A Beat

You're words are like a heartbeat in my chest,
pounding out the pulse of my feelings,
tapping out the rhythm of my deepest desires,
tattooing your being into my empty lungs.

The Labels (Alternate Title: Who will you be?)

We don't grow up knowing who we are on a personal level. Instead we grow up assigning labels and adjusting to fit into or
out of those labels. We grow up underneath a plethora of "tags," causing a definite division between our self and the self
the world sees.

We are defined by the colours of our skin, who we choose to love, who we vote for, whether we are smart or pretty. Not by
who we are at our core. The core of who we are is lost in the proverbial shuffle caused by the constant need to navigate the
changing tides of pop culture.

This is why we have a generation of children who don't know who they are, a generation in crisis. A generation of cutters,
self-mutilators; children who don't know their own worth because its never been shown to them. They are constantly under
attack, labeled against their will. Not who they want to be, but who they are manifestly "destined" to be, culturally defined.

It is time for a revolution of sorts. The revolution of the self. Its time to decipher ourselves, ditch the labels, forget the words
that have always been used on us. Its time to choose our own words, discover our own worth. This is the time of flowering,
of bursting open and revealing the beauty inside. A face may be pretty, but it does not define the core of your humanity.

Each of us has an essential spark and it is time for it to ignite. We are not the stereotypes, the labels, the ridiculing voices,
the words that hit harder than any fist. We are unique. We are intelligent. We are gifted. We are stronger than we have ever
given ourselves credit for. Forget everything you've been told and delve into your self. You decide who you will be.

You decide. Not the labels. So, all the labels aside, who are you?

Temerity

If there was courage it seems to have fled.
Bravery is a drink best drunk by those who can hold their liquor,
not by girls with big hearts and bigger mouths.

The precipice is steep, a long fall, further than Alice's rabbit hole,
darker than a starless night.
Conjuring temerity is a lost art when facing the crypt.

She looks around, gulping the air as though it were water,
clutching the edge as though it were a hand to help her.
It doesn't pull her up and her fingers slip, dropping her down.

We're All Mad Here

Madness did not arrive in the form of shackles and screaming tirades.
Instead it crept up, much like a lost kitten, mewling for comfort in the dark.
It purred softly, rubbing and playfully batting.
Before long it was as if it had always been there, swishing its tail.

It wasn't always this way; we were not always this way.
The shifting of the sunlight through the windows shaped the shadows between us.
The soft lilt of a nightingale silenced the questions we never meant to ask.
The madness slipped through the door, its eyes blinking sweetness and confusion.

We danced our evenings to the muted sonatas inside our hearts.
We spun the stories of our whiskey-soaked nightmares onto our skin.
We traced the scars of the sickness into our faces and our minds.
We shaved our heads, cracked open our skulls to dig out the memories.

Madness arrived; without fanfare or a bottle of wine.
It came while we were away, on holiday somewhere far from home.
It was sly and we were lost and wandering in a loblolly before we knew it.
A bottle marked "poison" tasted like custard and we did not resist.

Your Absence

Your absence has not gone unnoticed. I still miss you every day since you passed. I'm still waiting by the phone, re-listening to your voice-mails, wishing I had asked you to show me how to make goulash, wishing I could tell you about being able to finally eat rice again, wishing the Mondays weren't stretching out before me in weeks, months and years.

I am still feeling the pain of your loss. I am still waiting for you to call me, feeling guilty for not having called that last week you were here, wishing I could do it all over, wanting to see you again.

I know it sounds selfish to other people. They must not understand what its like to not be able to breath, because you feel like someone just kicked you in the ribs. They must not understand what its like to crumple to the ground, because you suddenly don't know how to stand. They must not understand what its like to lose someone that you believed, foolishly, would live forever.

I want you back. I want you here. I want you to annoy me by constantly calling. I want you to tell the TV people that they don't know what they're talking about. I want you to do that funny little dance you would do whenever you were getting up to go do something. I want to be in your too hot house while you grumble about all the cooking you have to get done.

I want you back, because I'm looking at a calendar full of empty Mondays and I just don't know what to do without you. And they say these things fade with time, but I don't think it will. I don't think I'll ever get over this.

On Monday...

Dear Aunt Peggy,
I keep expecting you to call, even though I know you're not going to. I keep expecting you to leave me a voicemail message, saying, you know, "what do you want for lunch on Monday?" And I keep thinking "what am I even going to do on Monday?"

I've had a lot of suggestions.

"Well, you could always catch up on all your reading." or...
"I'm sure you'll come up with something, you have plenty of time." and...
"What will you do on Monday?"

My answer is, I don't know.

What will I do on Monday, Aunt Peggy?

You're not going to be there and I keep thinking, "man, I kept putting off cleaning those pictures for you. And, man, I kept putting off going and seeing you there at the end. And, man, I did a lot of putting off didn't I?"

And then I keep thinking you never broke any promises to me before now. In one fell swoop, you broke several.

I don't have a picture of you. Besides the one I took on my phone when you weren't paying attention. Can't see your face.

And you broke your promise that you would live to 100, 'cause we still had seventeen more years to go.

And, you know, broken promises. I'm not angry at you. I just wish you'd been able to keep them.

But I keep thinking that you had the spaghetti and meatballs all ready. And that you were so excited we were going to have spaghetti and meatballs because we hadn't had it in a long time.

And I keep coming back to "what am I going to do on Monday?"

Because we're not going to get to share our McDonald's cup of coffee anymore.
And we're not going to get to eat goulash together anymore.
And we're not going to get to rant at Pat Robertson anymore.
And we're not going to get to do any of those things anymore.

So, what am I going to do on Monday, Aunt Peggy?

What am I going to do on Monday?

I thought maybe I'd still come and share a cup of coffee with you.
And maybe I'll bring my books and I'll bring a blanket to sit on so I don't get grass stains all over my rear.
And maybe I'll go and buy a chocolate soda.
And maybe I'll figure out how to make goulash on my own.
And maybe I'll use those potholders that you gave me.
I'll put up all the knick-knacks you gave me.
There's a lot of maybe's.

But Aunt Peggy, I'd much rather be with you. I'd much rather actually be getting to see you than wondering what it is I'm going to do.

Who am I going to watch "The Price is Right" with?
Who am I going to banter with about who pays for what?
Whose going to make me ham salad even though I don't eat pork? But I eat it anyway because you made it. The only time I ate pork for a really long time.
Whose going to worry about me while I'm off gallivanting in DC and whose going to ask me what "erectile dysfunction" means and whose going to ask me all these questions I don't know how to answer?

Its not fair, Aunt Peggy.
I love you.
I miss you.
I'm sorry I didn't come and see you at the end.
I'm sorry.

Lost Petals

You bloom along my skyline horizon, an ever changing landscape.
Your purples and your blues make no apologies for what they are.
Your body is a visceral flower, blood stark against white sheets.
All of your dreaming is a breath on the lips of god,
all of your screaming a single note in a crashing melody,
all of your dying is reels of tape on the cutting floor.

He takes everything apart, as though you were a puzzle to solve.
He breaks you down to the basest of base components.
He tears you up and throws your bits in the air like confetti.
All of your fluidity is flowing, eternally out and never in.
All of his love is written across your skin, tattoos that fade.
All of you is nothing to him.

I see your pieces float away, flotsam on the ocean of your life.
I watch the patterns shift, the wary smiles crushed with fists.
I observe the fading of hard kisses against paper thin skin.
All of you is falling apart, breaking under the pounding hands.
All of his "love" is your poetry, you drink it in and don't cry out.
All of my begging, all of my crying, its all the same voice.

You and I are the same being, deflowered goddesses torn from pedestals.
I scream with his hand around my throat, he lifts you off the floor.
He enjoys the struggle, the faint cyan of our skin as the air rushes out.
All of our love for him isn't enough to stop the pain.
All of our fear feeds his flame.
All of our resistance is fruitless.