I.
“you are a closed book.” you said, but I don’t believe it. books were made to be opened, you see. and I’ve been sealed since the beginning.
My Heart is in Your Pocket
He says I am the sleepiest soundtrack, knows my rain jacket is my reddest organ.
Please pretend I always wash my dishes after eating and that I didn’t cry in the bathroom after your wedding in the fall. For your birthday I’m going to give you a portable version of my heart. You’ll express excitement over the plug in for your ear phones. Ride the bus bobbing your head to the beats. Wondering what all the white noise is about. When you leave I will not jump from a high place like that boy did in high school. I will wake up early and always hang up my towels and I will tell myself that a can and string telephone just isn’t a practical thing to lay between states. I won’t take the pills. I will bury the pills. Grow myself a medication forest and neglect the shit out of it. Please pretend that I know what love is and that I never sit when I should be standing in the shower. That my hands never hold themselves, that this is all so real you should be searching for Michelangleo’s signature in the strokes. This is the part where my portable heart will leak all over your shoes. Apologies. Apologies. Come at me like I’m your dirtiest bathroom counter. Like this is a job for Draino and Windex and the saddest sponge. When you leave I will not drive drunk. I will wear something low cut, accelerate towards every changing light, talk my way out of every almost ticket, every almost chest pain. He says I am the loneliest excuse to forgo bowling, leaves my portable heart in the driveway to star gaze, to air out, to do anything that sounds better than sleeping with real thing.
I write what I cannot photograph.
where the heart is
I only use metaphors because I need something to hide behind. the honest truth hurts too much to pull past my fingertips and I’ve been so quiet this last little while, so shaking scared to write things down because when it comes to finding words I can mean something by, the margin for error is just too high. and I can’t stand the thought of getting it wrong, can’t stand knowing I might one day read my own fractured poetry and regret it. I thought maybe you could be my metaphor, you know? you could be my something to hide behind, something to tuck myself into when real life comes knocking(me down) but it’s not fair, is it. to use someone like shelter when they treat you like their home.
still tripping over your name
you make me want to grow up. I didn’t mean to look at you like this. I try to keep my eyes on other things, the half-snowed over road, the glowing gray sky but I just can’t keep my eyes from landing back on your hands on the steering wheel. you are not like the rest; there is something inside of you that time and space cannot forget. you reach till my core. it is your soul that speaks. and it pulls and it calls and the whole inside of my chest is riddled with holes that you cover with an unthinking touch of your hand. it is the holy Spirit that keeps your fingertips so warm. and I didn’t know it would be like this; I didn’t know that when the lights came down and everything slipped through my fingers, it would be your presence I craved. you drove me home and I couldn’t leave the car. and you let my name slip from your white teeth, so casually, and my bones cried, ‘please, please just let me stay’. because there is a light in your eyes and without it, I cannot see anything. when I finally walked away, I felt your signal fade. and as I heard your car pull off my driveway, my light grew dimmer until you were out of range. there was nothing first-sight about this, it took a while for your being to settle in but the passion you breathe is something I’ve never seen. (I just want what you give off.) and I don’t know what any of this is, all I know is you carry a flame just beneath your skin and I’m more of a fire hazard than I’ve ever been.
sea legs
do you know what it’s like when a soul slips in, past the curtain in your open window and touches your arm so earnestly it burns for 3 days afterwards? do you know what it’s like when the same soul lets go and never looks back. you would not like the letters I’ve written you. you would peel back the pretty words and leave nothing but the small, shaking truth. I cannot let you (get so close). because once the poet’s fragments and bits of light and smoke and mirrors disappear, what is left will not be enough. and I can’t stand the thought of sitting before you with nothing but the meager elements of who I am in my cupped hands, while you live more wholly than anyone who’s ever claimed to know better. I should have been collecting years instead of words, should have learnt to swim instead of trying not to rock the boat. (a well-strung sentence won’t save you from the sea.) and I caught on a split second too late (to grow old with you). you are a paradox; you are bottomless and overflowing, a tsunami that’s still grounded and I am
drowning.
tonight my hands hold the same scent you did last summer. it’s incredible how a couple of doorways and a narrow set of steep, green stairs can make you feel like nothing’s changed. how you can wander your old haunts; how they’re still there after all this time and they’re still begging you to play (as if the seasons haven’t come undone). things looked so different under june’s love-drunk sun. but then you’re 18 and you’re not so young anymore and you’re standing in the middle of main street, just barely hanging on to the closest thing you have to love and it isn’t even something you can call your own; it’s just something you touched once. and it seems your hands have more scars than skin but it doesn’t matter because when you press them to your face, they still smell like him.
everyone tells me where I shouldn’t end up but
no one ever tells me where to go from here.
certain days still catch the light. even in the coat of clouds I’ve made myself, sometimes the sun reaches in and brushes my skin with burning fingers. you always sounded like pure gold when you sang. but the forest has hung heavy with silence, and lately I can’t raise my sorry voice to fill the void. so, I pull the thunder a little closer; let the storm rage because rain against my skin sounds better than nothing. and if no one else, at least the weather still touches me.
I don’t know what’s wrong with me I can’t write about things in particular lately, it’s been all or nothing. but I don’t want either of them. I want bits and pieces unfolded and overwritten until they’re exhausted; till I can be done with them. I can’t fix it all at once.
