I wanted to write for you.

I wrung myself out,

but found that I did not know the words I needed you to hear--

that I could love you a thousand different ways,

or kiss you with the blessing of a thousand different sunsets,

and never grasp how to tell you what you mean to me.

But you are my foundation,

and I am in the process of building a life that I might be able to live,

because you are the only thing that has ever made the ground stop 

moving beneath my feet

because those kind green eyes still my roiling soul.

I fell in love with you as my heart knocked against your ribs in the smoky darkness. there is something undeniable about you, some part of you that echoes me, some resonance that leaves me breathless in those kind green eyes, some part of you that sees me for what I am and does not find me wanting, does not seek to grind down, but instead, to build

I used to tell myself that I was broken, every rubber-band snap of my beating heart washing inadequacy through my veins. Hot-blooded, thin-skinned. And knowing I was worthless, I gave up.

But you touch me like I’m whole, you tell me it’s going to be ok, and I believe you, because there is something so right in the way you piece me together in the dark.

Maybe, just this once, I am enough.

Too late.

When the hurt comes hard and fast and there isn’t any warning

and I’m numb,

breathless in the smoke

I know you’ll fail me

when it matters like this

(but how can you catch someone who’s already on the ground?)

Necessity is the mother of invention, and I myself am no exception:

the pieces of me that were not passed between my lips like slips of filmy bible pages,

are neatly folded sterile units of of whoever I need to be

layer upon layer of crisply stacked linen napkins with their edges unforgivingly aligned

layer upon layer of the women I became to survive

~~~~~~

(Inspiration for “crow”: the Aesop’s fable about a thirsty crow feeding stones into a jar to reach the water at the bottom, whose moral is “Necessity is the mother of invention.”)

Steady

when the stars hang heavy overhead and you are lost in the brambles of what should have been,

when everything you were seems to be more of a question and less of an answer,

when the very ground beneath your feet sways in the breeze,   

I will steady you in my arms.

If you were mine

I'd scatter bite-sized love poems under your feet, like a trail of breadcrumbs back to my embrace.

The way I need you reminds me of the way I used to need a midnight cigarette, a need so deep I could feel it rising in my chest, when all of the world had come crashing down around me and my hope had begun to seep slowly into the parched earth,

only you don’t turn my lungs to crumbling ash inside me, to some pickled version of what’s left of me collapsing in,

you make my life brighter than a streelight at 3 AM, something sweet enough to make my teeth ache

May the draft curl the smoke and the hurt curl your lip May the waves come and wash you up somewhere far away May your heart lay down like candles in the rain May every step you take take you further from me

Offerings in Ink

“Your body is a temple.”

hear this whispered over wine

glancing towards the blooming ink that I cannot disguise.

“Your body is a temple.”

and my ink-stuck tangled skin

blooms like Eden on the edges and burns like hell within.

My body is a temple

and my blossoms offerings

to the god of light in darkness and of broken, damaged things.

Funeral cake

There's something thing they don't tell you about funerals is that after all is said and done when the cake has been eaten and the wine has been drunk and the tears have slipped down your shoulders as everyone else cries for your loss they dont tell you that when everyone else gets to walk away you become your own funeral procession; you get to carry the hearse alone

So I’m sitting here wondering

why it is that I’m still drawing breath

when most everything I’ve ever lived for is six feet under,

or else 6 hours away

when everyone I love abandons me for dreams or love or death

when I essentially have nothing left

when every part of me that saw good in the mirror

has flickered into darkness and begun to smoke

I am of the opinion that you cannot heal unless you are broken,

and darling, I am still in the process of falling apart.

Do not ask me to mend what is still shifting, while I still wake up each morning to clumps of golden hair and flaking pieces of my mind stuck to a pillowcase

As high as it takes

"How high must you be?" As high as it takes. to chase away memories choking my brain "How are you coping?" As high as it takes. to smother the hurt turning to hate. "Are you ok?" As high as it takes. to piece back a heart that no longer can break.

A note

My father, my best friend, passed away three days ago. I am 19. He will never see me graduate from college, never walk me down the aisle, never meet my children. I spent the first two days in a drunken stupor. Now all I have left is this. My most sincere apologies for the poetry that is going to be on this blog in the coming days, weeks, months, years that it takes me to overcome this loss.