Your small room ll

It was the first poem I read,
Really read,
After flipping through it.

I sat on the corner of your bed
In the light from the hallway
In your room now empty of you
And lonely
Because now it was just a room
And less you.

You are this orange blanket,
You are your red sweater,
You are your tabby cat beard
That runs along my spine in tickles
When your room turns watery green in the morning
As if we lived under a lake.

You are those quick slanted grey blue eyes
That dart,
Slower than your mind,
Slower than your mouth,
With its handful of honest words.
That squint of appreciation as I peer over
 the smooth shoulder of some girl.
That cried for me once or twice.
And I made my hands wet from wiping your face.

And I understood what the man said
 when he wrote
"This isn't the whole story.
The fact is, I was still in love."

Because I know what it is to have the world be too loud.
I know that sometimes when you hold me my skin feels flayed
And I know there is something about light and what it does to us.

"But a body wishes to be held
& held and what can you do
about that?"

"My only advice is not to go away.
Or, go away.
most of my decisions have been wrong."

But a body wants to be held and held,
A heart needs to be loved,
And what can one do about that.

I would have given you anything.
The world on a string.
The best and bright treasures.
The intangible collection of soul
That I proudly and with awe
Pulled out and showed you
Piece by piece,
A child's show and tell.

But you couldn't see the magic
In the odd display.
The stones were just stones.
The broken toys,
The glued together heart,
The tenacious bravery,
Were all just junk.
And I was shamed.

And I tried to be whatever you needed.
Whenever.
So the tree became a river
That flowed around your every whim
With little resistance.
With eyes averted at your faults.
With unconditional mercy
For ever planned betrayal.
With acceptance for every other lover
That you loved instead of me.

And I kept few things hidden
Away from your hand.
Miniscule pieces of me,
And when I left
These became the seeds I planted.
Accepting the loss of self
While it grew.
I am not a river.
I cannot bend and bend and bend
Forever
While you harvest from me,
From the best fruits and call them bitter.

While I shy away from the kindness of others,

And hide from the concern of friends,
The questions of strangers.
Because I don't know why,
I don't know and I make the excuses to protect you.
Because you are an iccarus of a boy and you don't know your wings are melting. 

I cannot save you.

I cannot save you,

Because I am a tree 

And you, 

You are made of paper hellbent on the sun. 

Love never ends

Love woke me in the morning,
Stung me with the pin prick of heartache
As I lay defenseless and open-
Not yet able to tell if this was a dream.
The foggy mornings you wrapped your arms around me tightly
I thought it was just one morning of forever
Instead of a handful of numbered days.

The story replayed and chased me 

through my sheets still slick with sweat.

Hunted me down with a longing I am yet too young to be haunted by. 

Spun in my mind til I was dizzy and mad with stars.
I wonder when I will be my own again.
For I am no longer yours,
You are no longer mine,
We loved eachother for a brief blink of time.

I wonder when you will stop showing up 

between a strangers cologne on a crowded sidewalk 

and the last restaurant we ever shared a meal in togther.
Because you are no longer mine.
And if I am no longer yours 

Why are all my insides scattered like a toddlers puzzle?
Why didn't you put my pieces back neatly and in their box on the shelf?
  where did those small pieces go to die?
I've looked through my possessions, under my couch, and through my closets
I still haven't found them yet.
I stopped painting a year after knowing you,
I said nothing about everything a year after I left,
I forgot how to dress myself,
Regressed.
Left in such a hurry with my possession stuffed in garbage bags 

that I didn't bring all the fragments 

No. No.
I stitched myself togther but the wound hasn't closed.
I'm not alone or lonely.
With all the offers of company.
Just missing
But not missed.

You never think of me,
I know you never did.
It would be so much easier to hate you.
Instead of working around the pain of loss
Like a blanket whose tightly knit edges my over worried fingers have worn down.

When does it stop hurting,
And when does it just stop?

Mars

Where does love go to die?

Is it in plain sight?
A ventilator on the termanilly ill,
Slowly the breaths space out and become shallow.
The jarring resuscitation over and over
Until the lungs fill up with water and are crushed,
Drowning dry and unable to translate air
into life.

Or like an animal
Dragging it's self into the desert wilderness
To find a quiet place,
Is it alone love goes?
Unable to speak the same dialect
We have unlearned, our tongues moving backwards
Until comrades are enemies.
We just don't know how to negotiate out another fragile peace treaty.
In our dead languages we have lost each other,
the siege has left us too short on white flags.
Battered we go our separate ways,
Too weary for another round.

But what if love goes out in a flood pain to Mars?
Leaving a graceful blue and green planet
To the heavy air and red dust,
To the cold numbness of space.
The abrasive sandstorm, eternal in its march,
To wear down the kisses from your mouth
Of a love that just couldn't love anymore.
I'll take aliens or emptiness,
Leave me the great void
Something you haven't tamed, touched, infected
Only me on the sterile planet
Hosting the terminal disease of you.
The scars you've left leave me malformed,
They colapse into a black hole in me
Eating all the stars
Even the ones you eclipsed.

Love is as final as death.
I would of welcomed the ring of black suits
Lowering me down.
A marker to say "love passed here"
A still born hope that never breathed.
But the heart is a simple organ
That only knows how to play it's part.
A memory is a death that dies again and dies again.

Synesthesia

I don't always see texture as color,
Not always.
The memory of a maroon lattice in a microphone when I was 15.
The celery green of our kitchen
In smooth ovals.

I did tonight.
Making love,
Your arms wrapped around me tightly.
Our ebb and flow
Bringing sunsets of purple-blue, pink, and yellow
Behind my eyes
Against the silhouette of a black leafless tree 

I had seen somewhere once.

I will remember lemon wine,
The onyx lace edge of a stocking
Warm in the wash of colored past-season Christmas lights.
How you touched my skin with your gentle hands
Like it was to be worshipped.
The secrecy of reverent whispered epitaphs

That were
Lost, forever lost in the dark forrest of my hair.
The songs I played
On the midnight drive home
As it hailed
Were all blue.

The Last Time I Ever Saw You

We drove in the car, shared darkness.
The dashboard lights had us under their spell.
Swelled with desire you reached out
To touch, my leg, my hand,
Briefly a grabbing breast like ripened fruit,
The last of summers harvest.
Autumn was our season.
Caressed between thighs, drawing back,
Laughing at my frustration.
Boyish teeth glinting in the moonlight
Leaking through.
Desperate with want I grabbed your hand, my lips
Brushing skin, drawing you in,
Like I had many darknesses ago
When we were all tangled heat,
Senseless passion,
Foolish youth.
Pausing, you dropped my off.
Strange sudden shyed look in your eye.
Autumn was our season,
But this,
was winter now.

A Day In The Life Of An Ordinary Housewife

He hit me again today.
The slap painting a primary red onto my cheek.
The stinging surprise turning my face into a burning question mark.
Today there would be nothing further, thankfully.
My eyes swim but I do not cry
For outside the sun is shinning and there are birds
So I am happy.

Today there was more.
He hit me and then there were rough hands
Pushing me down into thin sheet covering the mattress.
The breathlessness as his weight pinned me there;
Black spots dancing into my vision.
The hardly noticeable agony of what our lower halves were doing.
My eyes roll to the window.
The sun is shinning but there are no birds today
But perhaps there will be grass in the spring.
Luxuriant, soft, fragrant, blades of grass and I think of this
And I am happy.

And today was the last time
That he would hit me.
Blue and violent blooming on my face like badly placed make up.
(I'm so sorry dear, let me get a tissue to wipe it off)
The red lines exclaim on pale skin where he took my clothes off too hastily.
There were no birds or sun.
A white sheet wrapped around my face and neck so I could not see the window,
But only stars once, when my head hit the corner of the bedside table.
I will not get to see the grass in the spring,
But I think of it winding it's roots over me
And the flowers that will grow there,
And I think of how lovely they will be.
Perfect and delicate, fragrant and frail, pink petals that I may never touch -
But still, I think of them,

And I am so very happy.