I’m dreaming up free-falling into something deep, 
but I’m clinging to the shred of five seconds 
nothing but gravity has her hands on me.  
Sometimes I feel like I’m getting over everything. 
Sometimes I feel strong enough to put precisely my needs,
and others, I want to crawl inside a memory
of a version of myself who knew herself quite well. 
Far before now.  Or then.  

It’s become clear to me that it doesn’t matter how where I go
because your eyes won’t look at me that way again
and that’s the home I look for in every place.  
Look at all the space in the room where we once lived
when I was always trying to move-
You were on Saturday, and I, lost in the week, but
we were happy, darling. 
I understand now all those things you saw in me
struggling to float to the surface.
You saw the disarray, but you heard my heart.
You felt the heat source when I was lost in the sunset
and it was enough.  But I wasn’t, for me.
And only, for you, have I felt so… real.  
So much more me than I could have dreamed up.
And I loved You.

You love someone else and it fills my heart to know,
but I can’t help but find that every fresh start leads back to you,
in this way or that.
We stopped colliding because I started hiding,
in the nooks and crannies of our universe,
which leaves us on the same street, in the same song,
a regret apart.  Time and time again.

I realize now...

that it’s not enough to have someone who hears you if they’re not listening.
that it’s not enough to feel understood if you cannot trust the person who understands.
that it’s not enough to have raging passion if there is no friendship.
that friends are the rarest and most special gift you can give to yourself, but everything must be harvested.
that all relationships take work, but none worth having should feel like work.
that when it starts getting really, really hard and you start feeling really, really far away from yourself, it’s not right.
that time doesn’t change people. It just makes you farther and harder to certain things. And closer and softer to others.
that people are innately selfish, but claiming your feelings doesn’t make you selfish. It makes you You.
that insecure people will betray you to preserve some idea they have about themselves, and that sometimes, just because you’re alone in something, doesn’t mean you’re wrong.
that sometimes no one wins. Sometimes things are just sad.
that a common spirit and ultimate values and an open mind are the greatest tools in the best romances of your life.
that a history with someone doesn’t justify not being taken care in the present. Though it is sad because you’ll never have the same history with any body else.
that today is mine. And yours. And we can make that everything.
that fearing being vulnerable is a waste of time. Everything delicious and real in life requires risk. Tell her you love her. Tell her you were wrong.
that what you do does not define you. Only weak people will judge you by which boxes you fit in. True loves will embrace your limitlessness. No walls.

Total waking up

Autumn has slid her cool hands up my sides, leaving me with goosebumps.  I take in how the leaves gather in dry gutters, anticipating the rain, while I walk through the damp grass.  I lean my toes into dusty floorboards on the porch and look ahead- my room is aglow, beckoning.  I slide my key into its lock and peer through my window tapestry to my bed, dimly lit by the corner lamp.  I think I see you there curled up on the left side with your back away from me.  I think I see the ripples of your spine.  I think of tracing them with my fingertips and pressing our cold bodies together until we become warm.

You are not here.  I know that as I open the door and see my comforters tangled into something much more lifeless.  But I know before I open the door that you are not here.  It is my hope that deceives me.  It’s the truth that lets me down because it doesn’t.  I don’t know why I hurt you.  

I spend a lot of time in window panes.  I spend a lot of time awake when the world is sleeping.  I’ve seen 4 sunrises this week.  I’ve taught myself Spanish, read Rumi’s works, and begun to read music.  I’ve pulled all the photos from my walls, but yours.  I think that if I think hard enough, you’ll know my thoughts.  I think that if I cry hard enough, it may rain.  And that if I play this song enough, you’ll hear it too.  

I think every car that drives by is your car- and I watch the headlights scan my living room as they turn the street corner and disappear.  I hope to hear the stopping of an engine.  I hope to hear your highheels on my stoop.  I hope to hear your body pressing against the door.  I hope to know your arms around me.   To feel your weight in my arms, and to put mine in yours, and truly hold one another, until all of this stops.  Until all the drums in this big circle become one beat, one heartbeat that moves inside of me.  

Seasons change as time changes and people change with that time and hard times can bring us from us and good times can bring us back, but all time is our time, and I feel this time.  I think, sometimes, we believe our lives are hard, and then things shift, and we realize we were coasting all along.  I think, sometimes, good people do bad things because they don’t believe they are strong enough to do the good thing.  I think things are not always as they appear to be.  Sometimes what makes sense is nothing sensical.  Sometimes everybody loses in the name of something much weaker than the love it began with.   

I know this is not simple.  I know I have hurt you in ways I never dreamed I might.  I know it will be hard to look in my eyes for a long time.  I know you are silent, though you feel loud, because you love me.  I know I am loud, though I feel silent, because I love you. 

The irony is that this has become the total waking up I’ve been hoping for.  Maybe it was looming ahead.  Maybe it took losing the one thing I believed in.  Maybe it was accountability.  Or the lesson.  Maybe it was this stillness and this silence I needed.  I’d been running franticly for so long, I forgot why I started, and where I was going.  Even this pain I’ve never felt before- of losing people I care about, and feeling betrayed by those I’d trusted and built life with… and of letting myself down… has woken me up.  And pushed the blocks into something that exposes the path I’ll walk down now.    

This isn’t about casualities.  Or what was.  And though this room of friends seems much smaller than it did, I feel like perhaps that’s how it should have been for a long time, now.  Except for the missing one.  I was the vacancy this year- and now, you are the one who is not here.  I have miss for you.  

I am coming home.  I have nothing on my back and fire in my chest- there is no cover up; I am stunned by this feeling of feeling and I want to feel it all over me, even if it hurts.  I may wait here for some time, for you, I know.  I expect to feel cold and to go mad in moments and to feel sad for this place and to feel humbled by the possibilities.  I’ve never been truly naked for you, before.  I never let go and opened up.  I know you think I only fight when the battle is over, but I don’t think this is a battle, and I hope this will never be over.  

You know me, but I haven’t shown myself to you.  I’d like to take your hands and press them to my cheeks and let you look into me.  I’d like to take mine and trace your palms so you know I will not let go and I will not let you down.  I have spent much of this time with you, chasing the tail of a kite, that was so high, I didn’t realize it wasn’t a kite at all- just a storm cloud blowing over.  It was not real, but my hurt was, and my disarray was, and the way I confided in you and cried in you and laughed in you and loved you was real.  I have felt, in many ways, like an echo of my former- something with the sound, but not the energy or awareness of the creator.  I have that now.  Like a root pulled from it’s source and pressed back again, like a skipping record set, life turning back toward the sun.  

I will fight for you because you are good.  I love you in ways I’ve never loved another human being.  I believe you are my soulmate.  I am not the dark, though I was in it.  It’s still me, here, and I know that you know that.  I can handle the slander.  I can handle how the world around us will shift.  I can handle feeling exposed.  I can handle all of that, but to lose you.  

Eternal sunshine

The sunshine outside my window
deceived me today, when I woke
because it smelled like rain-
and I felt the weight dense air bears
before a clouds about to break-
we sat in that gray.  For so long, love.

But it was today, I knew
would be the last day.
So I savored the small anxious moments
before I lost you
and you weren't mine any more.

It's black and white now;
I can't dispute our reason
and I won't be the one thing standing in your way
I won't tug your dress hem and look at you the way I do-
I sang you my heart song as you moved to the door
creaking over my soul's floorboards.
And I didn't stop with the click of the lock.

I held on as tightly as you held on to me.
Now it's time to leave. 


I tried to take a shower to wash the ache from me
I stared at my ribs and saw the emptiness
                my chest and watched my heart slide
                down into my gut, where it's rested awhile.
I tried to get clean- and took in my nude body
and all I saw was you.  Me and you.
I never felt alive until we made love.

That's the truth.
This goodbye tastes bad on my tongue
but I know I need to swallow it any way.
Because I'm hungry for change.
I'm scared of all I've yet to feel.
I'll Eternal Sunshine my mind to erase you
but I'll still find traces of you.  In me.

Igloos of sugar cubes

I'm acutely aware that it's time to demand more.
From everything.  From a day.  From what I fill that day with.
From you.  From me.
I'm kind-of-sort-of calling this a scrap year.
Not in any way I'd take back;  I learned.  I did.
But I didn't grow in stride.
And I'm not walking in stride.
Most days I sit in this.
I haven't done a lot of that twentysomethingmumbojumbo
that gives a person a superficial reason
to believe they're successful.
And I certainly haven't found success in the real world.
(Wherever that is).
I just want to be proud of myself.  Deep in there.
I want to know that when I say things like "myself,"
I know who that's referring to.
I want to live in a house of cadence, honesty,
integrity and deliciously lived hootinanny.
Not words.  Not my house of cards.
Not in toothpicks or igloos of sugar cubes.
That break in weight.  And fall in strain.  And melt in heat.

AugustDitties

The streetlight held the door open for me;

he knew I needed this tonight- to believe in the

grace of something figurative 

like a gentleman with a light.

I suck in this stale cigarette and star-stained air and 

I take his hand, though I know better.

I'm really alone, here. 

We're racing the night,

into the depths of something unseen. 

I'm not doing this because I believe, 

I'm doing it to find something to believe in. 

__________

It's below my surface because it sunk, not because it's rooted. 

__________

Tired and creased,

I'm crinkled rice paper in an old Bible

with no religion, no scripture or praise

along the incision of the page

I sit in the blankness between no lines.

_________

There's so much poetry I want to write 

in the late hours of the night 

that I forget come morning time 

so I sleep in (always)- 

to preserve the limbo state 

between feeling moved by something 

and moving something. 

I want to wake up in this- 

not shake it awake every day. 

I'm crazed, living in this paranoid place

where everything that rivets is so far away

and everything close is too delicate to touch 

because I've melted it down so many times

that it's brittle in my clumsy, child's hands.

Mumford and Sons

Roll away your stone I will roll away mine
Together we can see what we will find
Don't leave me alone at this time
For I am afraid of what I will discover inside

You told me that I wouldn't find a home
Beneath the fragile substance of my soul
And I have filled this void with things unreal
And all the while my character it steals

Darkness is a harsh term don't you think
Yet it dominates the things I see

It seems that all my bridges have been burned
But you say 'That's exactly how this grace thing works’
It's not the long walk home that will change this heart
But the welcome I receive with every start

Darkness is a harsh term don't you think
And yet it dominates the things I see

Stars hide your fires
For these here are my desires
And I won't give them up to you this time around
And so I will be found
With my stake stuck in the ground
Marking the territory of this newly impassioned soul

And you, you've gone too far this time
You have neither reason nor rhyme
With which to take this soul that is so rightfully mine

Mostly when she breathes

Mostly when she breathes,
Her exhale melts candle's wax
down my bumpy wall,
filling the space like honey
in the pores of the oat nut bread
I ate in the sunrise
on the day we cried
and said goodbye.
The light outside
this room is turned off
but I feel the warmth
beneath my door frame
of a dull, flickering flame
untamed, bedside,
calling out to me-
b r e a t h e.
I remember what I've
remembered to forget
and my hand comes to my mouth,
holding in my thoughts
like a forbidden phrase
that wants out.
I remember these fingers
traced your outline
as I watched your eyes
change weather patterns
I remember understanding
"beautiful"
for the first time in a long time,
I feel this way.
Mostly when she breathes,  
Mostly on my cheek.

White noise

I'm clawing back these roles

like the black crayon scribbled

over your rainbow- 

who's your picture of?  Not what.

The wax is cluttering the space 

beneath my fingernails

and I question- why there's no color here,

but the droning white of a living room

with nothing on the walls.

I can't teach you to hear the music 

I do when my eyes flutter, awake

to drink in the day- and feel it all.

To feel is the guide from here to there

in this life- to live in the sound

and the guts and heartstrings

of your internal orchestra

and not in the white noise

of what you're made out to be.

You are not what you do, but who you are.  You define your roles; your roles do not define you.  If you live a life consistent with your feelings and gut, and stay honest with that moment-to-moment-to-moment, your life will be true to you- and unforced and uncomplicated.  Only when you don't listen to that and you allow what you do to be bigger than who you are- you lose yourself.  And only if you allow the way you think you should be to stifle the voice of who you actually are- you lose yourself.  Learning to listen is the hardest part of life- learning to listen to yourself means facing the uglies, taking responsibility, and learning to be vulnerable, but it is the only way to turn the white noise, the dull buzz in the background of a life, into sound you can move to and believe in.  And live in, fully.

Secret life

It's the silence between us
that scares the shit out of me:
that fills the room
when your eyes close to the world
and mine grow wide,
and my breaths drip to my hipbones
as I strain not to move you.
This is the way I lay
and think too much
when you slip into dreams
and I, into the endless in-between, of
Wanting:
the beautiful things... I wish we were doing
the beautiful love... I want to be making
the beautiful words... I want to be exchanging.
I feel a hypnic jerk
of restrained, restless energy that keeps my legs twitching
as yours hold to me
begging me not to run, tonight.
"Not tonight, baby."
I fake contentment, because it feels good
to be this close to someone like you,
though in moments like now,
I feel like you don't know Me at all-
for this is when I like to dig
and be dug into.
In my mouth, I can only taste
the waste- of such a spark.
Can't we just run
and forget what must be done?
This is when I get real.  
Instead, I feel really alone.
It's the secret life I live
while existing two inches from your face
that makes this hard,
because you're here, but so far away,
and it's simply not my place
to call you home.