in with honesty
Shoved them into the glove box
Of a car I didn't own

Too flashy to be impressive and expensive to be practical
And I rode
Tried to pretend like my skin wasn't falling off with the road
And maybe given the right pair of jeans and some Coach shoes
I might look like the girl who is supposed to ride in the front of this car
Unhappy
And a lot of nothing
Just wanting the company

I took my morals and shoved them in the backseat
Grabbed a hand full of dreams and placed them in the sheets
Of every Hilton this side of the States

Took the love of my life
And shoved it into a body too old to be a lover
But screwing me all the same
In more ways than one

I set flames to the life I wanted to live
And kept riding

I occasionally opened the window
Throwing out
"This wasn't supposed to be my life"
And grabbing
"I guess this is my life"
Shoving it in my bag like a belonging

This was supposed to be a familiar pain
A man like all the others
A nothing situation that I sold a little bit of my soul for
They were right... it gets easier to stop feeling

I just didn't see it coming
Nature has it's own way of catching up with me

And right when he was about the stop the car and let me out
He made sure that he grabbed my baby
The size of my thumb nail
And set it under the tires saying

"Life has a way of catching up with you, baby.
Now let me get back to mine."

Free

Silence
A stillness so strong that it brings me to my knees
Throws pride to the ground
Asking my legs why they are running

Stone cold
Apathy rid my body of joy
And left me.
Painless.
Without any happiness to speak of
But painless

I need a solace
A year of sleep and some peace
A place to lay my head
And a place to pray
... just until I am whole
Just until I can stand up again with feeling in my body
Asking to live a life worthy

If God can redeem my time...
I need 22 years worth of redemption
And a new life

I need my baby
I need my family

I want life away from this place and an eternity
This world has failed me
They said it would but I just kept fighting
I couldn't stop fighting
The pain
Just long enough to realize that it wasn't the enemy

I don't need a life that's easy
I just need Love

Love me
Set me free

I cry in cars

I cry. by myself. in cars. once in a blue moon.
And even then
It's embarrassing

Away
I'm always driving away when I cry

If I was asked where I am going
It would simple be... nowhere

I'm driving away from a past
A disappointment
Another thing that I painfully pull my contractured fingers away from
In the name of "I guess that's just life"
And it has been

My tears
They store up
They sit in my chest cavity
Knocking politely on my sternum
Asking to be free

After time I can only pretend
That the movement in my chest is me breathing
Barely
Like oceans
And bilateral rails

The cage
It adds to my guilt
That I can not give tears to my sadness

My ocean stopped my lungs completely
Begging me to move
To sit on the floor
Face in hands
And let go
It was the least I could do
After flushing my baby down the toilet in the Target bathroom...

Fear is the dam
The stop in my natural thoughts
And I was afraid
That I would sink into the floor
And become a part of that bathroom
And stay with my baby
Thinking that her heart would beat again

That God didn't spare her from a poor excuse for a dad
And maybe even me...

I am a statue
I am cold as ice
And steady as hollow stone

Despite the lack of depth
I always look the same

I made myself this way

I was told that no one was coming to save me
And I decided that even if there is nothing inside me
At least I look held together
Like someone you could lean on

The sarcastic voice
The heels that make my 5 foot 7 inch stature tower over everyone saying... "I'm aright with you looking up at me."

I thought I was strong
I thought it looked like strength for so long
When I've never been strong enough
And at the end of the day

I'm not sure what strength looks like

Dreams

If eyes really are windows to the soul
Than he knows

Our DNA just held hands
And he can feel my sadness
It transcends reality and sits on our shared chromosomes

I gave myself set amounts of time
To be destructive
Angry
But sadness won't confine itself to my time
I can not bind it and force submission
No music is breaking me from it's claws
And sleep doesn't seem as easy to come by as it once was

This is my problem

I'm barely post adolescent
And this was when my life was supposed to begin
This is my moment
And it looks just like everything I dreamed it would be

Did anyone tell me?

Dreams change so quickly
Maybe that's why they slip through my fingers
Dancing in breezes right in front of my face
Reminding me that I can't hold them

This was my dream
Until 4 excruciating months ago
And who would have known
That my dream is missing little fingers and toes

I can not communicate
I can not write
I know nothing of this sadness
Or microscopic heart beats

I know nothing of these dreams

Wish My Life Away

I walk.

Sidewalks made of diamonds and gold. The water was flowing into pearl gutters and I may have noticed, had I ever looked down.

I promise.

I would not have tripped had my dreamy head not been stuck in the sky looking for airplanes going somewhere ... where the grass must be green.
While crayon stained greenery lay around me.


I may have looked that child in the eyes one more time and noticed that they are not so different from mine, had I not been sitting around writing the "To-Do" list for my life.

I could have seen how beautiful my life is here and now if I were not always so bent on being somewhere else.... right now.


I would have loved better.

Asked for more solid things less likely to slip through my little fingers.

I would have seen that you needed me and cared enough to go.

I would have set fire to the street and pained our hearts on graffiti stained nothings.

Just to prove that this is my life and I'm right where I belong.


Fear never held me. My walls are cold and tall reminding me of all the places where only other people can go. I would love more. I would be fearlessly unafraid.

I could have been a good many things.

Had I not wished my life away.

Funerals

We should get together and cry.

... or have a funeral.

Please, tell me the difference.

We should pull our sorrow down to frail finger tips and hold hands compounding the distance between our minds.

Funerals are familiar faces.

They said that there's nothing worse than losing a child, but I never knew until I shook uncomfortable hands with her eyes. She said that it's like living through your own death and you no longer belong in this world or the next.

Her earth is a holding place.

Much like the girl in the next room.

Sometimes I think I can hear her soul begging to be set from from that shell of a mechanical body and I can't help but wonder.
What have we done to her?

I never thought death would look so merciful.

His hands were stiff blocks of ice and I could see the black sutures in their poor attempt to bring his lips into harmony and silence him... forever.
We have the same eyes and I was begging that he open them one more time.

He rose and conquered the grave.

Etched into my mind making an epitaph at every funeral... every wake.

I never said it out loud. I knew it was crazy before the thought was born, but death was sitting on my shoulder and I couldn't name him friend or foe.

He just was.



I will dance at your funeral if you promise to cry at mine.

I will hold your hand so tight that death has no choice but to take us at the same time.

Conscious

Tossed back and forth between my hands
I juggled the thought halfheartedly
Half keeping my distance

Partly rolling around in my brain
And mostly laying on the floor trying to breathe again


I was supposed to move on
Wake up and decide to be done
With little to no pain

This was supposed to be a minimally invasive procedure


I stayed too long...

I like pain
It's an old friend and oddly comforting like a blanket
... in reverse

And I'm pulling away
Slowly or quickly
Whichever feels right


... I'm moving on
One conscious decision at a time

There's nothing natural about this feeling

Natural Disaster

The ground would shake beneath us

Much like earthquakes we shake
Live on fault lines
Standing between revealing everything
And keeping just enough secret to cause a tremor when we speak

I knew that your love would be bigger than me
Bigger than my will
Larger than my abilities

Only your love
The size of quaking catastrophes
Could tear down my walls
And at the end of the day
I lived knowing that
God knew only an earthquake would shake me

We'll live like tornadoes
And love like tsunamis
We'll care like floods
And in the end

We'll always make a way
We'll always Believe



It will be worth it, only when I know that I would be better with you than I ever was without. We will love more, live more, care more, and do more. I've been living afraid of giving up my dreams....

But your my dream.

My dream.

The Things I Hate

You're like an ocean
I can't breathe in your presence
And if I were ever under you
I would surely die

We're Communists
We look great on paper
But we don't actually work...

Just another bad idea


And I've been kicking it with Amy since I was 17 and I wish we weren't so much the same but "I'll be some next man's other woman too"...

I've been drawing this out with other people's lyrics
With mistakes that I've already made
But at least I know how it ends
I've been waiting to get angry enough to want something different
To love enough to know that I deserve more
To care enough to shatter into a million pieces
And lay knowing that's where I belong

...


I've been painting my life with green dreams
And purple promises
Breaking
Looking much like what I said I did not want
But am too afraid to hope for... more
I want more

I'm taking these moments in strides
I'm refusing to wish my life away
And from the outside
This is my dream
And I'm living it
Selfishly

I guess I'm still too young to realize that time is a gift
Not a right of birth



I used to hear Your voice in sirens
See You in street lights

I used to find You in broken lives and beautiful faces
I found meaning in Your arms
And hope in promises
That for the first time in my life
I knew would never be broken

Your voice was in whispers and screams

And I swore I would never look for You again
At the bottom of my own bottles of truth serum
At the end of joints
In the silence between my sarcasm

Why do I do the things I hate...

Cold Hands and Summer Days

I loved you long before I knew how...

That was my favorite shirt. I don't know why, but I've always looked good in yellow. It shone like the sun straight over us and all around us. Your eyes were the best part of my day speaking words to me much more sweet than anything that ever leaked from your forgetful mouth.

You were so much of heaven that I forgot to hate earth.
A peace in my chaotic mind.

When you looked at me... serenity met insanity and they bred beautiful babies who looked just like the space between our eyes.... stop. Take a breath.
Some call it fate, but I refer to it as creation.

Like waves meeting at the shore to kiss... our blue eyes. Blue eyes.

I might should have been a little more tactful when I told you never to wear that shirt again. I should have walked a little longer. It didn't really matter if there was a hole in my jeans, we should have kept walking.

My new flip flops were hurting my feet.

There it is...
I didn't want to tell you in the moment because I was embarrassed, but that's just how selfish I am.

I just wish you would have told me that you had a month to live. I promise that I would have kept walking. I promise.

I adored every rock you kicked.

It was the first time that I feared a good feeling and it felt like insanity pained like a goddess.

You always felt like a dream come true. A boy I stared at from across the room in middle school and barely dared to wish for.

You told me it was alright when I awkwardly walking in my body. You taught me to stop hating. You taught me to live before you died and I kept on mostly because I knew it was what you wanted. I wanted you to have my life, and I wanted your eternity. Ironically enough I got it on earth, but I never meant for it to be measured in months. I was thinking decades. I was thinking babies and foreign countries. I was thinking about us.

Your hand was cold, maybe it was a foreshadowing. It was the middle of the summer...

and your hand was deathly cold.