It started with vodka and your aroma of fresh bread,

frozen stones of dirty streets melted in open pools.

I wanted, yes yearned, to pitch tents with you

in the blaze of midnight sun and the scent of rain.

I wanted you as my igniting spark with ember words.

I felt drawn and impassioned to give myself to you -

a drunken state with liquor bottles reflected on night stands,

breathing and moving together in well rehearsed symphony

as I waited for you to be close enough to stroke my hair,

a touch to reaffirm my existence and worth as a human being.

I felt sheltered in my naked skin as I let you come in

alone, together, promising only to be one night friends.

I begged you to be my shadow soul mate singing tipsy love songs.

The next morning, minus you, I remembered the drunken sex,

sweaty lust and wet passion engraved on shards of my mind -

the pieces left behind while I returned to my own bed alone,

awakening to begin my search, once again, for a heartbeat.

Waiting

Is proof

That time

Is wibbly-wobbly

Because when you

Wait

Time never moves

As fast as

It should.

Waiting takes

Forever.

My heart is stripped naked

etched with acid

like a balloon in flight

floating away

from sliced anguish.

In the black sky, I find

shattered pieces

of my heart

burrowing into

crumpled clouds,

leaking from

tunneled pain.

Burnt tulip words,

walking on broken

sidewalks, forever scar

my soul, as I

tuck your absence

inside my sleeve,

choked by memories.

Lacerated pain

in my crumbled pith

causes an aching silence

worse than the

shatter of my heart.

I sorrowfully

pick up the pieces

of my heart,

poke them back

into my throbbing chest

and begin rebuilding

my battered soul.

My nightmares can’t sleep,

darkened demons

with guttural sounds and

hangdog eyes.

Ripping my chest

in strips of flesh.

I hear the footfalls

of headless beasts

dragging rusty chains

down my winding hall.

I detect moans emanating

from my closet.

The onyx night’s teeth

sharpen and devour my soul,

trapping me in foul cold breath

of monsters treading.

I’m defiled

by ghosts marching

with spiked shoes,

leaving splotched trail

of crimson blood.

Screams torture my ears

as I crouch under covers

waiting for redemption

by savior of daylight.

No one sees you

but me

but I know you

were there

even though you left

without saying GOODBYE.

  We weren't taught how to face our pain head-on. Society today wants us to shove our painful experiences aside so that we appear perfect to the outside world. They imply that to be anything less than perfect is unacceptable. If we show even the slightest hint of hurt;we're broken. Unusable. That we'll be thrown away like an old toy. 

 Yet, the things we have been forced to experience has made us stronger. What we've been through hasn't broken us. We survived. When the pain was unbearable we kept breathing. Inhale.Exhale.Inhale.Exhale. We,the people that society thinks is broken, because of our broken circumstances managed to not only survive but, to learn from our experiences and thrive.  

Lying against this bed of pines and shriveled stones,

I have come to the conclusion

that life is inevitably sweet and divine yet treacherously pure.

Events dancing like broken shells and bits of soot and brown

falling against the ground, welding into place.

Skies drifting about like mangled tongues

stripped and devoured

thrown against and through,

a greenish ritual of utmost beauty and grace.

Birds with beaks as glass pitchers

holding beds of water as stimulative as they are simulated.

Yet who am I to spew such parsing diction?

I am but a yearning heart sprawled over like a corpse

hanging from a bridge, hands nailed to the concrete

yet breathing scarlet-blazed cause and not boiled reason.

My rivers flow empty with clear tubes

and subtle worthless meanders that crisp and thrash so silently.

I am but a stringed mass

A pale pendulous body wandering about, wondering.

An individual with thoughts of stillness,

feeling trapped and caged,

lying here alone as one: a composite whole, a singular projection,

distant from others by lunges and clouds of colorless, virgin terrain.

Yet we all bleed the same, don't we?

I am anything but the needle in a stack of grain.

We all embody this ambiguity, this frailty, this solitude.

This intimacy.

We are all somewhat of able-bodied streams of ire.

Prussian blue shades of boisterous life.

Lax and lustrous shades of death.

Shrewd and wine-like shades of time.

An aging pack of tinted blotches.

A withered, elegant frame.

And a painting of skies and flames waltzing about,

filling each others missing pieces

like a liquid so generously takes the shape of its container.