Too long I’ve played second best in other peoples bedrooms
Breaking my body like communal bread again and again
To be passed around
And not one lover ever looked to preserve the whole of me

While I wraped soft flesh and sweet words around them
Twisted and braided and bent myself to their comfort
I’ve stood mute in kitchen corners
Eyes cast down waiting for permission
To have my birth-right voice back.

I’ve paid with blood and sweat
And down to the bones of my hands
For free air
For a small corner of the heart
Vague promises that melted
Like soft butter over bread
At the smallest hint of imperfection

At any straying over the boundaries
The square lines drawn around me
Saying ” here I have given you space to live but no further-
Here is your spectrum.”
For once you had fallen in love with my vast and vibrant rainbows
I am now given a handful of shades.
And then complain at how well I
Color in the lines
While you chase more free and vivid lovers,
…Like I once was.

Past time

I'm never a viable ...." Option" ... To you,

Just a pastime. 

And maybe I do this to myself.

Always being out of reach,

Always being boring and predictable,

Always getting attached unconsciously and where I shouldn't. 

Always half believing under my breath that this time it will be different
 and I'll be loved, wanted, treated like I am valued and worth the kind of respect and long term affection that I want.

That I've always wanted.

That's All I want. 

It's never a graceful end with us.

Always cliff hangers and question marks.

Always the invisible wind down 

And never periods.

We love in incomplete sentences 

That we pick up the thread and start over and over but always stop at the tenses -

Were. are. is. was. will be.

Everything is hoped for 

And everything is hazy;

Nothing is complete

Or fully said.

Implication pairs its self with commitment.

Our tongues dance round and round the subject growing older each year. 

I want. I need. I love. I will. I am.  

I can almost imagine your room 

I can almost feel the weight of a wedding band.

Put Away

You only want to touch me after dark.
Night time holds affection captive
And I’m only familiar in half light.

Nobody knows you steal kisses
When stop lights and street lamps turn on.
My convex shapes blend and bend into your eclipse.

I return though,
Your front porch has become something silent I cross
In the few seconds it takes for you to open your front door.

I accept your hesitant touch,
The hurried way you make love to me,
Momentary sparks in the darkness.
Tracing and retracing the the nations of your skin,
The desert of your back,
The sharp stone cliffs of your hands..
The fields of grass stretching off into sighing plains
when the stubble of your cheek brushes the smoothness of mine
Almost by accident.

I kindle these fragments of quick light
So when I return
And climb into bed pulling the covers up over my loneliness,
I can retrace the feeling of sunrises on my skin.
The golden way it lit lovers interlocking in sleep,
The moments I knew what it was to be endless.
I remember a time
you wouldn’t be ashamed to hold my hand in the day light.
You wouldn’t be afraid to say my name
in more than a whisper.

It’s 2am, the streets are empty,
Your house is cold.
Tonight I will leave your neighborhood un-haunted,

Tired of being a ghost.

Shulamite

You will find me in the fields

With the empty of your fresh harvests,

Noosed shells swaying in the breeze.

These vibrant lives are now hollow vessels

Echoing the sound of your voice back to you.

Your love has sucked dry the fruit and left the rind.

And I am left to question how many other hands did you bring in to sow the seeds
Was I twelve or maybe thirteen?
Do I have a story or a history anymore
Was it all left in genocide and rewritten
Did I loose the lineage and the noble heritage on the alter
In my omission was assistance
In my passiveness, permission
My pale hands, stained, clutch a voiceless throat.

Oh my brothers, who have turned your faces in anger to me,
Has the sun not taken out enough vengeance?
I have tended your fields well,
my own I have not kept.