Sometimes at night when I can't sleep I think about your poems.
Your words get caught in my brain at the oddest of times and wont unstick until I recite them to myself
Laying on my pillow staring at the roof.
And I wish I had more of an excuse to know you, and unravel the too skinny boy with his secrets and pen that I know to little about.
You could die tomorrow ( as you have been giving away piece by piece and it has not gone unnoticed ) and I would be helpless to help you.

...

I guess that's what happens when a man is everything to you.
You lose everything when he leaves.

And then you are a nothing girl,
You sit and stare at the walls
And try to remember how life went
When you were about 15 and boys
Weren't as important as school or friends.

You try to pick up the pieces
And cut your fingers on some
But still the same, you try.

You realize you don't smile anymore
So you practice til you can coax
Brilliant sunny dispositions out of air,
And laugh with movie star grace
At the monotony of existence.

You recite your name
So you remember who you were.

Crush

You left. Displacing air
That blew backward as if hurrying away
Like old men slouching, hurry along the street outside
Looking for something lost.

But when the air returned it caressed
As if with fingers belonging to a hand
Longing to be held.
A shy child that apologizes without words.
I clung to pictures like I wanted so desperately to cling to you.

Leaving notes to myself that spoke of the love you never gave.
I wonder if I'm insane or if this is perfectly normal;
To obsess. I'm ashamed.
12 years old and awkwardly agonizing
Because I want you to notice me and I thinking I'm to ugly to have you notice.
I'm not good at loving, I can only give and not second guess every word and action.
I'm broken of being too analytical.

I've forgotten what I once knew
And I can only stand here trembling,
Not daring to say a word
Because I don't know the right thing to say.
My hopes contradict them selves
And I'm inclosing faster then you can reveal me.
I want you to understand with out my tongue tripping and hopscotching around phrases
That I'm too afraid to share with you -
That I have always been to scared to share with anyone.

This is all in my head.
If life is simple there is a black and white answer
[either you notice or you don't notice]
but in this over/out blown world
Where bubblegum bubbles and the scent of a boys hair
Are hot air balloons and jungles of fragrance
A glance is undressing,
Your touch on my hand the intimacy of love making.
I find myself wishing I wasn't so stupid.
So naive, so painfully self aware of what I am
Which is nothing.
Nothing to you. Nothing at all.

Today is a day for confessions

I never want to cry around you because I want the time I spend with you to be happy.
I try not to get attached because honestly you scare the hell out of me. I'm scared to love you or feel anything because I know you will never love me back.

You say your scared to tell her you love her because you're 99% sure she'd never talk to you again.
Well I can't ever tell you that I feel the exact same way.
I hate how she treats you. I hate that she ignores you for weeks then comes over just to fuck you. I hate that you love her.

0.

Size 0 was always a dream floating past me.
I used to sit on my bathroom floor,
back propped against the tiles where my spine cut like uneven knife wounds into me, dreaming of being size 0.

They say a girl of 5'1 should be 103.
133 always told me I'm a failure.
And just a glass of water was all I would take
Hoping to wash away that unclean greased feeling
That 30 extra pounds gives you.

Have you ever tried sleeping on a dead empty stomach?
its not so bad.
kind of like some one punching you from the inside,
fighting for you to give in and have one little bite of food.

Its better then standing up
Or moving when you haven't eaten for days.
being dizzy always scared me
Ever since that time I fainted at work
And smashed my face into a metal ice scoop.
And that was only on pursuit of size two.
I'm more careful now.

"just a little juice."

" really, I'm fine"

"Not pasty just naturally pale."

"It's just so hot in here."
Really, there are a thousand excuses for why you look sick.

Have you ever done disgusting things to make yourself not eat?
like crawling into a maggot coated trash barrel
And scrubbing it out.
Hoping the three week old soup of other peoples meals
Will make you sick and you can purge
Whatever calories are left.
Wondering to yourself all the while
"Does throwing up count as negative calories?"

I just want to be a size zero.
I want toothpick thighs that don't rub together when I walk;
that look good in dresses and amazing in jeans.
I want to look like the mannequins in clothing shops.
The perfect body type, for why else would they try to sell clothing off it?
(have you ever seen a 168lb mannequin? there's a reason for that)

I just want this fucking body to listen up.
I cry every time I look in the mirror or look at these god dammed legs
that in my despair I worry will never look right.
Will never be skinny.

I want people to feel my bones when they touch me and treat me delicately.
I want girls to look at me enviously wishing they could look like that.
And men, I never want to have another man look at my body in disgust or uncertainty.
Never want another man to leave me for someone more skinny or pretty.
I want to feel worthy of attractive peoples affection.

I just wish I could unzip this fat suit and step out as the real me.

I want to be happy and have one less worry.
103 . . . I can do better then this.

It Is Over

Now I know.
I mean for sure,
It's done.
I can pack up my memories in boxes
With diary pages like old news papers around them.
I can put those pictures
And dreams away.
Every time I see a place I wanted to show you
I can finally look without the ghosts images
Of you and I before my eyes.
It's fitting that on this day
There should be rain.
Someone was merciful and didn't give me
A bright sun to mock my misery.
No. This isn't a nice day,
A fine day,
There aren't birds singing in a blue perfect sky.
This isn't the kind of day I would of wished
To share with you.
It is a broken ruined day
And I like it.
Every perfect thing reminds me of you.

mocking bird

There was a disturbing message
That you left in the bathroom
Water droplets fell shimmering onto the floor
and lay there waiting for me.

Smiles of shy delicate apprehension
Cold kisses that mean less then what I want
I don't know you, I don't know you,
but kiss me anyway.

Touch my cold ghost pale skin,
Lie that you like me.
And make me forget what I am;
Make me remember who I was.

When I was a nightbird
Caught in your net
My songs were all for you.
My sighs and lies
And the art of all my sequined feathers
falling
falling
off my body with the sun rise.

Silent too-quiet,
You left and I know not when.
Leaving me to weep
And sing songs I wrote for you.
Tethered to your absent fingers,
Mocking bird that you outgrew.

Forever
Isn't any longer
What it used to mean.

And I'm tired of the bitter tastes of the same.

My cold tongue doesn't recite your name anymore
And I don't remember your face like I used to
But I still have dreams that I'm looking for you
And sometimes I catch up to you
but you don't remember me
And I don't remember how that makes me feel.

I think I'm ready to forget
but my heart won't let me
And I can't decipher if this is you
Or the gods and demons in my head I have crafted you to be.
You never asked to be them
And I never wanted to be religiousless
Naked and blamed
screaming under an open sky
To give me a new name

I want to be found
I want someone to care about this fucked up mess
but I can't pretend any longer
to be someone else.

Home. a work in progress

And this is the house I grew up in
this is the swing in the back yard
that I fretted over not using more when I was younger
Because then I didn't know how much it would mean

And this is the kitchen floor
Warped and wobbled and covered in green carpeting
And the kitchen drawers we used as tables
When we didn't have any furniture yet

This is the corner of the hall
And these lines and dates
are the tree rings of children
That have grown here

Safe. warm. protected.

And this is the living room
where my father almost died
The year I was 14
And that was a bad year, one of the worst

And these are the window sills where I would sit
above the heater in winter
Watching the snow in this 200 year old house
and not doing school because I wanted to be warm one more moment

And this is the room my sister and I shared
til she moved across the house when I was 11
the walls were pink back then
and I missed her for the first year but said nothing.

And this is the closet where I wrote notes
to nobody in particular
Just because I wanted them to be found
When I was gone.

And this is the front yard that never grew grass, Only moss.
And we would lay there After spinning games
Because it was soft and the trees were very old
And I always liked the shape of them.

And this is the place that I had my first kiss
I was 16 and it was only a moment
I trembled afterwords because I was a shy child
And not used to things so intimate

And out back is the hill that my brothers and sisters and I
would sled down When we were younger
And these are the crab apple trees that we would climb
I still did when I was older, and it didn't matter that I was to big for that.

we raised our first puppy here
Her name was faith and she had eyes that used to smile all the time
When she died we buried her at the edge of the woods.
She was a good dog and I miss her.

impulse

And I will lay in the bathwater of my own guilty admissions.
Washed but not pure.
Blank slate to be reflected on in the swamp of my sins and missteps.
Mother, I am so numb.
What are these? These arms and breasts
And legs all tombstone white,
All cages, all temple.
My belly rising from the cloudy murk, infant
Distended and swollen with womanhood
The crashing jangles of what I am and am not.
Show me the way,
You said you would once.

These are my hands, my ears, the curve of my hip
And the birthmark
You noted on the day I was born.
Have I ever been so perfect?
So trusting?
So utterly demanding and unassuming?

But I am not captain of this ship,
No commander to my destiny.
Still falling, still making these deadly mistakes.

You once said I was all wind, all trust, all impulse
set to wondering.
And you had always known…
Can you blame me?
Can you blame me for it all?

One Night Stand

So you wanna pick me up?
I'll make up a lie
and we'll hop in your ride

And make awkward conversation on the way back to
your place.
We'll lie on your bed and watch tv
All the while pretending not to be
Thinkin what we're thinkin

You'll wanna touch me
And say that you
love me
Put reason on hold as you take off my cloths and promise you wont
judge me.

But what next?

Your hands in my pants looking for the magic that's supposed to undo me
Find the line that's supposed to make my mind so blank
except for the breath on my neck so you can pass right through me.

But what you don't know is I'm already gone
already fixing on the next fix
To fulfill my disappointment
The next high to get me by the low that comes crashing down around this
Staticed out emotional connection.

Climax doesn't thrill me.
I am not fulfilled by the spill of
your insufficient manhood and
fears of loneliness into me.

I will not be the rag
That wipes the smears of yesterdays
haunting failures off your chin.

I am not a weakness.
A place you can hide your dirty little secrets
To compress the desperation and panic that you feel
Recycled into a face you can keep in public
so I can be kept in your back pocket
always running to where you keep me in the closet

So you can hide
And entwine your body with mine
Til there is no you anymore.

And I was erased
without a face
trying to be what you wanted
so I could always be counted
And have a place to go so I could feel alive
Cuz I'm dead to the world_
And no one cares enough to take it to the next level
And make resuscitation a possibility

What do you want from me?

I have been come on with your
Shortcomings
Always running
From that face that haunted me
That rejected me
That made me want to prove
there is more to me
Then a body and a strict set of rules
On not to have intimacy
Can't let nobody close to me
Because I can't hurt
If you don't know the real me.

And I am tired of running from me own face in the mirror.

Can't stand to look at me
Can't stand to talk to me
I just wanted resurrection
in the fake connection
That I thought we had.

But rescue is possible.
And it's not found in these stained sheets
Or the 3am phone calls to hide the nagging
of our own self loathing
At what we never wanted to be.

I wont follow you down that road and into that car
Because I know what waits for me
And it is empty.

I can't be that girl
Because I already have been.
And I would rather pick my self inflicted wounds
of all the bitterness
then let you cram your emptiness into me.

Something of Value

I wanted so much more then to be wanted.
Seen as a pit stop to fill a need as basic as hunger.
I didn't want to be desirable
Just to be played with and put back on a shelf and for sale.
I have value.
And the secret to my enticement is found in the layers and depth of a person
That has treasures stored up and waiting to be spilled and spent with abandon on the One who would pursue her.
But you walked past all that.
Took what you thought you wanted and stayed hungry.
Still prowling the streets for me, for this,
And you don't even know it.

While you were window shopping for little girls playing dress up
Dangling like candy in front of you
I was at home waiting.

I could of given you
Something of value.

Good Enough?

Don't you dare call me your child.
Your baby,
Honey. Sweetheart.

What you didn't know was I was
Always on the side lines
Playing good enough.

I have never been beautiful,
I have never been smart,
Just good enough.
Good enough to fuck
Good enough to be handled like cheap
Meat on the verge of turning,
Panicking to get in and out
Before I change my mind.
But how could I when you had my heart?

Highjacked like stolen electronics;
Only responding to your signal.
Living for the moments that you noticed me,
Waiting to pick out the thin invisible wire
That I thought connected us

Love? - I whispered to myself, Love?
Only occasionally.

prose? I don't know.

Her hair was black.
I remember that.
Notes stuffed in the bottom of an old drawer
That chronicled a life
That was secretly tragic.

Not that you'd know by just a look.

Whispered snatches of song
barley audible beyond the blowing
Of a million scraps of paper on the floor
Sticking to the spots
of brown stained water leaks.

And he found her on the floor,
Only sleeping,
Not like in his dreams
Where all the precious words
That made her music
Were used like tissue paper
blotting out letters with circles of blood.

And all he wanted to do was tuck her hair behind her ear
And sing her all the favorite lines of songs he liked.
But she was sleeping
And he didn't want to stare
In case she woke up and was startled by him there.
He didn't want to be labeled
with transparent tape,
barely noticeable but still there,
freak or pervert.
Didn't want to violate her privacy
or the trust that she could sleep with out something happening to her.

It took months to get her insomnia to die down.
And who would blame her for being unable to sleep with nightmares that never should of crossed the boundary into reality.
And when she cried in her sleep there was never much to do.
She would awake, not really ashamed but rather just tired of having it happen again, and for having to put me through it again.
She'd calm down at just the right pace so I felt comfortable leaving her alone. Though I knew she wasn't really calm,
just conscious that I had work in the morning and never should of been up in the first place.

silver

Sometimes I think I steal love,
Hoarding it away into dark holes for the heart,
Keeping it like trinkets to look over on rainy days.
Feeling over the bumps and rough edges
That cause me to look at the worlds ugliness
And smile on it anyways;
That soften atrocity's into forgiveness
Convincing this frayed heart to be brave.

I am really not unafraid
I am really nothing
But love tells me that I am.

ends

And you are always scrapping me with the brittle sound of your words
And I am always using my mouth to question myself
I don't want to be this person anymore.
Each footfall drags me down with the paper tears of a roll I have outstayed my welcome in

I have grown and the shoe no longer fits
I am not your Cinderella.

Everything Ends.

I still have dreams that I'm looking for you
And sometimes I catch up to you,
but you don't remember me
And I don't remember how that makes me feel.

And this is so,
So temporary.

Olive's Ocean

Would you look at me?
It's already too late and we both know it.
Your fingers tangle in my hair and think of salt and sea weed,
A faraway ocean cold and colorless.
You trace the bumps and sharp edged rounds of my spine
A sea anemone made of jelly and stringy dangling left overs.
I never wanted to disappoint.

Somehow you wanted this but slightly different.
So we become this sort of accidental lovers,
Now muted down of any loneliness.
We tire of each others company and bore
Each other with talk,
So neither of us speaks.

Our love making becomes the scene of a crime,
Brutal and violent.
We avoid each others eyes after,
As if each of us knows. . .
But chooses to let our innocence hang
By the thin threads of denial and silence.
And we insinuate into our lives the half hearted attempt
That there are others . . .
But we both know it's only checking the pulse
So we ignore and glance over,
We forgive what never originally offended.
And we do only enough of whats expected to get by.

We make repetitions of patterns that lost meaning
A thousand days ago
But monotony and monogamy is harder to break
Then the disturbance at the thought of sudden change.
"What do we do, dear?"
I will say,
And you will reply with a murmur in your sleep
Which will mean anything a want it to at the moment
Because the noise keeps me up at night
And I haven't the heart or effort to tell you.

I write on lunch break sometimes

I woke up last night
And the terror of my dreams
Wasn't painted on the shadows of the wall.
But the simple stirring of your moth breath
That fluttered the roses on the bedspread
And turned pages in my mind.

I gazed at you and feared losing you
For my dreams are all the same,
I am losing you
And I cannot change.

The music of a dripping kitchen faucet
And the midnight drone of a refrigerator
Lulls me and assures me that all remains the same.
Still I am putting on my jacket
And leaving through the front door
And I'm not coming back again.

Insomnia

Here, under the single florescent light,
I become something other then myself.
The constant pull and flow of a coke heads energy
Has finally subsided to where dreams undulate
Like underwater kingdoms before my eyes.
And water log my brain
So that each step becomes gravityless.

I am not filled with delusions of my own self impotence
Or the wailing cry of drug addiction.
But under the twin bulbs that flicker,
Undecided if they will share their green tinted,
Unforgiving glow with me,
I am passive.

Fascinated with a simpletons tunneled concentration
At the crack in this table
That has sprung up between the grains.
Swelling larger, shifting uneasily, magnifying it's self,
Til it is an abyss I fall into;
A crack in the universe sucking me in.
A darkness that hides such horrible knowing things
That wish to eat me in great sucking, sicking, crunching,
smacks from there unmouths.
I scream, terrified that I will tumble in,
And the universe behind me like a thread pulled through the eye of a needle.

My eyes spring open.
I am at my desk again.
My fingers upon a split in the table
That glows and darkens under the lull
Of florescent lights...

I am alone and something other then myself.