Car Seat

                We sat side by side in my car on top of a hill overlooking the city. And the lights glittered like dragonflies and they didn’t remind me of your eyes. And he spoke of longing I no longer felt and I wondered why. Because you used to make me feel everything. And we’re sleeping side by side on reclined black seats and the steering wheel points to nowhere. And we’re poised on top of this hill and the moon is full and bursting and I miss you. But you’re just a city stretched out like a lover and your eyes are dark like the night and they glitter like city lights. It’s harder at night darling because at night emptiness is free of preoccupation and there is nothing to think of but lost closeness and empty wishes. And I wish you were here. But I don’t think of you then, no, I think of the way his voice ripples over the stereo and I’m not lonely because I can’t long for something that was not mine to love. We’re poised on this hill overlooking doubts and fears and reasons for leaving. I have plenty but he has none. My hands are empty and his are full and I used to be full of you. But your dress is ripped and you’re staying behind. And soon I’ll be looking down over glittering city lights and I wonder if I’ll be able to miss you.

                And I wonder if I envy his sadness because it is the kind of sadness that is full, swelling like the moon and bright, the light that blinds your eyes in the morning and pulses into the depth of the night. And mine is a resigned throbbing of constance that is deafening and intoxicating and barely noticeable so you think it’s just a part of you. And maybe that’s why I think I don’t miss you because missing you has just dissolved into the sadness that was there before your bright eyes and ripped dress and crinkly eye smile relieved me like a lover when you weren’t mine to love. I’m just drunk on what we could have been and I don’t think of this in the day, only when the city lights touch the parts of me that you left empty.

                So I curl up on the black seat of my car and it’s tilted back under the full moon and city lights and I look at the cds overflowing and the dirty window and him next to me, the way he reminds me of how I used to be.

                And sometimes I think I miss you.

It's not my fault

And it's not my fault
But it is, because every
Fault that creases my skin
In all the hollow places
Those fault lines were self-inflicted
And every time my voice
Echoed down the hallways of you
Because I was just too loud
That loudness was of my creation
And every time wasted days laced with anxiety
Tense like the suspension bridge of instability
Dissolved into the blackness of endings
That waste was of my own fabrication
And I know
None of this was my fault
I am a victim of chemicals and circumstances and
Everyone else
But I'd rather live with infinite guilt
Than succumb to external misery

"The future arrives without warning"

"The future arrives without warning"
Maybe that's true
Or maybe it's in all the little things
Maybe it's in the way you don't tuck me in anymore
Because sheets like security are now my own responsibility
Maybe it's in the way I stay
Out past midnight now
And you're asleep when I come home
Maybe the future arrives gradually
A slow burn of age eating away at all the times
I called you just to tell you
That I still need you
Sometimes I think the future has come too quickly
I'll be on my own without you there to wrap me up and hold me
So close my tears are enveloped by the warmth of the tea
You bring me when it's all too much
I have to fight for myself now
And all these faces, all these rocks that have been my support when my
Backbone was made of clay
Soluble
We will be separated by oceans and landforms and
Maybe
Maybe the future does arrive without warning
I sure as hell don't feel prepared
For the way it will feel when your arms release me
Maybe one day I used to want this

Smirking Sun

This kind of sadness
Curls up in all the hollow
Coves of the barren carcass
Of a beach that is your comfort
Your beach
Waves pounding away, the melodic
Rhythm of erosion,
Constant
You were a hurricane, you fed off the warm waters
Like an animal
Finding solace in surrender,
You threw your body off the cliff face
Just to feel the splash
Waves encompassing the hollow bones of your grief
You swam
Until your legs ceased motion with abrupt
Confusion
You could just see the shore
But you sank, deep deep down
Staring up at the smile
Curved into the water by the sun
Smirking
But now the seaweed was holding on to your
Ankles and your hair was
Full of sand and piranhas
Your skin pruned and
Dissolved, solubility in the
Way you gave in to
Disintegration
You think too much
You think maybe there's a life raft out there for me
You wait and you sink and
You remember hurricanes
And cliff faces
You only wanted to test the water
You think too much
You dream too often of the smirking sun and you ache
For completion, a resolve
To the loneliness
Enveloping you
You're sinking

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