On nights like this

I’m sure God knows where to find me,

a puddle on the floor,

stagnant ideas that once had potential

are now bare bones.

Nothing left to even gnaw on

except the bone of a concept

that I used to know myself.

So I’ll lead you to my house with braille for fingers.

You’ll feel me up to find your way home,

no breadcrumbs, just a body as desperate to understand

who she is and no means to figure out how.

Her friends and family know her.

They shake their fists, “How dare he!” They cry.

But I was just a map, I was never the treasure.

And I’m beginning to see that this is one of the many mistakes of men.

The destination sums up their whole lives,

their whole idea of you,

until you’re falling from their mouth,

this top shelf version of a woman they made with their hands,

because you are but braille

and not in the way it should be used.

You’re strummed until you show them what they want,

never knowing that maybe this isn’t what you wanted in the first place.

So tell God, I don’t understand what I’m doing here.

Tell God, their plan isn’t working and I should be taken home.

Just take me home I beg.

Until then, I’ll be on the floor

next to the bones of what I could’ve been,

dug deep with all the skeletons I’ve long since buried.

I’ll say my prayers and hope God knows I’m down here.

Because God knows all.

They'll find me… right?

You left me in sweat soaked sheets.

I think the supernova of our love

became a red giant before I knew it.

There was no explosive ending for us.

It was all in our beginning

with our mouths finding pauses in hidden places,

we made love for a short, beautiful time.

And you left like you promised,

in the cool, early hours of morning.

Eyes once bright,

now a dark reminder

that you were exactly what you promised

a man with no home but the road...

and I was never going to change that fact, was I?

In my twenties, I think my life was my stage, a stage I could not leave. I felt like my whole life was some sick performance that I had to prove I deserved to be on. I still feel this even at the ripe old age of 32. But back then, for many reasons we don't have time to get into, I felt like a cheap court jester trying desperately to make you smile so she could go to sleep at night knowing someone may have liked her, hell even love her. I needed people to love me, or else I did not matter. I became increasingly more exhausted just being me. I could not let people see me when I was angry, sad, or scared. I wasn't allowed to hurt anyone's feelings even by accident. I walked on this tightrope that I had designed for myself. Above a stage built for just me. I suppose this was a self imposed hell I thought I deserved.

After many years of healing and just surrounding myself with solid people, I finally have let myself be imperfect. It is still a work in progress. I still struggle being at all visibly frustrated with someone. I catastrophize that, that means our friendship will end. Just this morning while staying with my best friend I made her silence become a trial I put myself through. I made a whole play in my head, ways she might be upset, sad or angry and how I could've contributed to it, or if not me, someone else. It is a catastrophizing that I am prone too and I know my therapist would agree ;) . Yet, I don't want to be on this stage anymore. I'd like to come down. I have been taking a step each day since I hit 30 years old. I am taking the risk for people to see the raw me, the one that is emotional at times, one that can feel pain, but most of all someone who can burn with anger.

I'd like to take that risk. I think it is about time.

In the beginning there was ash.

Tough skin, nails on concrete,

Death only comes when there is nothing left.

And there was nothing left of me.

But one day the sun came blazing through my bedroom window.

My shell of iron melted and all that was left was the ashes of who I used to be.

I thought that would be the end.

Then evening came,

cooled my resolve,

and I made love with the beautiful possibility

that I could be something.

And suddenly there was a tomorrow for me after all.

Ashes in my bed, iron in the morning. Feathers fluttering from my window.

Was it all a dream?

For this body that was “mine” feels brand new. As if I have never seen the birth mark on my left elbow.

That my eyes, deep blue with white flecks, “like waves crashing”, is an ocean that I only just found.

An impossibly ordinary yet extraordinary miracle that I have been here all along. These marks that stretch across skin with scars, wrinkles and dimples are still here, despite it all.

Ashes from the beginning maybe ashes in the end.

Who knows?

But I do plan to go out blazing, with all that I have,

With all that I am.

Worthless

you gorgeous gal you

idiot fucking fucker

uniquely you better off dead

burden great friend

selfish

talentless

selfless

They come not in waves, that would suggest there is a semblance of order to these thoughts.

They come lightening fast, cracking my fragile equilibrium.

I don't think my mind was ever ready for... well... myself.

Like weeds they need no encouragement to plant their roots deep.

Then to bloom under the right circumstances. They like to come to me during any disappointment. They do not need an invitation.

open the door, pour the lies down my throat, make me dry heave regret.

Death comes to anyone gal. No one will remember.

And yet...

Sometimes the truth comes through when life is at its bleakest.

But what if they do? What then?

I pull you from the shadows,

your memory is like silk,

a loose promise that

you will one day be made real again.

Yet just like silk,

you slip from my hands so quickly

I am left wondering

if I ever held you at all.

Memories can do this to a person.

They come from shadows,

cocoon you in promises

about a time that once was...

until it wasn't.

If my memory of you is my longing

than my nights are full of desperate yearning

for your warm promise to wrap around me once more

even if it is all a lie.

So I wait in the shadows,

a distant dream of a person

hoping for my beloved to come out of my memory,

to make love in darkness.

Only to wake... and find you are not here,

and you never were.

I went to the shore of your longing and gave you parts of myself that you have seen but not known.

First I gave you my eyes.

That you could see the depths of blue and the wholeness yet emptiness that fill my days.

Next, I gave you my ears. So you could hear the undertone of meaning in every human’s voice-their true desire.

I then came and gave you my hands, so you could feel how skin, seemingly malleable, is also unyielding and cages a soul.

My mouth was next. I wanted you to shape and taste the pleasure of my thoughts but with that, the pain too. The sharp bite of what can come after pleasure.

Lastly, I gave you my feet. I wanted you to feel how the Earth moves with me and not always against.

But all you could ask was, “What else?”

And to that I wept,

and was no more.

She follows rivers to the gently rounded bank

near dilapidated slices of concrete she finds her home

over back when, things made sense and life was just a road

or

rather like a path to the ever elongated rivets of obstacles

furrowing their way into life’s roads fluidly cemented in its stubbornness

if only the mind knew its way back from such traveled paths

to wander completely down would pit the soul of any brave traveler

I wonder when things began to erode so perfectly

first at life’s road then at the stubborn slowness of its realness

when this came about settlers took flight and the new world

was never found

all new became ordinary

all ordinary came to ruins.

There is a time and a place for Sorrow. Let Sorrow make a home in you.

Sorrow bathes and lathers.

It soothes.

Sorrow is a strange thing.

Sorrow is the weeds in our soul.

Try to purge it and it grows back as quickly as it came.

Sorrow makes the world stark and real.

Sorrow creates a want for more.

Sorrow is the hallowed breath.

Listen.

Sorrow blooms gratefulness.

Awe.

Before:

I thought.

I thought maybe we could be the pair of lovers who walked side by side, not needing to touch, comfortable to accompany the other, in silent communion.

I made movies in my head. A friendship that maybe could lead to more?

In the thick of it:

Then I stopped dreaming so often. You would look at me and I did not know what text to read from you. From your eyes? From your limbs? Or just from your voice? What were you really saying? Was I looking just to look?

Now:

Now I am awake, your words a halting rejection through clenched teeth showed me I did "read you right" after all. Now, I do not yearn for you. At first not as often and then not much at all. It seems to have happened overnight or maybe it was many nights. What I know is that I am now the one who isn’t able to always see you. I see you and I do not know if I feel anything anymore: is it gone or will it come back?

I do not yet understand how this happened. My first instinct is to look at myself and wonder if I am broken, or that I am running away from the prospect of a relationship, because I believe I cannot have one, because I am afraid of intimacy. I think this has always been true, even before, before he came and

t

o

o

k.

Or

maybe I do not want to date you and you are a friend. A friend from the beginning and a friend to the end.

But now,

I sometimes catch you looking at me. You are thoughtful in your expression and you blush when I smile. What changed?

Did we just

switch places?