you at sixteen

I find myself thumbing through the ghosts of you

And all your had beens and almosts

Until my mind is numb at one a.m. 

You will always be a half-finished masterpiece to me

For I cannot understand the lines sketched across your skin

Without having witnessed your preliminary drawings

When your canvas was washed

Clean

Vices piled up around you like cigarette butts and you

At sixteen

Your eyes burned red 

I try to imagine you

Halved

Prior to your emergence from your chrysalis

I fail

For suffering feels unnatural on you

Foreign

Alien

I know you must think the same of me

Me

At fourteen

A girl you will never meet

Perhaps we are all half-people

Snippets, cut off at each end

Our pasts a vague and distant mimicry 

Of our present selves

An echoing of gulls against jagged cliffs

Our futures memories of tomorrow

Pretty in how we imagine ourselves to be

Picturing you at sixteen is futile

As attempting to return to fourteen year old me

I must see you for all your half-finished beauty

My eyes awash in your effervescent shades of topaz

Without searching for the scratched out graphite beneath

You at sixteen died with all those birthdays

And it is enough to be in these parentheses

To know you now

You at eighteen

honey air

the air is thick like honey syrup and we are slaves
to the pull of the sun magnetic upon our icy winter skin
limbs stripped from jeans, extricated from blankety wombs
we run and spill out of our underground caverns to the rolling hills of emerald
the trees still barren, signs of winter's cruelty
the sun azure in a way that makes my bones ache for oceans
my lungs are filled with sweetness and a vague nostalgia
for nights like this eight months ago
walking home in the warm darkness I remember
pavements just like these
and nights I breathed freedom like it came naturally
and days we laid on blankets like this, wrapped up in a comfort
of warmth and togetherness
there is a part of summer that breeds unity
he laughs as he bounces the baby on his hips and she glances
up from the novel she is reading to smile at him as he flicks
ash from the end of his cigarette and
the bare skin of his back is to me while his fingers strum a guitar to
the tambourine player's beat
and breathing comes easy
when the air is thick like honey syrup and grass is cool beneath our feet

lighthouse

And it was almost like a thin lined reminder

Raised a near invisible inch above the flesh of her

A tribute to her humanity, she felt warmth of life stuff in currents through her veins below

Beneath the origami paper thin webbed as if by a spider so easily broken by the slightest bend of a fingertip, the slightest increase in pressure

Almost immeasurable
Nearly undetectable

She thought of this often, the power entrusted in her entirely undeserving hands

Her fingers shook too violently, as tremorous as aspen sometimes
And it was during the earthquakes she was reminded of it, the searing release

She knew now the chemical equation that was missing from her, the adrenaline and endorphins that calmed her shaking hands like the warm breath of a mother stroking the hair above her ear

And she remembered it, as distant a memory as it was now, fogged and creased around the edges as a wallet sized photo kept in a jacket pocket too long, crushed beneath receipts and spilled chewing gum

But it was there, still, she realized
A partially obscured lighthouse beacon and sometimes she felt herself running towards the crags of the rocks it stood upon instead of obeying the warning it screamed

And she sometimes felt she craved sharp edges more than she needed the gentle ebb of the sea

afraid of the dark

I'm afraid of the dark
But not in the ways you would expect, no I am not afraid of unnamable monsters that lurk between floorboards and bedboards, of hidden spaces closet-black, of tree-skeletons projected like black and white movies on death-pale carpet, no
I have no fear of the unavoidable, of my vulnerability to circumstance and night predators
I do not tremble by cause of fear for the unknown, the concealed, the shapes that shift unnoticed across walls paling in moonlight
For my fear lies instead within me
Under the layers of skin in the half-light through the window blinds
In my eyes filmed over with night stuff
In my hands that reach for something they recognize in the blackness
My terror is in me, in my choices influenced by the shadows of midnight, puppeteered by a loneliness that develops like a sheet photo in a darkroom sometime around two a.m.
And this is the fear of it, when all is stripped of ghosts and shadows and tricks of light
How does one prepare oneself against their own slight of hand?
How do I run from a thing which will inevitably be neither in front nor behind?

airport

Eyes searching scanning pointing finding 'we still have two hours'
ten languages bleed into one

Backpack heavy it weighs him down hair long and unbrushed skin penny tarnished

Limbs aching shoulders heaving face drawn and tired she sits because her anxiety put her here hours early

Man in business suit duty free liquor in a sealed plastic bag I wonder if he'll be drinking alone

Italian family swelling and overflowing speaking loudly they love one another

Middle aged man one sleek black briefcase long handled I wonder if he's flying home or away if he has two kids in pajamas waiting for him at the top of the stairs

He is old, his back bends like a willow
Too old to be flying alone

Were all caught between staying and leaving, here and where we're meant to be I wonder who is going home and who is running away

her bones

She held the fire of a thousand frustrated suns in both her eyes, irises opening and closing again like butterflies and I am still as I watch her because her lifeforms are too much for me

She is the swelling pregnancy of fire between her fingertips, ash dispensed from broken lungs

She is flame crushed beneath a dying humanity and I crave to know the way her skin aches to release the taut elasticity inside of her

She is falseness stretched to cover her like sheets and I breathe quietly in the moments I can hear her speak

She speaks of skin like it is the very stuff that cages her body and I pray for the light that breeds inside her bones

Her bones are so beautiful in their cracking fragility and I know she wakes empty and aching

A dull sensation insatiable in its honesty and I see she's on her knees

I see her knees they're bleeding now and still I find her so very hurtfully beautiful

I see her skin paper thin like butterfly wings

Fingerprints tattooed as if someone tried to finger paint across her canyons and

I am breathless underneath her beauty

It is far too heavy and I am far too tired to sleep my darling

But maybe I can find vacant relief in the way your bones crave to release you

building blocks

maybe we're all just children with fingers itching to build towers out of
wooden blocks
seeking inspiration in the dull moments lying on the carpet staring into space
wondering what it would be like to be tiny as an ant, fibres of the floor magnified with our eyes so close
we try to recognize perspective but get so wrapped up in our skewed thinking that the world revolves
around our tiny lives
like the moon following us outside our car windows
we believe the weather must echo our feelings and get angry when the sun is too bright for our rainy insides
but our towers get knocked down and others' are built up all around us
and maybe if we admired our collective greatness the downfall wouldn't feel so unbelievable
unbeatable
I know I'll build your tower up
before it has a chance to fall
I know your architecture is a work of art and mine is faltering
trembling like aspen and yours is strong
secure in its concrete frame
and I know that makes me happier
knowing you won't tumble like building blocks
at the slightest clap of thunder
because I love your tower
more than I love mine