you would recoil in horrorat the mere thought of crushing a cockroachyou would not even kill an ant, nothen youstabbed me repeatedlyuntil I had to hold my insides inwith my hands and fightfor air my body remembers being your punching bagyour mattressyour safe spaceyour wellthe place from which you would fill yourself -and pour it all out on someone else.
when the men leave the women try to heal each otherbut violence is never far awayat midnight the tree outside my windowcomes alive with firefliesand then the batseat them
how are you ableto see the writingcarved into my skinread this languageunderstand this bloodhow it ebbs and flowshold this breathmeasure its weightand know its depthyou have notknown enoughof this life but yetwhen I seeyour soft handsI want them
I want to forgethow I loved youwith a love that made you want to cry[unable to reciprocate -heart swollenwith wantinghead trying tostay afloat]I will take nothing from youwhen I leaveyou will feel everything you aredisappear
you brought out the dictionarymade her swear on every synonym for over, left, brokenframing your questions in all possible wayscovering all bases in uncoveringyour guile nowhere near sufficientfor her deceitmy aunt looking for proposals for her daughter, adjusted her shawl and with a youthful laugh once saidan old man marrying a young girlis like buying a book for other people to read
you are yetto drawlines betweenmy scarssee the shapethat emergesdraw parallelsand you wouldspeak of lovewe have far to journeyI am still mapping your birthmarks
you bury your face in melike you are starving I am left gaspingclawing at the sheetsyour arms gripping meheld by the hipsI am helpless,breathless, boundand then you break me
what you call serendipity is a weight inside my chestyou give me too little of you how did you learn to be so careful with yourself?watching me hurl myself into usstanding there calmly, know this -I will turn away after I break.
for the first time it doesn't scare you didn't you see my hands shake as I lit up yet another cigarette -I've been scared for weeksmy face against your chest helps me breatheyou are homeI am lostno bearings, no ground, no sky
why does fallingfeel like leavinglike being leftlike abandonment?like standing in a room alonewatching for ghostswaiting for shadows of you to fall across me again?why does falling feel like sinkingwhen it should make me fly?why is your fallenso easy for you to containwhen I want to fold myself into the floor and cry?
my mother taught me to leave when no one’s lookingwhen there is no danger of being stopped or getting caughtshe left past midnightthree children in towattempting an escapealong dark beaches, rail tracksheart pounding but I sayleave in the lightbefore being leftleave when it is least expected – that’s when no one’s looking
some morningsI wake up broken wash the blood from the sheetsafter he goesthey do not dance in the breezeor dry stiffin the hot sunbut seethe in darknessbeneath a ceiling fan swirling slowly,heavy,bearing witness to too much
1 when you kissed me on the street and said I tasted of strawberries 2 when we watched ‘Titanic’; and you cried, and got mad thinking I didn’t 3 when there were others and you and I were still ours, us, always.
your death was an accident but you stayed faithful to the end purposeful even in passing – rising, bloody and broken, to your knees the unbroken flow of the sign of the cross, a prayer to your father, and down, to death. at times shoes fly off in death – yours did. one hit the windshield of a car ...