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.

Softer Skin

I always remember the strangest things about you.
The way your hands look when you drive,
The way a smile looks like
Hanging from the corner of your mouth.

The linger of your self
 ( pitter patter of baby feet, shallow sounds of arguments now ended)
seeps into the cracks of your childhood home
And every floorboard tells a story of you.
Every wall and hallway still reeking with your sound,
asks after you.

I remember the way the sun painted you gold.
Early morning couplets we would make,
Arms tucked loosely around each other,
Face to face, as innocent as children.
And I do not know why
I could not keep the days
When we slept in our softer skin.

when you look me in the eye, in the intimacy of silence
I never know what to say to you.

I remember you in the hallway,
Hands hanging limp.
Accusations and questions folded in your brow.
And every memory ends this way,
The wind down and soundlessness
Of your heart and stomach on a race to the floor.

Falling out of love is a different music.
Chords being dissected and faltering haphazardly into silence,
The last ones courageously dying off in a handful of ugly notes.
So unlike the carefully constructed love poems I would leave in your mail box.

I only know how to end things sadly
So I will say this:
I love the way you reach out in the middle of the night to hold me.
I love when you are gentle,
Even by accident.

The last chapter

Kiss me, let it be final.
Just for me, just once,
Finish the story.

Ships in the night must be about us,
We drift in and out of each other's lives.
And there's never a certain beginning,
Never a defined end.

We're just a handful of half finished sentences
Void of the commitment of tenses.
Floating without wheels or anchors,
Captains or passengers pleading for mercy.

You said "maybe in the future..."
But I know what that means.
I understand how life gets in the way.
But If you want something you don't give up on it.
I thank you,
But I don't need kindness, I need closure.
So take back the life boats that are just for show,
We both know we won't be needing them now. 

The next time we kiss will be the last.
You don't know it yet,
Not in those terms.
But like old Velcro we are just now beginning to unstick.
And this maiden voyoge isn't so maiden anymore.

And I will always remember how special I felt
On a night drive with you.
Music and darkness and the clearest sky with the brightest stars
And all the possibilities sitting in the seat next to you,
Young and infinite and aging.
But I know I was never special to you,
I just thought that if I wished hard enough
I would be.
Just the endless madding hope that one day
One of us would wake up different.
On a new shore, at another place, in a different time.

And so I am finally giving up on you.

I will run until it doesn't hurt anymore,
So far it hasn't happened yet.

Just a waste of time

Obsession is going through your Facebook friends at 2am,

Wondering which ones you slept with

( the number is twelve. I think he said twelve,

Was that including me? Was I thirteen?)

And wondering if it was just the pretty ones.

I guess you can do a lot in 10 years.

Obsession is being turned on by you

And being confused when you touch me and then shoot me down.

Wondering if it's on purpose

Or if you're accidentally gently fucking with my head.

Obsession is where I keep you in my sketch pad.

That picture you sent to me on snap chat

That you have no idea that I saved

( don't worry, it's just your face)

That I touch instead of the real thing.

Studying the microscopic patterns in your irises

And the crop circles in your beard,

Knowing I will never get the details right.

It's difficult to erase you, even there.

Obsession is feeling like I'm in the most beautiful moment ever

Sitting next to you in your sisters car

As we're on our way to a show that your last fuck buddy is throwing.

I want to parade around like the better replacement.

I want to show you off,

I want everyone to know.

But instead I sit on a couch half the night drinking my alcoholic snapple.

Laughing with some of your friends that I wish were my friends.

Being hit on by a 40 year old rapper,

But not by you, not where everyone can see.
Not so I ruin your game or make people start asking questions.

In retrospect I hope I acted normal enough.

Obsession is embarrassing myself over and over.

It's wanting to read your journals
To know what you think about me,
Because you don't say
And you never tell me I'm pretty.
It's when my eyes slide over to your phone
And I remembered when you said you delete all your messages and don't save nudes
I just want to know if that's true.

It's in the small day to day pains between texts that grow
Farther and Farther
Apart.
It's how you don't know that I know 
the way you talk about me when I'm not around,
If at all.
And how, even so,
I wish you called.
(crazy for sweetly cradling that degradation.)
It's the sad realization in 

"whats great about you anyway?"
And that you're not as nice as you insisted.

Sometimes Wednesdays still feel special 

With no reason to be.

 Sometimes I forget to forget you 
And wonder how you are, 

 Sometimes I pass your house and hardly notice that you live there anymore.

But mostly you've become a ghost,
Something to stand on the edges of other memories.

One day I will say your name for the last time,
The syllables will feel strangely unfamiliar by then.
Sharp dusty relics falling shakily off the tongue,
Consonants rusted and rounded smooth filling my mouth like stones.
As if they were never moaned aloud in the heat of passion 
Or a moment of grief.
Never whispered like weary prayers against your skin,
As if they were never alive...

Or ever said at all.

Put Away

You only want to touch me after dark.
Night time holds affection captive
And I’m only familiar in half light.

Nobody knows you steal kisses
When stop lights and street lamps turn on.
My convex shapes blend and bend into your eclipse.

I return though,
Your front porch has become something silent I cross
In the few seconds it takes for you to open your front door.

I accept your hesitant touch,
The hurried way you make love to me,
Momentary sparks in the darkness.
Tracing and retracing the the nations of your skin,
The desert of your back,
The sharp stone cliffs of your hands..
The fields of grass stretching off into sighing plains
when the stubble of your cheek brushes the smoothness of mine
Almost by accident.

I kindle these fragments of quick light
So when I return
And climb into bed pulling the covers up over my loneliness,
I can retrace the feeling of sunrises on my skin.
The golden way it lit lovers interlocking in sleep,
The moments I knew what it was to be endless.
I remember a time
you wouldn’t be ashamed to hold my hand in the day light.
You wouldn’t be afraid to say my name
in more than a whisper.

It’s 2am, the streets are empty,
Your house is cold.
Tonight I will leave your neighborhood un-haunted,
Tired of being a ghost.

Nothing Is That a Was Not Before

I saw something that made me sad today.
I wont, . . . No, I will not tell you.
Keeping the secret is keeping the beauty to me.
Keeping the emptiness.
Keeping the hollow ache, the one that makes it hurt to breathe.
And you somehow now feel special because you've kept it to your self.

When I started this I meant to tell you something,
Something about the uncertainty of missing you.
Fuck it. It's gone now, like so many lost thoughts I don't bother to write down anymore.
I meant to say that from missing you I buried myself in the damp, wet, earth.
I covered myself from the sun because it was like your love
And I lay there in the dark dreaming of your warmth.
But that's utter shit, isn't it?

It all is.
Maybe it always was.
But who am I trying to impress?
I cannot satisfy myself and that is the key,
The buzzing of the hive
That tells me I'm no good
And the voices are all my own.
They prick me, stinging venom.
I lie here uncomfortable
but hardly fatal,
Hardly in danger,
Hardly importend enough to matter.

Blue

I lost you somewhere between Jesus and the floor boards.
And these thin tissue paper words are just that.
Frail and transparent,
I hold them up to the moon to see their faint shades dancing listlessly
And I wonder vaguely what happened to us.

Was it the light that made us realize we no longer wanted this?
Should we of just continued by candle light and soft perfumes of night flowers?
Turning and speaking love poems on sheets of satin,
No, not that.
Anything but, is what we truly are.

We aren't exotic night birds.
We are simple.
Your ribs are shades of black and white
Devoid of color I trace them with failing fingers
Searching for the truth as solid as news print.
We haven't talked for weeks.
But in this moment there is only me and you
And blue collared cotton bleached by moonlight.
A new england farm house
Set alight by noiseless fire
(So quietly we burn).

We are drifting apart and it is already late.
And I'm wondering
If I should say goodbye,
Or make love to you one last time.