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.