∆

I gave someone my heart, but he is thoughtless and careless and reckless with everyone and everything. broken pieces follow him in circuitous routes of destruction. everyday he chips away fragments of my fragile heart, knocking it against door jambs and bookshelves and stair railings, closing car doors on me, while I quietly follow, sweeping up the scraps of me and tucking them away into coat pockets and purses so I don’t lose them, but I think I’m becoming more broken than whole. I love him, I’m sure I do, but if I let him break everything I have left, there will no longer be anyone to pick up my pieces.

a collection of fleeting desires

i want to be the loudest sound you’ll ever hear.
i want to be the 200 decibels that shake your bones before the 
blood vessels in your brain decide to explode.

i want to hit you like a ton of bricks.
i want to be the forty-ton truck that jackknifes and smears you like paint across the pavement, leaving only the memory of broken glass in its wake.

i want to be the tidal wave that rips you from your solid ground,
while you struggle to hang on with the ends of your fingertips.
i want to be the water that deprives your lungs of air.

i want to be earth-shattering,
the meteor that sends your species into extinction.
i want to make you the fossil that your descendants will burn as fuel.

i want to be the flame that consumes you,
the solar flare that incinerates the world around you.
i want to be the flowing, hot magma that melts your flesh and bones alike.
i want to turn you into ash.

i want to destroy you with my mere existence,
but powerless as i am, you are safe.

I.
You recline with your eyes closed, a recumbent Adonis, sunken into silky clouds. Of course, togas aren’t quite your style, so you lie buttoned up in that suit and shirt you never wore, with the tie your mother gave you last Christmas around your neck. Now, God knows I love her, but He also knows she should’ve picked a darker wood. Doesn’t she realize that that white lining and ivory casket absolutely wash you out? Honestly, I’ve never seen you look so pale.

II.
But really, you just look like you’re sleeping, childlike and untroubled. I move to stand beside you and my quiet, trembling fingers smooth strands of hair away from your forehead. I almost wait for you to turn your face and nuzzle your nose into my palm, like all those mornings I woke you the same way, with your coffee-filled mug in my free hand instead of a ball of crumpled up tissue. I replay the memory of your opening eyes, silently begging you to open them now, but you are still, slumbering too deeply for anyone alive to wake you.

III.
Instead of listening to the priest’s solemn susurrations about your eternal life, I listened to the autumn wind singing softly in the yellow trees. Instead of watching as they lowered your glossy casket into your new three-by-eight home, I watched the migrating birds turn into smudges and then nothing as they flew over the horizon. After every body left but ours, I could smell the newly-overturned earth, and I wanted to push my hands in and pull you out, or push my hands in and reclaim my rightful place, next to you.

IV.
That was yesterday, and today’s today, but you’re still gone, and—despite my wordless hours in a long, long bath—I’m still smelling soil beneath my fingernails. There is a hole just your size everywhere I look, and there is no one else that will fit. The scars of your absence mar every surface you once touched; I am more scar-tissue than skin. I don’t think I can love anyone else the way I loved you. I think I’ll be smelling soil for the rest of my life.

“The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is an attribute of the strong.”
                                          —Mahatma Gandhi

I.
I cannot forgive you for this.
If that equates to pettiness,
then I am petty.
If that amounts to weakness,
then I am weak.
For this betrayal makes me petty,
and this betrayal makes me weak.
I never claimed to be so strong.

II.
So time has passed 
and chapters gone by.
Roaring winds and turbulent seas
have quieted and calmed.
Fiery rages have died down
leaving only ashes and ashes.
The matador’s rag only waves in the past.
Vengeance
is no longer on the lips of victims.

things to do this week:
dead space
dead space 2
dead space 3

here we go.

i’ve heard it said
that
if you build it,
they will come.

but i have learned
that
if you build it,
they will break it.

i’ve been trying to see the bigger picture,

   to see the forest, not the trees,

but i have always concerned myself 

with the leaves, twigs, and roots of every tree i’ve ever met.

it’s a new year,
give me a new skin to live in.
i want to shed this old life
and start afresh.

who says i can’t?

Anonymous asked: Tell us a story?

(she took my soft, green hands
she turned them brittle and brown with rust
so i could fall and break and be blown about by the gusts of her resentful sighs
she took the breath right out of my lungs
she turned them into clouds
so we could watch them—-
she, with satisfaction, i, with resignation—-
disappear)

the seasons changed
i couldn’t keep her warm forever