A love story in three parts.

Falling
The falling was the easiest part. And, really, it was more like sinking. It was like walking into the ocean’s arms until all that existed was salt water and the ache of breathless lungs. But what an exquisite ache.

The beginning is always easiest. There are no quarrels, no silences stretching into the darkness, no empty words or broken promises. There are passionate kisses in the rain, frenetic love making. There are soft kisses too, evenings spent cuddled together. There are cups of hot cocoa or lemonade.

If you had asked her the moment she fell in love, it would be when he breathed her name against the paper of her skin. The way he said it like a promise.

If you had asked him the moment he fell in love, it would be when she walked out of the bathroom wearing his shirt from the night before. He knew he wanted to wake up next to her every morning for the rest of his life.

Swimming
The middling is richer than the beginning. It has more depth and is full of sweetness. It is a settling; a melding. It is a slow blending of two into one.

She loved making love during these times more than in the beginning. Those were hurried, sometimes awkward. These were slow and delicious, full of the mutual feelings and shared passion.

He loved talking during these times. They had passed the superfluous “getting to know you” chatter and could get to the meat of shared interests and philosophical topics. They sat, entwined, talking for hours about everything.

Swimming along, they resurface from the falling, riding waves as they come. They take their time, enjoying the feelings without the breathless ache and rushing need. Swimming, they sometimes dive deeper than they ever have, touching milestones to guide them back to surface.

Drowning
The end is defined in the moments they can’t take back. These moments are sometimes clearly etched into memory and sometimes forgettable.

The end came without fanfare. There was no straw to break the camel’s back; no warning bells. They simply let go of each other’s hands in the dark, took one last lungful of air and dove too deep to resurface.

She said it had started ending the day they ran out of things to say. The flow of conversation, their never-ending dialogue, became a trickle and then a drip, until it finally stopped altogether. 

He said it was the day they made love and the distance between their fingers seemed to grow shadows and their bodies took up space outside of each other. Separating like lips for a kiss, but never following through. They had blossomed and, just as quickly, they had wilted. No hard feelings, just the memory of oceans.

Eating Disorder

One day you eat lemons, because the internet says
lemons help detox. And your thighs could use all the 
detoxing they can get.

The next day you eat cake because you think skinny
could never taste as wonderful as this slice of
ultra moist chocolate layered heaven.

You obsessively weigh yourself, counting down to the
ounce just how much your belly fat jiggles over your
jeans and how much that piece of cake cost you.

You eat nothing. You don't deserve it, you miserable
waste of human flesh and space. Even the air you breathe
is too calorie dense for you and you practice holding
your breath to make yourself look smaller.

Cake, lemons (no fear of scurvy here), air, measuring
tapes, work out videos, sweat and tears of frustration.
You just want to grab a little slice of happiness,
swallow the sun in bite sized pieces until you glow from
the inside out.

You drink nothing but water, you eat nothing but lemons,
wracking your body down by a pound. Need to run faster,
eat better, swallow the diet pills, measure your food
in eighths of a cup for one meal.

Then one day, the person you so obsessively abused,
forgets how to be and simply vanishes into your punished
body. There is nothing left of you, except you. And
you don't even love you.

Heart break

My heart beats slightly off-kilter now. It doesn't run anymore,
It jogs.
It jumps, pauses, sprints and then walks.

Up and down my staircase ribs, it stumbles, it slips.
It skips, it rattles, it creaks.

Remember when it did that the first time?
You and I had stayed up all night, talking, discovering.
You made me feel like the moon would never give way to the sun.
I thought you were a prince in disguise, fairy tale perfect.

I didn't know that a loving heart could trip into breaking.
I never expected it to feel like falling in love when we were falling out.

But looking at you,
thinking the things I do,
my heart pauses it's marathon, memorizing your face.

Tomorrow I'll wake up somewhere else, will you even miss me?

June Bugs

Drinking mint juleps with a striped straw,
empty June lungs soon fill with June bugs
and sparkling July promises.
Bitter. The air is bitter with June skies
and July lightning. We called them fireflies,
like tiny beacons to follow home.
By September all our leaves had begun to
brown and the last of the June bugs had
flown South.
These empty June lungs breathe summer and
taste autumn. The sun sets slower, lingering to
glimpse the moon.
The fireflies fade out, one by one, candles
blown out by turning breezes. We're lost in
the dark and tied to each other by red threads.
In December the stars glitter like cracked glass
and dusty diamonds. Our June lungs have frozen
solid, all the air withered and lost in the snow drifts.
Those summer children have long returned to the
ground and all that is left are naked branches.
We remember lemons and the moon longs for the sun.

Disappearing Act

I woke up this morning missing my feet.
Below my ankles was nothing but air,
those two lefties I always claimed to dance with,
the ones too large and flattened,
those feet that I took for granted,
vanished.

By lunch I had lost my hands.
At the wrists I flexed,
stretching invisible fingers toward glasses of milk,
grasping, but not lifting,
dragging knuckles against ivory keys,
simply gone.

At dinner I noticed the hole in my chest.
Oddly misshaped, somehow full of its invisibility,
I touched it with my missing fingers and wondered;
wondered if I was just imagining those tactile senses,
will the rest of me follow suite?
Disappear?

By bedtime I was nothing more than a head.
Resting on a white pillow, dreaming of bodies fled;
wondering where all our pieces go when we fall apart,
aching from lost soles to lost digits,
my head rolled from side to side,
weeping.

In the morning I was gone.

Snowflakes in Black Hair

You are romantic; like snowflakes in black hair,
your smile askew, your hair rakish.
Your lips are roses, pressing themselves together,
parting like every movement is a kiss.

You are quiet; soft spoken like summer rain.
Yet, intense; passionate, provocative, polite.
Your eyes turn into oceans, I could fall hard into,
drowning in them, storm-tossed in softness.

The Skeleton Remains

The skeletal remains of your kisses
clink around my incisors, tickle the
ivory of my molars, tap dance across
my canines.

At night I can hear them, tinkling
like chandeliers in a breeze. I can
taste the bittersweet, hollowed, bones
of them curled against my tongue.

Their sugar melts into cavities of
emptiness, blackening my teeth with
the ash of them. They rub themselves
against my taste buds, reminders.

In the still of your long absence,
all of my teeth have rotted away, wasted
by the frame of your feelings for
me. Too sweetly  bitter to remain in me.

The ghosts of your kisses have replaced
the skeleton of your love. They howl,
but at least the clink of your chandeliers
against my teeth has ceased.

State of Rampant Regret & Superfluous Earthquaking Shivers

You unnerve me.
You make me question myself.
You make me feel like I'm on a roller coaster,
            careening into the Grand Canyon,
            about to fall off of the tracks.

I am over-analyzing your words;
actions, phrasing, tone.

Its not that I miss the 'us' that we were once,
its not that I miss your kiss,
its not that I want you back in my life.
            The hell am I doing?
            The fuck are you doing to me?

Now we are strangers.
And I over-think you.

I remember when you were all I dreamed about.
A vampire that I brought to stunning life,
a whisper in the shadows of my fucked up mind.
            I loved you, for some reason.
            Reasons I try not to remember, or can't remember.

La Douleur Exquise

I shouldn't let you break my heart.

Looking through old pictures, my heart always skips a beat.
It does a funny little flop in my chest,
like a fish out of water,
like a bird hitting a window,
like all those silly cliches we play with in school.

I shouldn't let myself feel this way about you.

What I tell my heart and what I feel are two different things.
It has always been this way,
I fall for you,
You let me fall,
I hit the ground with a sickening thud; bone crunch.

I shouldn't hold on to you, when its clear what you feel.

Have to laugh sometimes, or else I'd cry.
All I have are memories,
Long forgotten "I love you,"
Teenaged wishes,
A few glasses of gin and tonic in Seattle.

In the end, I'm a stupid girl for chasing dreams.

What a stupid heart, to keep longing for you like it does.
I should've let you go quietly,
drift into the memory landscape,
fade into distant dreaming,
instead you're lingering around the edges, a ghost without being dead.

I know what I should do, doesn't mean I can convince myself to do it.

Aren't you tired of me always falling for you?
Is there any way to break me of your habit?
If I keep breaking my heart on your skin,
If I keep drifting on your oceans,
If I keep dreaming of your lullaby heart beating?

Help me. Put me out of my misery.

Give me something to cut my teeth on.
Maybe if I taste your bittersweet, I'll let you go.
We both know I have no self-control.
I have no shame, except when I do.
I have no belief, except when I dream.
Fuck. Can't you remove yourself in a way that will heal?

Drowning Sun

The Sun drowned last night.

He followed the Moon through starlit passageways, black hair streaming behind her in waves.

She tripped over galaxies, swaying in the celestial ocean; waiting for the next starry tide to come in.

He waded out to stand beside her; their hands entwined like the constellations.

His lips grazed her still night hair, breathed in the newest scent of her and laughed.

She kissed the lemon slice of his mouth, drinking in the golden lips, a hand coming up to tangle in his wheat field hair.

The stars chattered, their diamond teeth clinking together like spoons in glasses; warning bells.

He lost his grip on her hand, slipping under a crescent wave, drifting out on primordial seas.

She lost him amongst the roiling blackness; holes swallowing the sound of her cries.

It was foolish to believe such moments were endless.

When all of heaven's din was hushed, they found him glowing beneath the mirror of the universe.

He had drowned in the tempest of her skies, lost in the voids of their eclipse.

The Sun drowned last night and the Moon has yet to stop weeping.

1985-2015

I'm going through my Polaroid memories,
sorting through snapshots and old feelings.

I was 12 when I told your father I would marry you.
I always wondered if you'd ever notice me.

I thought about you so much last year;
thought about how I'd like to talk to you again,
bring up old times and start new friendships.

There are no second chances with the scythe.
I watch the reels of tape spinning,
this is such a final, bitter, end.

Isn't it funny? I told your father I would marry you,
and Wednesday I'll watch you return to the earth.

These memories I have are too few, too little,
to make up a proper farewell.

Lingering

You linger around the edges of my brain. I am forever chasing you down rabbit holes, around the sun and up mountains. Will you ever find me?

Twitter Prose (a piece posted originally on Twitter)

Living all year for the tax money,
suburban alcoholism,
climbing a hill of seashells that stab your feet.
This is an awful kind of reality.

Lost in all my wanderings

I followed all the wrong signs.
Down rabbit holes, through wardrobes,
across troll infested mountains,
under hills and over dales.

I thought the maps would help.
All the paths were marked in yellow brick,
the roads clearly laid out.
Forks and spoons scattered in the dirt,
arrows to lands unknown.

Your silence was a warning bell;
a signal of tornadoes to come,
avalanches, tidal waves,
Mt Everest was collapsing.

I took all the wrong ways to your heart,
I never truly arrived at your destinations.
All the paths were lost,
all the ways were crossed,
all my maps storm-tossed; tattered and torn.

I lost my way on the way home.
It wasn't home after all,
another lie,
another game.

I followed all the wrong signs.
Falling down the holes, careening
through the wardrobes, traipsing
lands full of unknowns.
Lost in all my wanderings.

If you love me

If you love me
it is the same as loving fire.

At some point
you will be
burned.

Not because I want to burn you,
   but that is the nature of fire;
to burn.

I can be calm,
unassuming,
like the flicker of a campfire
or
a candle's flame.

But there will be times
where I rage;
  out of control,
  full of anguish,
  of wrath.

It is in my nature
  to burn quietly
or
  rage out of control.

Would you ask the ocean to
stop kissing the shore?
Would you ask the winds to
never whip the trees?

As romantic as it may seem to be in love
with the flame,
you must know,
that someday it will burn you.

Some day it is going to sweep through,
destroying everything in its wake.

And I will try to hold it back.
I will try to never let you see,
but there is a trail of
ashes.

And I am what I am.

Safety.

Her son won't come home.
His new home is decorated with headstones.
He wears maggots as one would evening wear.
He no longer sings.
He no longer laughs.
He longer breathes.
He can't breathe.

Her son won't be coming home.
What should've promised safety,
should've protected him,
murdered him for holding a toy,
a sandwich, his hands in the air.
He doesn't play anymore.

They murder our fathers
and condemn us for our fatherless lives.
They murder our husbands
and mock our single parenting skills.
We can't run for fear of accusations,
justifications, "precautions."

Her son won't be coming home anymore.
Another Emmett Till for a different era.
Another Michael Brown.
Another Tamir Rice.
Another Eric Garner.

We Can't Breathe.

Words

   hurt     wasting    hate     breathless
   heart    time       kiss     screaming
   pain     wishing    embrace  dreamed
   longing  stars      crying   lost
waiting   friend   resolve    alone
hoping    love     never      forgotten.

Would you want me to?

I won't cry.
I keep saying I'll stop.
Maybe I scare you.
Maybe I'm too much.

I blame myself.
Its always my fault...
when I am left.
How foolish to think you'd be different.

They all leave in the end.
Its inevitable.
And I'm always the dust,
settling into the cracks.

I'm different. I admit that.
Was my difference the final
nail?
I won't apologize for that.

I can't help that I love
too passionately. That I'm
crazy. That I long for stars
too far from the earth of my body.

Was it my love that sent
you running? Was it the Cheshire
Cat of my personality?
I can't apologize for who I am.

Would you want me to?

The Things We Claim

Flowers in your beard,
your arms around me,
the way you looked when
you fucked me...

Those are the memories I own.

The taste of your smile,
like a slice of the sun,
dimpled perfection...

Those are the things I miss most.

Tears and burnt love letters,
the snarl of your anger,
spitting venom...

Those are the things I remember.

New York

Standing on the subway train,
wondering what your name could be.
Looking out at the darkness,
barreling through time and space,
daydreaming sunshine into the moonlight.

Is it David? Jon? Sebastian?
I'm trying to guess from your features;
eyes the color of a root beer float,
lips like Cupid's bow and a darting
tongue like an arrow through my heart.

In my mind I imagine the curl of your
lips tasting mine. You taste like the
color of your eyes and I get high off
your sugared breath. Could you imagine
my arms circling your neck like a necklace?

Is it James? Perry? Geoff?
The train is pulling into the station, you
stand to go and you push the ribbons
of your hair out of your eyes. You step
out into the world and the only name you have...

Is it New York?