you

I miss you.
I hate you too. For not calling. For leaving me.
I wish I still had your voice at night, laughing into my pillow in the middle of the night, afraid the neighbors would hear.
I didn't forget your fucking birthday. That was a dumb excuse to say I didn't care. If you still think of me at all. I only wanted to make you as mad as you've made me. And I cling to that to keep from reaching out.

brain.

Be interesting. Be kind. Be liked, walk a straight line. 

Thursday.

Since you've been gone I've been plagues by what if's...questions with answers that can only be found far into the future. But there is something unhappy in me lately. I feel like I am not sure where my future lies. I am here, again, trying to decide what to do next. I keep thinking about saving money, maybe for a house. Maybe for some kids, or a trailer and a last ditch tour around the country before we settle. I think that would make me happy. Traveling alongside you, having a kid, being a mom. But maybe I'm not living up to my full potential? What was that education for? I want to do something big too, but I've been hurting, every, damn, day. Waiting. For the right time, when right now life feels so cluttered and these tiny rooms so claustrophobic and my heart empty.
I think now I am still, my existence feels...purposeless. I am ambivalent to so many futures. My soul not drawn to any one over the other. Most people say I am crazy to want what I want. More often I find myself holding other people's children as their parents squirm away to do their important things, and holding back. But I long to love. I think anyone who has known it would say the drive to become a mother is a feeling like a need, like thirst or hunger, a creeping coldness that knocks the wind out of you suddenly. I dont know the right answer. So we smile and think maybe next year and say but your still so young and yes, yes, that's true, but right now I'm only persevering and what I really want to do is live and be happy.

Rain.

"Grey", she whispers, "I don't think you should do that."
Maybe it's the way she says it, the wariness of her tone, the subtle whine in her voice, but something about that sentence makes me want to squeeze her. Squeeze her until she pops like a balloon. I let the frustration wash over me, a thousand tiny raindrops that cascade between over my temples and in between the folds of my shirt, down my legs and out out out of me, through my toes. Then it's over.
That holy moment hangs between us, thick and suspenseful. An eternity. But even as the echo of her voice bounces off the walls of the cavern to my rest between my ears for a second time, I lift my head over my shoulder and throw her a half smile. The spell is broken. I've reassured her. She lets out the breath she had been holding.
"Go sit outside if you are afraid. I will come get you when I find it."
I lean back, daring her to follow. For a second she falters, frozen at the crux of pride and instinct, both such stubborn vices. Then, with a twist of her heel, she walks quickly back out to the mouth of the cave and sits, beginning to run her fingers over dark hair. She lifts her voice in a thin, reedy song, and the birds sing their harmonies and watch her from high above in their tall jungle trees. She's better off there, I think to myself.
I have work to do.

You don't write to me anymore.

It's been a while
6 months
since you've rocked me to sleep
with the sound of your voice over the crackle of the telephone, talking about something new and exciting
the details all a whirl and getting lost in the abundant wordiness -

I
let myself get drawn in by that intake of breath, between the hiss of this and the tongue of that
To the time I
stayed up to see a lunar eclipse
and imagined your denim jacket hundreds of miles away
hugging your shoulders in winter
warming you when I could not.

Carry on, carry on.

I like to think we had something special.
It feels so far away now. Part of me will always want to rewind, out of pure nostalgia. For the way your place smelled, and the way your bedroom walls contained your energy, a vibration I can't quite explain. Once I opened your door and stood in the doorway, hands to my sides, and felt the power on my surface. Like you'd put some magic border up. It was safe, blue, like a blanket. Permeable like water. All shimmer and hum. It was sacred. And maybe I'm the only person who ever knew it was there.

One time I walked around your house. Opening all the drawers and searching through all the clothes. Not looking for anything in particular...maybe just looking to solve the mystery of you. Perhaps I believed if I could know all the things in this place, I could know you. I see how ambitious that sounds now.
I wonder all the same things girls wonder about a boy. Some are too selfish or shallow to be heard aloud. But I wonder if you miss me. If you think of me. And honestly, that's too terrifying to ask. It might change something. Or it might not. I can't deal with either.

Ghosting

Oh, injured bird. To steal your words, what am I going to do with you?
Has it really been so long for us?
Sometimes I wish I could rewind back to that night, when it all started. Quite a long saga in the end, but it played out a tragedy. But I still miss you, and the times you came to perch next to me. Sometimes you still try, and that makes me sad, because I still want to be the place you land. But it's nothing but a fleeting touch. Some passing ghost in shimmering ectoplasm passing me by on the sidewalk. Aimlessly haunting, and echoing conversations of long ago.

Husk.

He leans against the wall, feet crossed, and he's getting her number. I try to find some fault in her, but it's not even jealously. Just suppressed curiosity I guess. She's blonde and pretty. I quickly look down, like an unwilling witness to something I'm better off not seeing. I see her shoes and think, I used to wear expensive heels like that. So many things now only used to be.
On some level I really think it would be so easy for me to go full Type A. Perfect perfect perfect. I'm highly critical of myself and that's probably a fault...or maybe some leftover piece of my childhood, festering under the surface. It's actually really hard to explain. It's not that I want him, or don't want her to have him. I think I just miss someone looking at me like that. With interest, and awkward butterflies. Does that make me needy? Probably. Me the dry old husk.

awkward gravity.

It's like an old film reel. Clicking and flickering and suddenly - images. I brush my hand over your forehead. Your hair hasn't been cut in a while, and it runs a while through my fingers until it slips through their cracks and lands, disheveled, on your face and over your eyes. I throw you a half smile, the kind I make, that smirk you call it. You blow the hair out of your face, comically, with eyes crossed and it makes me laugh. The big laugh that takes over and crinkles my eyes and swallows my whole face. The real laugh you call it. 

We're just lying here, I get my two pillows and you have your one. It's one of those special moments where we don't feel guilty for just spending the day looking at the shapes in the ceiling, and I point out mine and you tell me yours and I try to find them. I'm always wrong but you lie to me and tell me I'm right. Enamored maybe, with me. I don't know why, and you certainly weren't always.

Sometimes I see you. Someone else whose obviously hiding secrets under baggy eyes, you're like a comic book character, you know. Don't get cocky, it's got nothing to do with being heroic. It's because you pretty much wear the same clothes every day. And you're broody. You are not an open book and I'm not into imposing. And emotional. But not the kind to let on. The kind that's only applicable in hindsight and that must drive everyone you know crazy. But the most frustrating? You're content being a martyr. You like to think of a better day but your comfortable in your own head and that's exactly where you'll stay, even if your arms and legs move and build an empire that reaches the sky. You're brilliant, and lovable, and you wasted it on me. Because you're so comfortable never actually going out and getting what you want from someone who can give it to you. 

Every time we pass. You don't care. You don't care. I keep thinking, maybe if we keep telling ourselves this, it will be true. I want to ask, happy now? 

Hey.

Through the bars, you were some kind of straight miracle. Maybe I wanted you to be, clinging so hard just like me. The first time I saw you, what a haze...and you were so bold. A crush. Maybe just a crush. But you were so new, grey t shirt I thought this could be easy, you here and me there. Sweet and a face like you've never seen, better yet smile and laugh so rare. I wanted you to see me. Maybe you ended up seeing me. For who I was. A picture of my heart, put up like some gallery and now its like I'm supposed to turn the page so easy?

You want to play, hey sad little game, we walk around blind but I still know you. And you feel me. Its time we come to the end, don't you think? We neither of us ever get what we want - strange place - silence. Fall asleep and you're there every time. Circle around I guess. Trying hard, trying hard to live without when all that I want is you. Well it's done huh. Yes, yes its done now. Remember that you made your choice. You knew how good it was. We watched the illusion escape...

à savoir

I heard
The things you weren't saying
you start to say
and then stop
because I'm not yours?
because you're shy of me
2 feet away and shy of me, hah
I'm thinking
miles away
I am not
a real thing
And vulnerable to your fantasies
So you gave me a name
And I looked enough
like home
for you to stay here for a while.
But now
flesh and blood
you falter
and I notice.
I'm thinking
Once
I would have jumped
happily ever after
with you and your regrets.

The Last Weekend

I keep thinking about what else I can do.
I keep making lists and crossing off tasks
like that's the answer
like that will alleviate the anxious waiting

My futile need for control.

I keep thinking about her body
a skeleton with a skin draped over it
gravity at its worst
bloodless, bones in a genetic bag

Her face is my face.

I keep thinking about the incense
rising in slow motion
wafting over her casket
holding my mother's hand and laughing

Standing alone and crying.

I keep thinking about what it means to be free
What it means to be a woman
This life, a raw and empty plain
I am a lamb, prepared for sacrifice

He says, you're crazy, but I'm only trying to plan. So the sickness in my gut will go away, so the tightness in my chest will abate, so I can finally get some decent sleep around here! Normally, I would get away, sitting in a window of white light I'd let it cleanse me. But I want to be here, in the nitty grit of this life. There is no escape, for now, I am trapped in the bag of bones that holds my consciousness. But I won't be forever.
We're all thinking the same thing, and I'm wondering, what will mine be like?
This unfamiliar cultish ritual isn't quite the way I'd like to go into the ground.
She's smiling.
She's crying, a strange cough caught in her throat, a white, quivering hand covering her mouth. Can this be the end? She's thinking

My blood
The half of me
She loved and didn't always do it right
Are we
the sum of our life
or the way we died?

It's open, and then they close it. Speaking in soft voices and we're laughing, and I don't feel close to her at all. In fact I feel very far away and removed from this. A part of me wants to go home, and they other wants to stop time, walk in the stillness and touch the face that bore me into this world, feel her coldness and find some forgiveness in all of this...