On Love, Lust, And Longing

Please, with a gracious gesture
  brush this curtain
    away from my endangered face
      with the back of a hand
whisper, one day
 tears carving riverbanks
  will dry out
    rain will fail to deliver
      memories of heartbreaks
If love is the most addicting
  I have been gluttonous
   drinking in liquid promises
    poured from mouths of wanderers
I am drunk
  conversing with the ghosts
    that reside in this space
     although these occupiers
      are far from benevolent
Fear has driven me into arms of monsters
  here in the wanting
   I wait

Red Days of the Left and Leaving

So many calendars have been recycled

since the day you snapped that first photo

of me unexpected and unsuspecting of the impact

a click of a lens could make

Pictures can say a thousand words

but they can also capture pieces of hearts

this was not something which I was aware of

but has snaked its way into too many nighttime ventricles

Every time another love finds the exit
I seal it shut with sap and nails, yet
you somehow find your way through my veining

You have not revealed your secrets
on how you knotted so instantly into the fibers of my being
if cutting out an organ would offer release
I would willing take steel to skin,
Yet this is not how to gain relief from the unrequited

Healing comes not from taking away
but adding to the tender, browning, undesired
train eyes to see the apple around the bruises

There is no harm in the heart as an offering
It seems easier to forget than to forgive
but that depends on where we are aiming the dagger
to forgive oneself for vulnerability is to become enlightened
perhaps finding the on switch should be our focus

How Distance Is Not Linear

I do not know how to love the distance
have no idea what to do to encapsulate the hours
minutes echo themselves off the walls
does not seem possible that time is going forward
seems as if I have been waiting for a long as I can remember
waiting for the door to open

I need your skin
as much as your heart
and right now I am feeling a little lost without it
I attempt to keep myself busy
but without whiskey to drive the dance
it is harder to convince myself to leave the house
this shell is easier to navigate without the glances
and stares
I don't want anyone to know that I am currently
feeling hollow
I know my place is not inside of you
but my heart has already taken refuge

 so I wait
for time to pass
for the tears to dry from their riverbed
so maybe I can run faster down the calendar
I cannot let my hands sit idle
my brain does laps

I will probably never tell you how hard time time has been
how I shredded the sheets in my sleep
woke up with shadows draped across my mouth
most mornings I wake with your name on my lips
but without you there to receive it,
I swallow, hoping that by ingesting the word
I will feel a little less empty

It is not that I won't survive
 or that I think
that after this, things will be perfect
it is simply that I am spent
my palms out stretched
searching every room for something solid

I have to continue to wait
patience has never been my virtue
so I apologize my love
for the vacancy in my throat
that I need you to fill

Then again, I might never actually
tell you how I felt
during the time when I waited

Journey in a World of Limited Love

To say that I love you is almost to lie
how to describe when someone is part of your marrow?
seen you through the hourglass sands
never to drop the lacing of fingers
or letting your eyes discord from one another
how to let someone know that they have saved you?
not in a saintly way
but rescued your heart from the grinder
helped gather the lost meat parts
never grimacing at the mess of it all
always so willing to get scraped up bloody
how to tell someone
I am inspired by your very existence?
when I thought that this head would explode
from lack of love
your song echoed past horizons
giving strings of vibration to cling to
how do you tell someone you are my heart?
part of my muscle and structure
please do not mistake
I do not reside inside of you
instead have you mended my legs
replaced them with steel heavied pillars
strong enough to occupy the vastness
how do you tell someone you are star shining light
illuminating back a path?
your patience, grace, consistency
allowing sight to what was never lost
How to let you know that you are my other half?
part of the same rain soaked puzzle
we thought was behind us
I don't know how to tell you that you
 beyond my wildest dreams
that with you gone
I float along the pavement ghosting shadows
  gripping phantom empty fingers
I imagine you, maps away
eyes sewn against
what was drawn from blood
unsung songs have no existence
poetry unread
 just words weaved together on the page
love without intention fades
 hands tired of remaining empty
will seek all the promised
in a world without you

Waiting game

Time continues her dripping waltz
hands beseeching ether,
come, dance in the soundless never-ending
cruelly, these sockets still make home to sight
I bare witness to the ribboning
without invitation to join
I become more bone than woman
abilities once prized
carried into another world
what is not whole cannot be tied down
truth could save, but silence shreds
what is left is ghostly
I am comprised of only
time and ether

Final

And like that, there was silence

Totalitarian whole of love gone

What we cannot hold with our hands

And hearts

Will eventually fade into ether

solace in this charred silence

Serenity is closer

Burial of the Forgotten

I know in this moment I am doomed
to live out this life as driftwood
hollowed out bones
shaped so unkindly as a woman
heart a cavern for the feasting insects
sun bleached, half buried in the sands
time ticking lines in melting flesh

Here, I have no home
among the ancient bloodless
encased in stone
almost as unrecognizable
as when I would occupy any bed
punishment for seeking heat
is to be emptied out completely
womb charred
to feel none other than waves
or grit beneath

Abandoned, useless timber
omitted from the story
left to ponder endless shells
waters will not echo calls to
open gates of the underworld
Hades does not want such as this
for her army

How Distance is Not Linear

I do not know how to love the distance
have no idea what to do to encapsulate the hours
minutes echo themselves off the walls
does not seem possible that time is going forward
seems as if I have been waiting for a long as I can remember
waiting for the door to open

I need your skin
as much as your heart
and right now I am feeling a little lost without it
I attempt to keep myself busy
but without whiskey to drive the dance
it is harder to convince myself to leave the house
this shell is easier to navigate without the glances
and stares
I don't want anyone to know that I am currently
feeling hollow
I know my place is not inside of you
but my heart has already taken refuge

 so I wait
for time to pass
for the tears to dry from their riverbed
so maybe I can run faster down the calendar
I cannot let my hands sit idle
my brain does laps

I will probably never tell you how hard time time has been
how I shredded the sheets in my sleep
woke up with shadows draped across my mouth
most mornings I wake with your name on my lips
but without you there to receive it,
I swallow, hoping that by ingesting the word
I will feel a little less empty

It is not that I won't survive
 or that I think
that after this, things will be perfect
it is simply that I am spent
my palms out stretched
searching every room for something solid

I have to continue to wait
patience has never been my virtue
so I apologize my love
for the vacancy in my throat
that I need you to fill

Then again, I might never actually
tell you how I felt
during the time when I waited

December

I did not know that when the sky was vast 

my longing would subside for as long as the sun was high
as soon as darkness blessed it's presence upon the horizon
along with night would come the mourning of loss
of that life left behind

Though much of nothing besides
what resided in frames held the weight of meaning
I found it is possible to love a skeleton
as I watched the flesh melt away
flickering candle incense
wine soaked confessions
became the makings of fairy tale endings
the bitterness of cold embraces turned to flame
in the twilight

Once the moon took her residence
the sky shrugged on her violet crown
my eyes flicked open to reveal the present
ashes gently rained from my bedroom ceiling
cleansing right now from already has been
clarity came in a familiar form

I often find I am looking beyond
much past my horizons
what I most need has been waiting for me
most patiently
with the visions of the past laying in the dust at my feet
lessons made manifest

I will have to learn to love the distance
I will fall asleep embraced by and for the wind
at times risking drowning
in a river of saltwater
will have to find salvation in convictions
I will have to climb into the very recesses of my own being

The ghosts that occupy this space
are far from benevolant
entering my every waking moment
burying my face in the bottle
no longer dims their calling

Fear has been a constant companion
driven me into the arms of monsters
sometimes without me even knowing
this doubt that has cremated so many others
I know this time it will give us armor
in which to weather this battle

Without mirroring the demons
that threaten to swallow this fragile frame
it will be impossible to root a home
this time I will not chose the poison

I have done the work to strengthen my hands
and now they are parachutes
that will carry us gently
creating shelter against the wind if needed
my heart, my blood

The definition of lost has changed
and I am no longer tangled up in it

Wishing

You could write the words
I would say
that would make the steel in hands,
relax
melt away
but as much as you would love
to hear those words
  wrote to be encased in lingering
I am not to be your muse
if allowed, mouths would house
those words
  empty upon arrival
  graced only with breath filled whispers
wishing that was enough
of enough
of enough
for those words to land softly
eggshell delicate
in open palms

Underneath

There is a blank space

where you seem to hide

in between window panes

when the light fades

I can hold nothing but your shadow

You are peeking from beneath the fridge

an eerie glow that haunts

the floor boards 

where you never even stood

Conviction has always eluded me

somehow I teeter on the edge 

of decisions more so now

then when the cliff edge was closer

I would love nothing more 

than to wrap myself up in you

get trafficked in your smile lines

yet those lines exist not for me

so I will settle for watch on the stairs