Loner

I'm lonely, but so are you

You can call it solidarity,

sympathetic empathetic decency

Be decent and cover up

put your clothes back on and 

hug your truth to your chest

shove your wallet back in 

and get the hell out. 

To call it solidarity 

is an insult they keep using

I'm mocking it when I agree

Knowing the words 'til it's a part of me

Shouting I'm in control 

While wheels slip from slack hands

And I understand the last stand 

Will be made by us on our knees.

You are so, lonely, but I'm 

calling it solidarity too 

Taking life as a line at a time 

A script I'm not following 

Asks me to read but I'm blind 

This is a world with no braille, 

You can't feel your way through

Stars

I connect the dots and find constellations
removed from skies
And I want to claim this prize
So far from where it should be
originated
Close now to here, caged and abated
Sheltered, healed and closed,
fraught with foolery and foolishness
Edging to the door with eyes open wide
Dying already and assuming it's died
Anything to speed the life
Of one so young

Catch

And so we grope

Wanting more and asking

For none

Blind eyes are turned to 

needing more from you

And so we cope

And desire, and cry

and perspire

Reaching, grasping

scratching your back and catching at 

straws

Scars

are all we end up with.

Change

I could write long lying lines

about how I hate you.

Counting the ways too carefully

catching smoke in my hands

and forcing thoughts from my head,

I'd follow you

down into that hole I dug, scraping carefully at rocks

and keeping the dirt in jars

while I let off fireworks labeled

"asshole!", "liar", "cheat"

to distract

saving secrets for summer

in case it should get hot

and you should

want me again

Manipulation

I think he's manipulating you. Changing you, like a light, from red to green, driving into and under you, forcing your feet from the floor and your head into the clouds, never letting you settle, hanging you by the throat from his bedpost.

I think he is manipulating you. Pulling your insides to your outside, seeing your heart on your sleeve and shouting 'not good enough', demanding that hearts cover you, printing them onto your shirt, grabbing you by your shirt, forcing fables on you and terrorizing what you know.

I think that he is manipulating you. Easing his tune over ears new to sound, laying you down to listen, impregnating your imagination, slipping softly through the gaps and strapping you to him.

I think he's manipulating you.

Up the Block

Her mention of his house killed my night. I can pinpoint the descent of my mood into hell right there, by mere mention of the fact that he lived a scant block away from where we stood. So close to and yet so far from me. The emotional distance meant nothing; his simple physical presence knotted my butterflies to breaking, crippling their wings and making my stomach feel as if a lead weight had settled onto the bottom.

I thought about the distance. Miles to go, inches to travel. Up the block was a place my feet could take me but my mind wouldn't go.. I would show up on his doorstep, looking to get my heart back, and find his arms as closed as ever, forced to that position by his fear of opening them. Of opening them to me.

And that would hurt, the way it's been hurting, sitting angrily next to that lead weight, infinitesimally small and infinitely binding. His was a face that wouldn't fade, that wouldn't go away, that would haunt me for decades.

As I stood there, the distance not to him but to peace crashed into me. It stretched away from me, a lonely path whose very coloring whispered lonliness, insecurity, longing, jealousy. A deeply chilling desire to turn my back on that path gripped me, but my next inhale brought the scent of calm to me. It might look like miles, but the end promised me more of that air. So much of it, in fact, that I might remember how to breathe.

"Wanna walk past? He's probably outside." I looked again at that path, and took another breath of that promised air.

"Nah."

Waiting

I'm waiting for you.

We haven't seen each other much at all, but I know you're on your way.

I met you once in the late night reassurance of a friend, during a lonely time. You dodged in and out of mind, stroked my arm as i reached for another cookie, said the right words at the right times.

You left that night, but I heard you on the radio. You whispered through the tune of that new song I love, reminded me. Soothed my ears with your melody. I knew I'd see you again.

I spoke, and recognized your intellect in the words of a stranger, identified your wit and your humor in the mischevious grin of a child.

I breathed your air on a mountaintop, far from people, voices, crowds, smog. It was a crisp awakening, and in it I saw you once more, opening your eyes next to me with a smile.

You cared gently for my cat the time it swallowed that string, and cradled me in flourescent orange plastic as I sat in the waiting room, needing to hear that he was alright.

You laughed over the beep of my home security system as I set it at night, reminding, cajoling, insisting you'd protect me.

And I was comforted.

I'm waiting for you. I don't know your name, I don't know how tall you are. I don't know if you've ever cared for a cat, or what your favorite color is. But I love you. And I know you're coming as fast as you can. And I'm waiting for you.

Sickening.

Sometimes I'll find something out about you that makes me sick. My stomach will hurt, my hands will feel weak, sweat will come out of pores I've forgotten existed and time will slow to drag it all out. A headache will swing by to top it all off, and then I feel disgusted with myself for bothering to be upset at all. As if I could bother. You can't keep your affairs under wraps, and for that, I suffer, I get sick, I barf words and curse through a throat too tightly closed to even breathe through. My trust is betrayed and my body rejects you like any other virus.

What it doesn't understand is that you live continued, unfettered, infallible and made stronger by resistance, in me. Fevers don't burn you out, you give me those all the time. Withdrawal symptoms can't be treated, and will bows before you and all that you are.

He never spoke. His words were lyrics, his steps choreography. Dance wasn't mine, but his pure performances drew me to follow his feet. We never danced together, always seperate, me one step behind. He avoided standing still with all of the fear of a man courting death. His fear was an infection, catching as colds do. So I remained hot with him, catching his sickness but never his beat. The tune wasn't mine to hear.

Eventually all things grind to a halt, inevitably. The loss of the music left us speechless, trapped with vocal cords not meant to speak, atrophied. If we weren't singing, we weren't living. We cease, and our song plays on radios and in headsets, forever torn by the static of a missing note. He made the beats.

First

We keep doing this dance

These encores

To the bravos of empty seats

First on stage.

Last to leave

We rose with the curtain

And for this, we refuse to fall

The lights will come down

Freed seats, left unfilled

And we'll continue to move

onstage

Even after the orchestra's died

because we were First

Sameness

I was the other woman. I didn't feel like it. I tried to make sense of it, tried to pinpoint how a Woman With Morals could become one who didn't care. He says we're meant for each other, can't forget each other because I was first, always. He says he's always loved me and always will.Others have. Lied that way. "Don't need anything else when I'm with you"... that other one, he called me bitter. Bitter, or bruised? And now I'm out to bitterly bruise someone else? He has a girlfriend yet I stay, for the way he fits into my arms, for the ease of talking to him. That other, he smites it with one side of his mouth and encourages it with the other. Two faced bastard. Just like me, two faced and bastardly. Love or leave him? When the choice is to leave him and love him. Selfish really.
That other, he's the reason. He took himself out of the picture, took peace of mind with him. And still he cuts, bitterly. Back I bounced, and here I land. On triangular ground. She loves him loves me loves him. We've got the odds, the majority. Win.