you spilled into my life and made a messy thing of my heart.
and i don't quite know how to forgive you,
because you ruined me
in an irrecoverable way.
i have another boy i'm supposed to be writing about now,
but he's not the one i keep finding fragments of, under my skin.
and, still, he's never held me like you did.
i don't think he can.
i don't know how to forgive.
S.
toe to tile
backbone to barren floor, frigid -
chills to clammy skin
a gravity that sinks deep into the gut
you are drawn to low things
fallen fruit and dirt between the cracks
down and damned,
already
and you are made from darkness
low voices clinging to cigarette stained walls,
you found comfort in your riven body being
far beneath brainwaves and scorching eyes
a safe haven in the fault lines that run
from the refrigerator to the stove
and in the smell of alcohol and Clorox mixed
all pulling you further in
the ones on foot can trample you, still
but you are a million cutting shards (broken)
this is why you chose the ground
flat-spined, invisible
down and damned,
already
S.
He was drunk and clinging to me in the way I hate but am flattered by,
whispering nothing consequential. Nothing he'd remember in the morning.
Being pulled away by jealous arms
that were never quick enough to stop a small-kiss or soft touch.
I couldn't stop the corners of my mouth from moving when he told me
in all his drunken glory that he likes me. He really likes me.
I hate - as I've always hated - when someone can make me
do something I don't mean to. Even smile.
It isn't fair because he's drunk and I'm sober enough
to know better than messy words and ear kisses.
Sober enough to not let it get to me,
but it does. He does.
(I hate this).
S.
"And how, when walking down the street he placed his palm against my neck in a way that I've spent every day since hoping some other man will do without me having to ask."
Meg Fee
I could be happy in his arms but God knows I'm not strong enough to leap to them.
Not with a heart weighed heavy as mine.
It shouldn't be this difficult, I know that. But there are a few things wrong with me.
I am made up of a thousand walls, and only a few doorways - barricaded now. And guarded.
He doesn't ask for much, just for something real.
But I am the lie behind false fronts; offering nothing for his troubles.
I hope only that my heart can soften before he gives me up.
Or, stays ice right through the walk away.
How did I get so broken?
S.
I have loved before, but it didn't feel like this.
I have kissed before, but it didn't burn me alive.
Jodi Picoult
Sometimes all it takes is everything you have and a spoonful more.
S.
I am sorry for the nights I spent by your side.
They ruined me, when they were supposed to make me whole.
The pieces I gathered broken from the hardwood floor don't feel like they belong to me any longer.
Tarnished surfaces, splintered and worn, and edges that could slice you deep if you aren't watching what you're doing. Cutting and bitter.
It's a terrible thing, but perhaps necessary, and perhaps more common than a heart would care to nod to. And perhaps, it wasn't you after all, but my own tendency to disappoint myself. A terrible - addicting - game that you are a card in.
Go back to start - do not collect a thing.
S.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
Isn't it so that time disturbs most everything?
More than anything, I fear putting myself within your grasp because time has a terrible habit of sweeping me away before anyone else can.
And yet it seems that love unused burns the strongest and the longest.
I think, if you took me back to that night, when you brushed my forehead with your lips with whispered words for only my hearing, forcing things to change, I think, I would have answered you differently. But who can know?
Time keeps ticking forward and this story is buried in the past.
S.
