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