Jumper

We idolize the jumpers because they had the courage to fly
When we should be learning from the ones who tied makeshift wings to backs
Because they had the courage not to die

Once I feared vertigo like a lullaby
Felt iron beneath toes, poised to release
Spring-loaded hatred for the shackles on my wrists
For tying me down to what I would leave behind
I only wanted to fly

Once I stared down to the rage of turbid waters
I wanted to be swirled into blackness
Feel cold beneath bare feet on railings
Limbo between potential and kinetic energy
The last breath of suspension
I wanted to feel air beneath empty wings

I would be a jumper, I said
I would be free for an instant
I would experience flying
Weightlessness of release

We idolize the hopeless because they lacked shackles to earth
They rose above planets, freed from orbit
We idolize the jumpers because they had the courage to fly
But freed from orbit I thank the shackles that reminded me of
What I would leave behind

Insanity

Although scars have faded
Like clouds dissolved into summer skies
Skin enveloping holes
Inflicted by emptiness
Although I've been
Breathing heavily for so long now darling
I'm unaware of how much time is left
My mind is thick like cobwebs sometimes
I get lost in the cracks and facades of
My imagination
Sometimes tears leak from me like bloodlines
And I'm crawling now
Insanity is beautiful
I just don't know how much I can stand

Whirlpool

Fingers beating

On dragon skin drums

We were tribal like loneliness

We ran like warriors

Cheeks stained with the juices of our crushed innocence

I held your hand

And told you not to be scared

And when they came for us

We were quiet like forgiveness

Sometimes in the dark of paradise

I hear the way your voice was ripped and frayed

Torn like our clothes as we jumped from waterfalls

We didn’t look down because we feared whirlpools

But now you’ve been sucked down

Swirled beneath the weight of blackness

You and I

Sometimes I gasp for breath
You know that feeling,
I can see myself in the emptiness of your eyes
You know how it feels to need
To need touch, heat, lifeforms
Breathing, pounding
Against the walls of your chest
To need flesh, rough and jagged
To need burning to feel alive
You and I, we feel everything
Magnified
We don't fall in love, we plummet
Face first, arms outstretched
Grasping at thin air
We don't walk into oblivion we
Run
Toes pressing off pavement like panthers
And we don't ache, we bleed
We burn until our supernovas
Are dissolved into blackness

Sometimes I forget
That we are the same
Sometimes I ache to feel human
Again
Sometimes air is crushing
And ghosts press cold and threatening
To paper skin
And life feels too big

But you are my oxygen when
Air is void of sustenance
You remind me of reality
When I get lost in me
You are a river when tears burn
I see life in your eyes when I have none

Passenger Seat

He sits in my passenger seat
Eyes fixed on the place above the dashboard
Where evening sun bends around the horizon like an embrace
We're plummeting
And time is rushing all around us between home and where the heart is
He sits in my passenger seat
Tongue laced with demons as he speaks of the times we've both been cursed
The words rush out the cracked window and
His eyes are filled with emptiness

In him I've found a home, nested my heart right next to his
Our beats are intertwined because
Their ventricles have struggled against identical constrictions
We're caught in a limbo between here and now
Between staying and leaving
That vertigo in the way we're suspended, potential energy

He sits in my passenger seat
Darkness of the last hours of day all around us
But I'm warm
He pulls from me the stories that have webbed so tightly around the walls of my heart
The vines creak as they release
My words come slower than his
But in those hours before midnight in my car, I understand
The way he has felt the pull of pain like I have felt the caress of emptiness
And beneath sleeves our snakelike scars are identical

He is like rainfall
The beating of my heart finally matched
Syncopated with another's
Melodic like the feeling of being found
Of being seen
I don't know why we met right before parting
Why we came together only to be blown apart
The expansion between us imminent
Unforgiving

All I know is he's in my passenger seat
And in that moment of darkness and heartbeats and rain and stories
Nothing and everything matters
We are nothing and everything
And maybe we met to be blown apart

Loneliness

Today I saw an old man

Walking with laboured steps

The weight of breathing heavy on his grey jacket

Sun beamed happiness on briskly stepping walkers

Phones pressed to closed ears, suit jackets bared against April winds

Smiles turned away,

Involuntarily or

Otherwise

From the gentle frown carved into his weathered skin, rough like a lizard’s

But I watched

And there was something so gravely saddening

In the way he walked so slowly

As if every step was painful

He stopped once at the garbage can down the path from the fountain where I sat

To collect some more bottles for his swelling plastic bag

And one at the bus stop

Just to rest awhile

I watched as he walked on

Slowly curving out of sight

And I was filled with a deep loneliness

Too deep for the even the sun to melt

goodbyes

just a little one because I'm scared to leave you all behind

reasons why goodbyes
seem to tremble facades I've built with anger driven hands
escape me
words carved from runaway fourteen year old plans forged from the fires of
'we could be'
it's just a word, two syllables pressed between here and gone,
limbo in the seams of staying and leaving you behind
that time and place where no one really wants to leave
immediacy of parting inescapable
in the way I need roads like snaking skeletons across maps of skin and bones
but the way your face falls
like the crumbling of cascading cliffs
trembles my self-solidarity like a weakness,
something I refuse to give in to
I only hope we meet again
after travels have quelled our mutual need for escape
and plans have turned to stories
all these plans will become stories
I can only hope your face
regains familiarity
and time doesn't mark the beauty of us