Half-Breed

When I met you it was like a caterpillar
turning into a butterfly, because I felt
the stirring of something more powerful,
of wings.
But when I was in the chrysalis,
something went wrong and I
came out all messed up.
Like I was part butterfly but still
part caterpillar. And I couldn't
figure out whether to crawl or fly,
but at least I knew what it felt like
to crawl. So I was crawling around,
and you didn't want to squish me,
but you were already flying, and
you couldn't carry me with you.
Of course not. Off you went and now
I don't have you to compare myself to
anymore, so maybe I have to keep being
this strange half-breed, too many legs
for my wings to work. You know that
half-breeds are sterile, like the donkey,
or the baby born of fairy and human.
You know they never understand
the futility of their lives. You know
they don't know that anything's wrong
with them, because all they ever know
is being half and half. You do know,
because you are half and half yourself
and I loved that about you and I thought
it made us perfect, understanding each
other. And then I lost myself
when I lost you.

~November 29, 2010

Photograph of a Lily

A flower bloomed in my heart
and I thought you could see
what it looked like, but you only
looked at the pale pink fluffy lilies,
like frosting on frosting on a cake
of lace. They're so feminine, you said.
Like you, you meant. So I knew how
to be feminine. Only, the lily I tried
to grow into didn't look anything
like what you liked. And the more
I tried the worse it got, because I
could feel the petals getting scrunched
and you could see my heart wilting.
And then I wasn't a flower and you
were there not to tend me
but to weed me out.

~November 15, 2010

Chance

I'm trying to stay on this side
of the line, where I'm ok. Where my
world is carried out in 3-D, not
the flatness of fear that allows in
only shadows so I know when to
run in my mind. This side with its
purpose, and warmth, and where
God might actually want me to
be happy, or confident. Where I
have a chance. I'm reaching from
just this side of that line, reaching
to hold on to that chance.

~November 10, 2010

Recycle

I want to put it all in a package

every slippery slope of a memory

that I slide down into another

aching depression.

My family is mine but I do not want them.

My life is mine but I do not want it.

My choices are mine but I do not take them.

My past is mine but I wanted to share it

with you.

Not this way, though.

I wanted to see it through you -

safer, warmer, making more sense.

Having more purpose.

I wanted our pasts to bring us together

in a glorious present

to us both, to our future,

to our future children.

I wanted every ache to be soothed

in your love

I wanted every mistake to be rectified

in your understanding

I wanted to find myself through you.

Now I talk to my best friend so much

and I worry that it's too much

I worry that she'll think I'm replacing you

with her, trying to replace you,

trying to fill a need she isn't meant to fill.

And never was. Why is it so easy to

talk to her, and is that a bad thing?

My words pour out and

always seem to be meaningful -

at least to me. I think a dozen times

a hundred times a month

does she resent me for talking so

much? Does she wait for her turn

and never get it? Does she think,

a dozen times, that I am a bore

and will clearly never find someone

who wants to listen to me?

And I eat. Sweets and breads. And I am

like dough but I am not sweet.

And I sleep. And when I am in bed, I wake up

and when I'm up I want to sleep. And when

I feel happy, a song comes on the radio

or a thought is a parasite in my mind

and suddenly I cry because of your old

dorm room, or because my best friend

might not want me to say good

morning to her every morning,

or because I am alone in the toy store

and we aren't selling any toys and this

whole wide world is full of isolation.

And I am an introverted, angst-

ridden adolescent, because I stopped talking

and my growth found its stuntedness in

not just my vegetarian diet but in the

diet of depression. I cannot tell what is

good for me, and what is immature, and

what I should or shouldn't do. Will I ever

know? Does God want me to know what to

do, and feel confident doing it? So many things

were not an issue in the past (the past

before me), like confidence, a billion life

choices, whether or not you spent time

outside. I see your past in my mind and I

want it. I want to BE you. Why?

This package will cost too much to send.

I'll let it sit in a corner or in my car

until maybe I forget what's in it

and can just toss it in the recycling bin

and recycle my memories into something

more useful. That can be my saving grace.

Thank goodness our landlady

put the blue bins in our yard.

~November 10, 2010

Heart I

You are a smudge across my heart -
burst blood vessels, charcoal burn,
the melting cocoa of your skin
left a mark I can't erase.
I know it takes time, but
will my body reabsorb wasted blood
regenerate burnt skin and
reclaim the pale heartbeat
that is the color of my own love?

~November 1, 2010

Heart II

There is a snake in your heart
born of what sins waged against you?
Ask your parents, who formed you
not just from their genes,
their personality quirks, but also
from the pressure of black on
white on black. They may know better
than you what plagues your broken
spirit. And those people you have
broken, who have felt the bite
of your poisoned, poisoning heart -
they know better, too.

~November 1, 2010

Crystal

In silent spaces
my ear forms a rim
like the rim of a crystal
glass when it's wet
and singing.
While your ear holds
the silence inside the glass,
I hear its crystalline song,
spinning with invisible fingers.

~October 26, 2010

A Star if Poisoned

Poison.
Words dripped from your lips
that I'll never hear.
Skin shed from skin
a spindle of fear
splash of anger on
the backdrop of my day.
Not fair.
Never here.
You're a star with no
sky because I blotted you
out.
Now I'm a sky with no star.

~Autumn 2010

Reverse

The problem with searching for cause
is that not everything was bad.
When I say that I want to be
understood, I forget that he did.
When I say I want acceptance, I
forget that he gave it.
When I say I want a world our own,
I forget that we lived there.
But when I write this I remember
that the world was in our
computers,
that he didn't like my skirt
and that I could not explain myself
to my own satisfaction.
Until now, when I find cause.

~October 7, 2010

Height and Breadth

I'm a surfer riding waves of grief,
always searching for the bigger one
that will take me up high enough
to see the breadth of my loss.
The heights of sadness have not been
enough to tide me over till the next
crashing joy. My exploring heart
got wedged in in the deepest crack
of the tallest mountain, and no ocean
can reach to wash it out.

~Autumn 2010

Fabric

My family is fabric that is faded

and threadbare, and yet I still try

to use it to keep myself warm.

Today the wind is blustering

and I can feel each tear, each

cold spot where nothing is left.

I cannot stitch every stitch back.

I do not know what colors to use

and do not have enough thread.

My fingers cramp from trying

to hold the needle and my eyes

strain every moment.

My family is not a loom,

and it will never

be made of whole cloth.

~October 3, 2010

Purpose

Last fall, leaves had a purpose

in changing their color,

air had a purpose

in being cold.

Mornings had a purpose in

breaking early and nights in

falling.

Last fall.

Falling in love was purpose.

This fall there is none.

Leaves stay green but tumble

in spite of it,

cold is chilling

and I cannot love sun or moon.

I know it's me, not the season;

the world's autumn

seen through mine.

Either way, the sun has

crossed the equinox, and

left my life behind.

~October 3, 2010

Limbo

Limbo is between being a child and an adult

between loving you and hating you

between last year and next.

I don't know what happens

what happened

what will happen.

Limbo is an ocean where all I can see

is water, and still I'm supposed to

keep swimming.

~October 3, 2010

The List

I have to admit
that soap reminds me of you -
the liquid kind. Glue, dried
or not, the inside of marshmallows
when I toast them,
milk,
even my bowl after ice cream.
Ripe figs. Buckeyes.
The brown peanut m&ms.
Bananas, of course, sprouts,
and sometimes a spaghetti squash.
I am too used to metaphors.
My poet mind assigns meaning
to these inanimate objects, and
though you are not here,
my life is full of you.

~September 28, 2010

Shadows Cast

Transference:
your past applied to your present.
I am living proof of this
phenomenon.
Just this morning, I was thinking
about how I can't get away
from everything I've done, or not done;
everything I see is cast
in the shadow of my history.
And then I read the
definition. I hadn't realized
it was so simple. But how
do I turn off that light, see
my life without this darkness?
So far all that's happened
is that my eyes have adjusted.

~September 29, 2010

Track

Get out of me.
Out of my synapses,
out of my arteries,
out of my nervous system.

No

stay.

At this time last year
I was so, so, so
excited.
You were coming to see me
in a few short days
and I could not wait.
I knew we were going to
love each other.
What happened?
I still can't understand
this train jumped the track
and I just can't find
the penny.

~September 28, 2010

A Monday Afternoon

How do I stop missing
the thing that doesn't exist?
Did it ever exist, or only in my
active imagination?
I wish I knew, so I could either
find it or give up.

~September 27, 2010

Sneeze

It was just a cry
that had to be teased
out of me,
like when your nose
itches until you sneeze -
only this was my
heart itching
until my tears ran
free.

~February 23, 2010

View

This is not
seeing through rose-colored lenses,
but maybe I'm sick of pink
the pink of being in love
in
fatuated
with the feelings I create.

Instead, I'm left with
the blue-green view
that comes from
simply seeing through
my own eyes.

~October 2007

Mull

I'm culling desperation
in this curious conformation
where everything comes back to you
or do I just want you
to come back to me.
I've pinned hopeless hopes
on your fading face
as though mulling you over
in my mind
has brought out the sweetest parts of you.
And now, spiced to perfection,
you are ready to drink -
and I am so thirsty, but
you cannot be poured
into my glass.

~November 30, 2006

Pause

It's been
two years since you tried to speak to me
ordered these songs up to
flow into my ears,
maybe strike something deeper,
once they were in
and now they're playing unrequited
through my speakers

it's been
six months since you spoke to me
ordered your words up to
maneuver the strange terrain
of "us, now"
and there is no question of depth,
only the shallow struggle of awkwardness

but in between
I hit "pause" on my heart
when it got too hard to listen to
and now I'm two years behind
and six months in
trying to understand
the soundtrack of
getting over you.

~May 21, 2006

Oil and Vinegar

I can't get away from you
tonight I opened a bottle of
rosemary, oil and vinegar
salad dressing
old, from you, never used
but still good.
But I can't get near you
too many unanswered messages
too many distracted phone calls
too many shots in the dark.
This experience,
of you two years past,
feels more like a breakup
than anything current at all
as though I just realized
we may be in the same bottle
but we will never mix.

~April 7, 2006

Rose-Colored

I felt such a fierce joy with you
(from what I remember)
that it is still with me today
so it's no wonder
I can't stop playing it over
and over
in my head:
sourdough toast with jam
running the streets
thousands of roses
(more than you could ever pick for me)
and the peace of the koi pond.
Sushi and sapporo
switchback trails we thought would never end
petals kept safe in a soap dish
and a home for my spirit,
my body,
my love.

Have I made it sound perfect enough?
Shall I add another detail or twenty?
Is my feeling real or just the projection of how it was
through an old, dusty and rose-colored filter?

~March 17, 2010

Orbit

I blew you a kiss, but it
disappeared in a puff of air.
I went back to where we were.
We were not there anymore.
And what if we had been?
Would I have chosen that
instead?:
those beautiful hours
shared in utter joy
orbiting endlessly without
fear of separation?
Or would I have chosen reality
the kick in the teeth when you
leave
but always with the promise
of return?
No matter now.
Here I am -
there you go -
my kiss will have to wait
until next time.

~January 12, 2004

Devotions

The dusk of your
sandpaper skull
moves me.
We worship this
shapely shape
make our fuzzy offerings
to the deities of the drain.
Small sacrifice
to be mistaken for boys
when we can
look at each other
and see more beauty
than ever before.
Let me just be blessed
with this charming monk
of a girlfriend
who revels in,
as I do, the buzz of the clippers:
the clean comb of metal:
the sweet sweep
of a naked head.

~October 28, 2003

What I Lost

I wonder if the first time
I heard someone say
"it's just sex"
I had a sinking feeling
from my chest to my abdomen,
a nervous system message.
I wonder what happened to
that feeling by the time
I heard it from you.
Along with it, I seem to have
lost the most important thing
to me - (not just that -) the
feeling that, to me,
it is not
just
sex.

~September 26, 2010

Sweep

Sweeping the folds of
my memory, I come up
with a pan full of dust
and glitter. I hold it.
What will I do with this pan?
Surely I cannot just
throw it away. Surely,
there is something more
constructive to be done with it.
My fingers buried in
the waste of yesterday,
I try
to form something solid
out of entropy,
to craft innocent sparkles
into something that will
last longer than a spark.
Aren't I embarrassed
to be caught like this,
hands dirty with hope deferred,
so close to the resolution
of the trash can?
Look at my life.
I have never been able
to part with the small
glittering potentials that
hide in corners everywhere.
I carry them with me
and my touch turns
everything not to gold,
but to the glimmer of loss.

~September 26, 2010

Tapestry

I seek these threads of memory
and stitch myself to the past
becoming part of a tapestry
that no one else can see.

~October 29, 2009

Chokecherry

Pick a cherry
to red lips
smooth taut skin
open up--

dew-dripped flesh
coils of blood
waiting within

for the aching crush
of ivory
spilling arteries
over the chin

runnels of nectar
tickle down the throat
warm from the inside
swallow a seed or two.

don't let the desire
choke you
in its fullness
save a few cherries
for me.

~July 21, 2003

Mer

Stumbling around my life
like the mer girl I wanted to be
when she thought
she wanted to be me.

Knives under every step, every clasp
of hands meant to fold through sea,
every swallow singing not wet words
but thirsty air in my throat.

I will never enchant my voice back from her lips

I can only hope.

To hear the call of a siren sister
limp craving limbs home to
the warm salt tumbled waves
and wait

~February 20, 2008

West

I drove a long way in your direction
convincing myself all the while
that the mind's destination
changes the road.

Stopping short of my longing for you
made no difference.
On my back, I cried, and my tear flowed west
down my cheek.

~February 5, 2008

Watercolor

You

an undercurrent in my watery brain

spilling out from my fingertips
in full blue drops
staining everything I touch
with unspoken words

a flow I can't staunch

~December 2007

Beads

Those notes became beads
with which I strung the chain
of our life -
my life, now, still -

though the chain snapped long ago,
beads flung to the corners of
never-will-be,
notes played unheard
to the ears of never-was.

~August 2008

Sugar

This
sugar-sick high
what I thought I wanted.
I wanted to eat the world,
a world of sugar
to keep me sweet on the inside.
I swallow it down.
Spun-sugar cobwebs my veins,
curtains my eyes.
Blind princess
of a sugar castle:
sweet,
stuck
on the inside.

~March 21, 2009

The Lie

I look at your face.
Still, but so friendly;
you were my friend.

I thought you were.

They say the camera doesn't lie,
but you must have,
at some point.
When you were giving of yourself?
your love? your time?
Your money?
You were keeping track.
I couldn't see your tally
or your lies.

I couldn't see your face
when you said to me:
Your time was not enough
Your gifts were a joke
Your love is not here
in my apartment.
My hands trembled,
hands which had made clear
my love:
made you gifts
cooked you food
massaged your hands.
I couldn't see your face -
but it was still you.

And which is the lie?
Your words,
marching from bitter fingers
to my receding heart?
Or that still smiling face?

~September 27, 2009

Salad

In the end, you were like
trying to hold a salad in my hands.
Lettuce, tomato, cucumber,
snow peas green onion carrot shavings
sliding everywhere, and I knew
there was nutrition contained
in these precious vegetables,
but I couldn't get them
to my mouth in time.

Your oil and vinegar.
One slippery, making it easy
to let you fall to the floor.
One stinging sharp, lingering still
on raw, clutching fingers.

~January 20, 2009

Out of Stride

I'm walking out of stride.
Stumbling over landmarks
suddenly unfamiliar from your perspective,
following faultlines that I thought
were my road home.

I'm lost.
I wander around a city of delusions,
bad directions,
difficult choices that,
once I make them,
will affect a world I can't see
when I'm stuck in yours -
I never
asked you to draw my map.
I only thought
we could walk a ways together.

~December 14, 2008

Raspberry

Liquid memory of a raspberry patch
how twisted
that a whiff of flavored liquor
could slam into me
a gulp of my childhood

~June 2004

The Meaning of a Breakup

When you broke up with me,
so did my period.
All those aches and crying spells
suddenly had a new meaning -
losing you, not losing blood.
Maybe my craving for olives
and chocolate ice cream
meant something else, too.
Maybe I gave you the wrong
idea, when I told you I
wanted to take a break.
Maybe I gave my period
the wrong idea, when
I thought that you were the one
who made it regular.

~August 2010

Healing

Healing is walking on the edge
of the cliff, seeing the fall
but clinging to the hope
of solid ground.
Healing is visiting the sick
and seeing myself in them,
but being able to walk away.

~September 23, 2010

Regeneration

It used to be
that the poems I wrote
were on my skin,
inscribed in mute red ink,
not to be shared with
anyone. Those words faded
to a milky white, their
meaning lost in the
regeneration of cells.
Now my pen gushes all over
the page, getting blood
on everyone who reads.
These words will not fade.
Perhaps that is why I
changed my writing implement.
Perhaps my skin is not
the only thing that has
regenerated.

~September 23, 2010

Trains (so you'll know)

I had a stop-this-train moment
and couldn't tell you because
our trains detached at the
split in the tracks.
I couldn't think who else
I to tell. I'll tell you here.

It was a moment approaching
the grocery store, when the
collection of seasonal flowerboxes,
scattered and just watered,
brought back every trip ever
to our childhood grocery store
in summer.
Popsicles, the pool, bikes
and playgrounds. Our "village."
That record's grooves play so deep
in my memory that sinking down
to them makes me nauseous.
A nostalgia so thorough, so
hopeless, in turns my stomach.

I felt faint at the door of the store.
I felt my past beseeching
and my present reaching
back in time, but returning
with nothing.
Not even a lone flower.

~September 23, 2010

One Exciting Thing

One exciting thing about being so full
of confusion that my wires fray and
spit sparks, so heavy with misery
that it spreads over the floor
as I walk, is the possibility that,
when it's all poured out,
I might see the wires to fix them.
I might lose mental heaviness
as well as physical.
I think that would be a good thing.
I think I will laugh.
I think I will stand on my head
to encourage the process.

~September 22, 2010

Not Enough

There is mud in my head
and I don't want you to get dirty.
You were a stream running
through my mind,
a waterfall pouring through
my heart,
an ocean waving over my
body.
Now you are a trickle,
and I don't know why,
but it's not enough
to wash the dirt away.

~July 8, 2010

Post Love Love Poem

I can't stop writing poems about you
any more than my legs
can stop growing hair.
(And though I never wanted you
to know this about me,
I am a pretty hairy person.)
I just wish they were real love poems,
not post-love love poems.
I guess I wanted to give you my words,
not myself.

~September 20, 2010

Word Stew

I'm making word stew,
many recipes with different ingredients
so I can mix and match and taste
what flavors complement each other best.
I might not need the carrots,
or thyme, or extra pinch
of salt. I may have too many
bowls on the table.
But I hope the act of cooking
will put my ingredients back together.
I hope that eating it will
nourish me.

~September 20, 2010

Fallow

I thought the pain of unwrapping
those layers would be worth it,
that leaving these seeds raw
and red would transform them
into the gems I'd hoped for.
I did not realize that unwrapping
was not enough. They lay fallow
in my hands, unseen, a sin.
I did not tend them but neither
could you. Tugging torn layers
back over my rotted efforts
has not been worth the pain
of not trusting you.

~September 20, 2010

Not So Different

Bare branches of a place I thought
had finally fleshed out. Flowers had
flourished over a skeleton of sadness,
their breath breathing into lost
lungs, full head of hair on a blank
skull. I was alive. I was real. I was
not a waste.
But I am not so different. My heart
remembers how to break, my head
remembers how to forget joy.
My body still fits into the grave
waiting for it, wind breathing
sadness over me, flowers resigned
to the ground, trees losing leaves
with every stretch to the sky.
Home a place lost, regained, lost
again.

~September 22, 2010

The Fall

Tonight is a fallback to summer,
crickets chirping speedily
in the balmy air. I want you.
Four hours and ten digits between us.
If that were all - never
mind a season of drought,
a drought of words -
I'd welcome the warmth
of tonight. But I know better.
Solving all the math problems
in the world won't stop the fall.

~September 20, 2010

How it Could Not Work

I almost knew you.
Wishing I could take all
the little things I love,
put them in a box,
show you to yourself.
Your earnest excitement
at a new discovery. Your
sweet solemn frown
while playing music.
Your love for cherry ice cream,
gentle hands on your rats,
biggest doe eyes gazing at me.
How could I not love you?
Wouldn't that work?
No. I already tried it.
My love would not stay
in a box.

~September 20, 2010

Beast

There was a beast at my door,
and I let him in thinking
he was you.
He was not you.
But I gave him your name,
and now he stays.
And when you come I am confused.
Who are you?
Are you the beast that daily
hunts my thoughts,
cuts the meat from my heart?
Why is he curled up,
content on my hearth?
Of whom should I be afraid,
the beast or the boy I love?
Or the one who opened the door?

~June 6, 2010

Doll

I don't want to be a doll
but baby you just wind me up
and I go all day long,
smiling talking laughing walking
happy happy me.
At night I miss your hands
on my key.
Smile falters, laughter turns
to wails, movement slows to
a jerky
halt.
My words stutter and stop,
leaving an empty porcelain head.

~January 21, 2010

Snap

I try hard to
attenuate
my longing for you,
loosen the tension in
a long clothesline
between our visits.
But my heart still beats,
and with every beat
pulls tight enough to
snap, stinging all the worse
for my efforts.

~January 17, 2010

Blackhole

I am a black hole,
taking in matter in the form
of ice cream, cookies candy chocolate
cake funnels toward me.
I absorb salt-soaked chips and
grease-laden pizza.
I'll stretch peanut butter
and jelly out for a whole
loaf of bread,
stretch milk
for a whole box of cereal.
Nothing will escape me,
not even the light
of my lite power bars.
I am a blackhole!

Except...

I am not so powerful.
Items like celery,
lettuce and grapefruit
resist me.
Green pepper and
apples are left behind.
And I cannot turn
the energy of what I eat
into nothing,
or send it to another time.
It circles round me,
rings on a planet spinning
out of control.

~January 21, 2010

Waterfall

I'm sorry.
Wanting your forgiveness
is a waterfall, never stopping flowing
over the edge of the cliff.
Regretting what I did wrong
is drowning at the bottom.

~September 20, 2010

Speed of Light

Connection
was always the fun part about it.
I saw the map of my mind with
beautiful stellar lights lighting up,
and rejoiced to discover
another starry set of thoughts,
another beautiful mind.
What a universe we'd create.

Now I see the dark side
of the galaxy, when you
fall out of orbit but my thoughts
are still stars, still lighting up
places I'd rather not travel.
This spaceship I call my brain
making connections
at the speed of light.

~September 22, 2010

Scoop

I sat down to lunch and got
scooped out from the inside:
a peanut butter and jelly sandwich
that we will never serve,
to the children we will never have together,
leaves me with a bad taste
in my mouth and an empty stomach.

~September 21, 2010

Verb

We discussed the power of verbs
in the poetry we liked,
and I felt their thrust and pull
between our words.
Meaning infused words infused life.
I haven't yet pulled free
of your thrust in my life,
and now each verb takes
on a different meaning.
It's hard to swallow
or pin things down,
cuddling doesn't come close
and I don't want to come
close.

~September 20, 2010

Clear

If I think about myself enough,
I'll think myself right
out of existence.
Like a star if you try
to look at it straight on -
it disappears.
Let your focus relax.
There you are.
Pure white, sparkling,
clear as day.

~May 10, 2010

Apple

How private is too private?
So much of me lives
on the outside with you
my thoughts and theories
and emotions where you
can touch them.
I know how to keep that
balance, giving you
all my best while
acknowledging my faults
and weaknesses.
But some things,
kept from you,
make me feel like an
apple with spots
on the inside,
going bad where you
can't see,
privately.

~February 23, 2010

My Head

I don't want to live in this world
where you don't want me
and shun me to be with your friends
where you ignore me in a pointed
statement about my weaknesses
and where a phone call asking
for your help
would make you hate me.
I don't want to live here.
Please, help me
move out of my head.

~February 23, 2010

Bitter

There is a bitterness in me
that I feed with black milk,
ink,
coffee brewed too strong.
This is not the strength
that I want.
Funny that we are turned
inside out of one another;
under my pale skin perhaps
you will glimpse the shifting
darkness,
but out of your warm brown pores
pours a golden light.
Maybe that is why
I have craved you, strong skin
much safer than mine,
not just for the hue
apparent, but the light
of you within.

~February 1, 2010

Drain

Running down the drain
of a long day,
my hands grasp for something
filling, refilling,
but cannot hold on to
what is offered.
Instead they find my hair
and begin to pull it out.

~February 23, 2010

Blind

All the love you offer
surrounds me,
a warm mist,
a cloud of butterflies,
sweet honey on my skin.
All the beautiful things
I could want,
the sparkling setting and
me as your gem.
But sometimes I am blind
to that sparkle,
straining my eyes in a
damp haze of selfishness,
choking on my lack of words
to tell you how good it is.
Frightened to death of
my capacity to
freeze or
crush or
wash it all away.

~February 23, 2010

Present

What kind of girl am I,
taking all you give and feeling
left empty -
the kind of girl who
plays with her toys and
breaks them all?
What kind of woman am I,
so afraid of breaking you
breaking us
that I lie awake and cry
write poems to stave off sleep
instead of cherishing the comfort
you bring me like the best
present any girl could ask for?

~February 23, 2010

Volcano

There is a volcano in me,
rumbling, pitching ash and
ready to explode.
My feelings run from it.
Love hides under a rock,
and I cannot find it.
Where can I go?
No escape, but I keep trying.
Maybe I am the volcano.
A heated mountain of
confusion, boiling over
and running down my sides
with lava, until
I am unrecognizable.
Where is that sweet
loving woman I want to be?
Trapped, inside the mountain
or me.

~May 16, 2010

Perfect

You perfect crunch, you perfect
distraction between my teeth.
In sugar shell there is solace;
chocolate, comfort;
in peanut there is peace of mind.
You perfect package that I am not.

~September 19, 2010

A Thousand Things

Remember a thousand things
(the way I do), the night
we listed a thousand things
to bring with us camping?
I tried not to laugh, until
my laugh went away.
You cracked first. By that time
I could no longer crack up.
I wish I had just let it loose.
A thousand things, I wish
I had let loose.

~September 17, 2010

Moon

If you wait long enough,
even the moon will shine
directions like the North Star,
four points to choose from
in this star-blank city.
I watch through the curtain
over the window. How many
layers between me and moon,
how many steps to my
destination? I'll keep waiting.
I'll keep walking.

~September 17, 2010

Eat

With every bite
I try to eat myself into oblivion
chew up sadness,
swallow down guilt,
digest my fears away.
But I only nourish it all
take it into myself
over and over and
over again.
I am what I eat.

~May 4, 2010

Empty

I walk past empty places
that I used to fill when I
was with you. They remain
unaffected by my absence.
I think of empty places
in myself, that I hadn't known
were empty before.
They are not unaffected,
but they, too, remain
empty.

~September 16, 2010

Portrait Envy

I painted a family portrait in my mind
with the brushstrokes of imagination
in the medium of love.
When I finished I found that
I didn't know who the people were
or even the artist. Now
I look at everyone else's work and wonder
how they knew what to paint and envy
that they ended up happy.

~September 16, 2010

When I See

Your eyelashes curl black and
sweet in my memory,
a fierce gorgeousness
steals the breath from
my heart, and gives it back.
I watch the curling lashes
before me and feel that
breath fail, wait for the
gift to come, but there
is nothing. He is not you;
not even ours, but he
will always have
those same eyelashes,
dark eyes so sweetly downcast,
dark skin dark hair
even the same dark self.
And will I always think
of you when I see him?

~September 16, 2010

Puzzle

My relationship with you
was a jigsaw puzzle
that I tried to put together -
the picture on the box was
Beautiful.
But now I have to
take it apart.
Some pieces are missing,
and so many are
scattered around me -
I find them everywhere.
Forgotten pockets of jeans,
under my pillows every night,
inside a stranger's box of Cheezits.
Maybe once I've collected them all
and put them safely away,
my heart will be put
back together too.

~September 16, 2010

Sirens

Every morning my body wakes
to the wailing sirens of my mind
adrenaline sliding down the narrow
fire pole of my spinal cord
to the fire raging in my heart
leaving embers burning in
my stomach. It's too late again.
Where is the hydrant
to put this out once
and for all?

~September 2010

Inside Out

This distance is turning
me inside out,
as I try to reach out
without moving at all.
Inside out, so I can examine
all the parts of myself
and try to scrape off
those I don't want;
inside out, so I don't feel
as distant from my world.
This is no way to live.
Turn me right side out.

~September 2010

Puppet

Ten months I was a puppet
worked by my own hands.
Five months I didn't know
plus five months I did not
want to know.
Now, with no audience,
there is no purpose
in puppetry.
And the purpose
of the puppet master?

~September 2010

Ladder

I built a ladder with my fears
and reached it up to you
so you could climb down
and think as little of me
as I did.

~September 2010

Miracle

I love you, night,
your clouded sky bringing
the scent of rain,
crickets singing a cool breeze.
My windowsill is not a pillow,
but it offers a different view
of night: rest, and a miracle
I never knew: the pattern of
tiny holes in the screen.

~September 2010

Hang

It seems that there isn't much
of you here to hang on to.
my memories are all in the past,
your words are in my phone,
but not in my ear.
the tiny snowman you gave me,
200-some miles away on my bed -
no, not even on my bed, because
I had to wash all the sheets.
I don't know where it is.
Our emails are no longer
a place we share.
I am here, you are there
We are nowhere.
The moon hangs almost full.
You gave me this sliver of
silver in my nose,
but I can't hang on to that at all.
and my hair that you held
onto - I dyed you out of it.

~August 2010

Video Game Love Life

I thought I'd keep
upgrading, and that
you were the grand prize,
the final level in
my video game love life.
I didn't want you to be
just another skill to learn.

~ August 2010

Used To

I'm used to a lot of things.

I'm used to a torrent of emotions

I'm used to waiting for them

to change on their own

I'm used to not owning my

emotions or choices to change things

and recently

I may have gotten used to

not being myself.

Maybe I had to get used to that -

to being another person I didn't

necessarily know, or like -

in order to make the choice

to change my emotions.

To get used to better things.

~August 2010

Bulb

My brain is a black lightbulb

waiting to burn out.

Break its shard shell

and let in the light

that I cannot seem to

turn on myself.

~August 2010

Sails

What a treacherous sea I sail
in my boat of fear.
Perched on its glass bottom,
I can never be sure
if I am safe from the wide waters
that lie below me,
swarming with every possibility.
My gaze is fixed.
No regard for what sky
may spread above me,
or what sails may take me there.

~August 2010

Little tricks

Look how we change shape
living through our generations:
my mother taught me,
from her mother,
how to iron a wet ribbon
across a hot lightbulb.
These little necessary tricks,
so short-lived --
there was a time before lightbulbs,
and who has need now
for a length of ribbon?
Even lightbulbs
have changed their shape.

July 2010