Sticky always

The morning thick,
Sickly with its wetness
Laden with the stillness
And you
are ill
Comatose in your waiting
Not restful, resentful
The clock bludgeons you
With its ticking
Teasing its ever present race
One pace ahead, two, three
And you are slowing, steady, ready
To keep yourself heading towards
Nothing, path veering,
Fearing what might be
if you keep on
But you do,
Muddy girl, weighted in your own ways
Stuck in your sticky always
Settled into the earth below

Drinking at night

You take a sip
Let the burn roll around your mouth
Like regret incarnate
Swallow,
wince as it rolls down to your stomach
and floats your nerves to the surface,
 You exhale the butterflies,
Let each one be a whiskey kiss
Desperate for motivation,
Directionless in a white room
Turn away reflections because it is just a reminder of projects left unfinished
You always had a problem with committment
Always a problem with yourself
Unfinished ends and old make up
Always dreamer, comfortable in your bed.

Find me

Did you see me, or see right through me?

eyes ravenous enough to swallow me 

or drown me in their murky pools, dark water

I swear I could see the spinning in your irises 

you're a whirlpool threatening to drag me in 

as if to say no matter where I go 

you will find me 

pulling me in,

 you say

 "stay, your eyes are dark, 

bathed in brown, with all the naturalness of earth

and all the life the soil can offer" 

Love for me

They are familiar,
Your
Broken roots
Jigsaw branches
Fevered shade
Knowing all too well the risk,
Of seeking shelter in you
But when you are the closest
thing I call home
It is easy to mistake your
bark for a tender touch,
And your dying leaves for pillows
With all of the impermanence of
A hollow tree,
I hope you find some love for me.

(March 2018, original writing date)

The fear is real,
Quickened pace, shallow breaths
Count one, two, three..no
Imagine the seat belt unclipping
 imagine shattered glass
Stars against your night sky hair
A dazziling display
When I say please stop,
You don't understand the ocean behind my words, pulsating with each second I count as to not cry, not put myself in vulnerability.
When I say my anxiety has been bad lately
I mean that the attacks are more frequent
My panic is more aggressive
I don't say I have anxiety to be romantic
I say it to convince myself it is okay

Goodbye

This is how I disappear,
Slowly like a passing storm attempting to wreck everything before it is gone.
I am going to push as far away as I can,
Make you avoid me,
I am a train wreck you do not need to see.
Do not worry about goodbyes,
I've always felt they were too heavy to hang in the air
So they'll drop, laden, with all the sorrow
They'll drip with the wishing
As if anything could stop me
from passing by.

No longer whirlwind,
 in the eye of the storm
My mind is the warzone, cognition tears into irrationality,  consumerism designed to make me happy
There are no demons here. It is calm,
 This is the most dangerous part,
a cold standoff
Silent acceptance that the end is coming,
That the three page note you have written on a laptop you should have never bought
Is poetic justice,
the recognition of a struggle you have lost
And I,
can't even seem to get the words right
so worried about disappointing anyone,
So worried about showing weakness, for needing something,
digging myself in deeper for those who never cared enough to slow down for me. This isn't a poem.
This isn't clarity, I do not wish to live, I
I do not wish to die.
I do not wish
for the fear that the longing
will consume the little light I have left to give.

This is how I say no

When you text me, I take a minute,
Count the days I haven't seen you on my hand. I remind myself that wanting doesn't make it healthy,
and that permanence is a word foreign to you anyway.
 I'll reach for you, with all the lonely in my fingertips,
I miss you, I want to say,
And it would be true
But this is not the you,
this physical manifestation of a connection,
That I need
I miss the laughter,
the comfortable conversations where
We don't need to hear anything but notes
Your symphony to the silence,
There is something
In the way I can say
That all of this empty will go away,
In your strumming I hear the sound,
In your absence it's you that has been found.

It was one of those times that silence became laden, and alone dropped like cinder blocks from the sky,
The quiet strumming,
Close enough to feel the rhythmic noise, far enough for me to ache for even a glance a semblance of a smile.
Half wanting you to look me in the eye, and call out smalls, the other half wanting you to grind my face back into the bed, and do it again.

I felt the distance in the rhythm of the strings as you played, the sadness in the "you look comfortable"
I knew this is what the fear felt like,
All those stories about the boy who never called you back
Rushed into my head like a wave of "
you were never good enough"
Then every story I've heard, brought memories of frantic girls asking me for advice, for help, I want to go to them, I understand now.
 How the want, fills you with echoing,
The voices gasping in the darkness
The curiousity, not knowing what another hand touching you feels like.
Part of you eager to know, nervous in your buzzed state

When I am anxious I will no longer reach for you
I will reach for my pen, my gym bag,
 I will run, far, run until my lungs explode with emptiness
I will write my fingers raw, a future they are able to feel
In a way I am punishing myself. In every way I am punishing myself
For knowing better, for wanting it
For
Grappling for things are not there.

It is a balancing act, walking a tight rope in a windstorm, I know, that I've fucked up
But I am too much optimist to let you go
I hold on to bits, small meaningless trivialities, I know you're not capable of this

Gauntlet

Your sigh in the darkness plays like a symphony in my head
It is stuck on repeat as if to remind me I
am the last quest in a hopeless journey
It is stuck in time to remind me of your rythmic fingers in the dim glow of candles
It is the goodbye,
it is me being right when I said this is just another way you disappear, slowly,
It is knowing, and having known that there is not room for me in this journey, and knowing you do not want there to be.
It is the sinking feeling in my stomach when you said you can not listen to a song we've sang so many times, that was you, stopping the beat, blowing out the flame, and walking away.

Everywhere I go feels like a farewell tour.
I say goodbye to my heart being trapped in four walls
 the small town, presenting its emptiness in the stars
Exhales with the sounds of complacency
As I breathe with too much wanting inside for suburbia to contain.

Unfinished

I am whirlwind and smooth sailing,
Waterspouts tall enough to disappear into a shanty heaven,
You are whirlpools and dark gray skies, embracing sailors, and dragging them into your depths
If I were to say we were opposites, it would suggest that we are no more than just two disasters coexsisting
But I have tasted the ocean floor, enough to know how much it longs to see day light
And you have seen birds fly through my towers, only to emerge on the other side and leave me empty once again.

I am just so annoyed.

So here I am, again,
Left to be ignored,
As if I really am disposable
As if I really haven't bent over backwards
As if you dont really want me, you've just been lonely for too long, and I've been unhappy for long enough for you to think my body looks like an empty house. You move in, fill all my spaces with your life, let your needs gnaw on my wooden frame
not caring if I collapse around you,
because I have always just been a catalyst,
A support system for every idea,
an ego boost asking for smile, for my words, for the reason I stick around, the truth is
I don't know, leaving has never really been my forte, and maybe I just like pretending things mean more than they do, like my needing, my undeniable want to be needed, transitioning into wanting to be heard too, but I can only have one.

It is the curse of knowing
All too well
How to make yourself disposable
Let yourself be forgotten,
and apologize when they remember.
You are an ocean, vast but below the surface
Your depths are unknown,
you mask them in riptides
Scary enough to make people weary, cautious on your shores,
 Mysterious enough for those to try to see, before they realize that being
Carried miles away from land is not worth it
Not for your mess, waves in places there shouldn't be, a constant silent storm,
But you never tell, never dare to ask for help.

Wanting/idealism

"And so the lion fell in love with the lamb."
-Stephanie Meyer

Okay, lets pretend for a minute that I didn't preface this poem with a quote from Twilight, just like I pretend like I can't relate to wanting something dangerous for you, like the male preying mantis moments before he gets his head bitten off. He just wanted love, we all just wanted love. Sure, maybe my lion is a little off, a little more insecure, but he bites,
licks his teeth and only says things to get a rise.
 Maybe it is the warning signs,
 after throwing off my blanket of security, and burning it
I search for something that offers nothing, makes no promises, only
 speaks pretty words
and the occasional smile.
Maybe I just have a thing for lions,
don't judge,
as if you've never wanted something, knowing full well it will destroy you,
Looking at you, staring into your five empty shot glasses, as if seeing them full again would stop the spinning feeling, as if seeing yourself in saftey again would stop your spinning feelings,
 I fell... like anyone would,
 more magnetic than anything.
Pulled in by my own docility, a lamb
It is so easy, when I am away I think of the harshness in your words,
The aggression in your movement,
but those goddamn eyes,
They are so much more intense in my head,
I see you, like the lion, waiting for the chance.

All I know

I lose us in words I do not know how to say                           yet,
They sit, thick in my throat
 Threatening to choke me
If only they could find the time.
That is all they are waiting for
like a gauntlent pending its drop
But I cannot dwell on this,
my feet find their way to the ground
I am unsteady, but still I wander
I pretend the uncertainty is the leaves, crushed under my feet as I move on
The words are the puddles I kick through, making my shoes slightly more laden and heavy, but I do not stop
Not for the weight,
not for those who yell that I am too much of a dreamer
Far too in the clouds to find my way on pavement
 I laugh because they think I am searching,
But there is nothing to be found
I allow the journey to manifest itself,
and that is all I know.

Letting go

I unpack my words carefully,
like moving boxes
From a now empty home
Let them settle themselves,
Glass plates full of talking,
 Lying vulnerable and bare.
I do not cover them,
do not pull a blankets to shield them from being broken
I let them be, and I walk away.

I stop at a reflection
 Of what,
 I cannot see,
One foot in front of the other
Conquering what I will be.

The puppet articulates to the indifferent

I am poised,
Prim, perfect, polished
Everything I could be and more, and you
You come in threatening, like a tornado
The dark sky before the storm
 stealing the thunder from my mouth before it can open
And aren't you envious
Of everything I can be?
 I manifest everything cute and special and you, clump around,
A moutain of a girl, you are not small enough, and polite enough, do not smile and bat your eyes at the right people
You cannot calm my fire, you cannot make them choose you. When it comes down to it I am storybook, the main character of a novel, and you cannot even impact the plot. Shrug your shoulders and pretend it doesn't get to you. I know it does, watch as the glow of my teeth fade into nothingness, I know you will remember.

I guess a poem about Corporate America

It ignites, the corporate greed

Swallowing employees like a whirlpool 

Gray walls, cement floor, scripted

The thing about being disingenuous is there is usually someone behind the scenes, a larger hand at play, 

Be my puppet it breathes,

"Make my money"

 it grits through perfect teeth

Take this number and make it your identity, take my words and let them coil around your tounge. Remember to smile and say thank you as you carry the weight on your already cracking spine. 

"Be grateful" they coo, " you could be them" they cry, senseless, and selfish the demands grow 

as they work to replace you with machines. 

A cog in a corporate wheel, inevitably turning and with it, the livelihood of thousands go too. 

Ring Leader

Welcome,
To my own show,
Where I am contained,
Watch my acrobat hormones,
My seratonin backflipping, dopamine twisters, cortisol oceans,
a god damn mess of a show. Girl.
A mess of a showgirl.
all stumbling words and frantic fingertips.
Let me show you my emotions,
 A tornado behind glass
Let me know if I entertain you, laugh at my sloppy steps falling just short of a rhythm
That is what I am here for.

This is my circus, but I am not the ring leader, Notice my strings,
and you will see its shadow pulling them just behind the curtains.

After Genie (sculpture by Sybille Peretti)

Look at you, whirlwind girl
In the eye of a tornado
You are restless behind transparent glass
Debris encasing you, mangling any words that grapple to find the end of the squall,
Hold on tightly for you are a genie,
Finding your own way out.
No need for rescue
If you could only find the time.

Hollow wants

In the dark, I trace stars on my ceiling,

Make believe constellations that connect
Me to anywhere,
I follow them with my finger,
Scribbling names of countries
I've never seen, over and over again
I sigh, as a familiar ache
Settles like cinder blocks
in my hollow chest. 

My mind is a dinner plate

My mind is a dinner plate, filled with foods that I cannot eat
It is shattered, as if to say I threw it
I threw it to say you cannot control me,
so in essence,
it controls me,
convinces me with its porclain facade
 to reject,
Bury the idea that I could ever be okay
With being something more than a void
A place where others go to bury themselves
My mind was a graveyard of the sorrows gifted to me for burial,
I let them take up space, fill my empty with their collections of the most beautiful plates, ones that are empty and unscathed.

she crawls on glass ceilings

She crawls on glass ceilings,
balances on paper ropes,
and allows the barbed wire to gauge her throat
her voice is lost in the dripping carmine
poetry brimming on cracked lips
can't be heard over blood-red creaks
like hollowed stairways at three a.m.
as youthful souls tiptoe over burning coals
to not wake the sleeping souls of
their silent opressers

It is always a foggy night in sleep,

             Laden with the stillness

The blurred surroundings

There is comfort in distortion 

Everything blanketed and comfortably dulled

eh

 I have tied strings around my wrists
and painted my cheeks rosy
Allowed every stroke to be a punctuation, every movement jerking,
 fluidity lost to those who control me
I wait perfectly poised, demure and vulnerable
More puppet than girl
Waiting for the next person to take control,
Tugging at my ropes before braiding them around my neck

I am chaos and enigma
I am bones and flesh
Puppet and girl
But more a marionette,
A silly dancing doll is all
I've tied strings around my wrists,
Let you tie them around my throat
maybe I did that too,
Guided you to my neck like a light house waiting for a ship to kiss the ledge
 let your hand crash into it until I
couldn't speak

The day of my mothers funeral

The summer gives me too much time to think
Not enough tasks to keep restless hands busy
Or keep the cluttered mind quiet
There will always be meloncholy as the snow vanishes and gives way to renewed life
How dare the earth turn more when you are not able to be lifted
And while
The ground does not cave way as I step closer to you, does not swallow my feet
I am consumed by the weight of so many gifts not given, so much time lost in an early death
So many whys and not enough answers
I swear
If ever there was a way to hear you again I would be first in line
With as many Lilacs and Lilies as I could hold

2011, why?

They float
      just out of reach
from where I sit in the old pine tree
 the shards of my sanity taunt me
pin pricks of carmine blossoming
from my palms
as I am consumed by
             inability

Restricted

I leave it mute
pleading with my eyes for you to hear the silent
I love you's.
and the words my broken articulation
can't choke out,
I sit in silence
thinking everything I could say
but afraid
the shaking hands too hard to place
I clasp yours uncertain, if I should
believe
that in which I, before, so strongly opposed
listening to your words
feeling the meaning through pronounced syllables
restricted to return the adoration.

I guess I'll never know 2011

I guess I'll never know
if those- sneak peaks,
    silly faces
exaggerated "hellos"
           are just rountine lies....
or if by some miracle,
      they tell me the truth.

Glass Ceilings 2012

She crawls on glass ceilings,
balances on paper ropes,
translucent skin blanketing corroded bones
she is lost inside paper bags
Stuffed in crevices no one can see
until he comes along
peeling her from the glass
catching her as the rope
breaks picking her out of crevices
making her skin opaque he rips apart her bag cocoon
and carries her away
and then drops her in volcanoes because
to him, it was only a game

abandonment 2011

Abandonment is a dancing drop
spinning jumps, over hurtled rocks
communication lingers weaved through fingers
lace veils in black drops grabbing them with
every last ounce of strength you have
because once someone is gone
it does not matter if they are dead
pain in a bombshell
explodes upon the pang
you get with the realization
to them, your voice is lost.

6am

6am calls me from my sleep,
I imagine it a reminder that the world is awake before I, rustled with the waking of early jobs, and pending sunrise
 and while I am somewhere between consciousness and dreaming, I have nowhere to be soon,
The is a stillness in the solitude of an early morning
 I let myself be transfixed in that moment,
 I  listen to my breathing
 and let its rythmic chant tell me
You are here
You are here
You are here

Still waters

The world is romantic,
With its fresh snow, the ice that brings two bodies colliding,
 the spring with its rain,  as a girl stares out her window and imagines being embraced drenched, stuck with petals from the trees, and the other laughs, and pulls one from her hair,
It gives way to summer, the world is ignited, overflowed in warmth, so many possibilites in the sunshine
and I watch from a bench of my own
Write empty letters to the landscape of your skin, it is easy
When the world is emitting fervor,
to fool myself.
how easy it is, to make yourself fall for the transitions of seasons,
To ignore what you really covet
In my head I imagine my love is a well
And it is dry, when I am honest,
But I can fill it with emptiness, make believe that love is steady and not rivers that roll and build into an ever turbulent ocean
I walk to my well, stare into the absence of ripples, and toss in a coin as if to say I wish.

Inviolable

Hold on, she yells as she bounds against a drenched midnight sky.
You are too risky, with your stumbling tread
Heart feeble
Meek, mild,
destined for some make shift heaven
A small town busy with stagnation
Do you hear it yet,
The call to the water? Leave it,
 Only the unknown depth waits below the surface.
Clutch to your familiar.
You are happy here
This place is amazing,
This boy is amazing,
He is hard working
Only home body, your home body
Hold you down, do not run to far
Little girl, you are only as valiant
As the handcuffs you are bound in
Secure yourself in your life vest apartment in your inflatable raft town, you are drowning in the ocean of yearning you made.
Be thankful, those who follow the call always return home, I am saving you the woe of finding something you cannot quite grasp.
Drain your sea, stop pining, it is not for you
This void is your home
Remember
you wanted this.

Puppet darling

Will you kiss me

As you move in closer,

                Will you reach out to grasp me

With no intention to pull me in?

It is not kind, this type of solitude

     It manifests itself, a stone man 

Rough and jagged hands 

This love is not gentle with its restrictions

It is not romantic 

The way it wraps around my neck and tells me I am worthless 

There is a love note: 

You will never let go, girl. Girl, of choking words and forgetful smiles. You are far too gullible and idle. You led me here through the doors that you leave open, careless girl. 

It writes to me, amorous notes like these 

 I leave piled in the corners, 

 A caution to stay,

He leaves another love note:

You just don't get it sweetheart, you're all loose lies and tree trunk limbs. Nothing of beauty in that. There is only worth in those who choose to go, not those cemented in place. And you, artless darling, there is no poise in your exit, so why venture?

I listen, with each tripping  step I move slower, if I make no progress what is the point in struggle,

I remain a puppet in fog, always controlled, always stumbling.
A final note:
So silly it is, to let your eyes have so many stars. Dull them in reality, dear, and I will hold you. 

I lay in my bed as if to say

There is too much gravity if I stand 

There is a reflection next to me and

And there is nothing 

No recognition of the blank expression 

No attachment to the shapes of a countenance muted,

In the times when you realize

You are not healthy 

Coping mechanism is not healing 

Guilt for exsisting is not an excuse 

to shut up

Feel the claws of meaning ripping up your 

Stubborn mind 

Try to find peace in dissociation 

There are no vacancies here
   Each room is filled with apparitions of
old friends
They hum things to remind you that
Your mind is a motel, and even the new visitors are in for the short stay
Transient like those before.
It is your fault, anyway.
Who wants to stay in a place that needs updating
is too muffled and muted
too much silence and not enough music
even your sheets worn threadbare, your curtains full of holes,
they welcome those who choose to come
and let them slam the door
when they leave.