You are the tender light beneath the stove that keeps the kitchen warm,

The one fluent in my language that I barely hold a lexicon to.

The pale crash of sea foam on rocks, and the trailing watercolour people drive out to photograph.

You are the moon flitting through parting leaves, and the moan of a well-loved bed after a long days work.

You are the orchestra to every piece of music that soothes the soul,

The divot carved from my cheek when I smile too hard, a kiss from the goddess’ above.

You are a sculptor that forms me in calloused, sure hands instead of throwing me into the kiln to burn.

You are the medicine that cures my aching throat when sick,

And the sting of a fresh tattoo that reminds me I am here.

The driftwood heart that has found me, naked and shaking, upon an isle made for me by sharp fangs and taking fingers.

But you do not take when you find me. You dress me in the finest cloth and detangle the salt from my hair with sure strokes, tentative and tender.

I bite my tongue as I read the wall of text on my phone.

Lies, lies- oh, good, a refreshing break of convoluted ideals!

I swallow against nothing, feeling the torrent of torture settle like grit,

a film on my teeth, a twinge of pain in eyelashes constantly covered with makeup.

I wonder where she thinks she gets off- but I realize it is stupid to wonder over someone with wandering eyes and ever shifting responsibility.

She dedicates songs to me I listened to in wracking sobs because of her,

tells me I manipulate all those I love into loving me, tells me I am mean and cruel,

and tops it with the crowning of the most mentally ill of our shared kind.

She knew it would land- the final blow. It is why she said it, and then tried in vain to take it back. Tells me I am good, only surrounded by enablers. That I am kind, just not to her.

I laugh. I empty my stomach contents into art. I burn it in hopes she feels the matte of ash on her fingertips- fingers that touched anyone but me. Tastes the smoke in her mouth along the spit of those she left me for.

I hollow. I rebuild. I swallow, I brush my teeth, I wash my face. All in vain to dispose of the corpse she left me with.

I trace every inch of revealed skin with a feather like brush of my fingertip, my gaze following saucer wide from smooth parchment to juniper eyes, blown so dark from their affection I can scarcely make out the ring of spring.

But I do.

And I see a flicker of a smile- tentative and new as my wandering hand that never strays from where is appropriate, because I will not ruin this. Will not ruin her. I refuse.

For once, every thing in me agrees.

Her lips quiver like my hands when we kiss, one of her firsts in her life, the only of mine to have counted for anything. And I touch. I wonder if I forget to breathe as we kiss because every time we part, and she flashes me that little nervous grin, I feel my heart pound over itself.

Perhaps this is what it is to truly love. To adore so fully. I am unsure what to do with such fidelity, such sweetness warning me in the cold of winter rather than cloying and clotting in my throat.

I wear her sweater hours after she’s gone, and the warmth of it- whatever the perfume is noted in- steeps my hurt evermore.

She smells vaguely of memory. Of something soothing and all together striking. Laughs like a best friend I once forced myself to think more of. Looks like my favourite actress. Talks like her favourite. Is the culmination of all I’ve ever wanted and so much more, because she was not made for me, but made alongside. Colliding and fusing and fissing at once.

How lucky I, to exist in a time where I would allow someone to fully devastate me.

My body is heavy as I drag it, even to sit up to type.

Drag it to my car. Drag it through work. Through emotions I'm sure I'd feel,

A mimic replicating, yet in my own flesh still.

Hopefully someone calls for a priest, or a torture, or something to make me feel like I'm myself again,

I stare at the screen- nail marks my own on my cheeks burning in the light.

I do not know how to write. Yet is has always been the only thing I've ever known.

What shall I say? What topic shall I choose?

Tapering from a medicine I've known all my sentient life?

Emotional abuse from the one I've trusted beyond all for years?

Sadness that I cannot sell my novel?

Apathy at my lack of trying?

It is not burnout. Perhaps I am jaded. Perhaps cynicism. It will wear off like a scab eventually. Until then, I have no creativity. No art. No words. Nothing important or anything to care for.

Man, am I the greatest author to exist. Wordless and mouthy like the most infamous.

I have found love a dozen times.

In a best friend, laden with familiar expectation and abuse.

In someone so traumatized they found coalescence in taking my youth.

In forcing my consent. In finding this very poetic account, spreading it among their own blood like a joke.

In sleeping amongst wolves, and claiming to be a shepherd.

I have found love, but never where it has meant to be.

A love broken and beaten and dried and shredded until its something to throw-

not in celebration, just as an add-in. Just as something. Filler.

And I have grinned and beared it.

Until I couldn't.

And then I was the villain.

A villain made of bone and little much else.

I felt like what was left inside an iron lung. A waking corpse.

Only feeling. No escape.

And once I found it- it was selfish, and cruel.

But what shall I do with bone? Clipper a clacking calcium song?

No. I will grow.

My mother always had her birthday-

the one thing my father remembered, due to his children's tentative reminders.

Her stocking was always half full, and most years she was the one to fill it.

She only did it halfway, herself, too, feeling undeserving, thanking Santa for the sake of our happiness.

Belittled by a man with a wandering eye, a cabinet filled with vases that hadn't housed flowers in twenty years.

I remedy it now. I give her an oversized stocking overflowing with love and gratitude,

flowers on every holiday, treats just because.

Some women fear their daughters will make fun of their own mother at their fathers behest,

but I am nothing like my father. I am my mother's mirror image- one that will never insult, or spout insecurity.

I don’t want to die.

I pause at the sight of a gap between greenery, a child's park and graves. I stare at them. The graves, that is.

I don’t want to die. My grandma has bought a slot in the desolate walls- she showed me the general area. Made a comment about the free single above her for my mother and a double for her sister and her husband beside it.

I step back.

I walk. It’s dark. It’s scary: no one is meant to be out at this hour. There’s no lights in this child's park, perhaps a testament to their bedtime or an unassuming way of living where the night is for rest.

There’s the gasp of something in the distance. Maybe a coyote. Maybe a ghost. Maybe not a thing. I’m not sure.

I walk along uneven terrain where I know parties occur, scuffed ground from family vans and the tire marks of a forgotten turn likely to the tune of an angry passenger. The only sound at this hour is my foot on gravel and the crinkling plastic of a chip bag in hand.

I sit on sun-burnt grass, my feet on pavement and a cigarette in hand. It burns me in the way that it shouldn’t be in my hand; though the lit tip doesn’t burn me. My back is to the dark park. No one around; no cameras or people. My adrenaline spikes, soothed by only the random sound of cars passing by.

I sit here, remembering the times I’ve gotten off the bus as a child. The one time I sat in the nearly barren creak, so deep within the earths core it practically molded to fit me.

I hear the scream of coyotes. Make my way home.

Coyotes are afraid of flashlights. I’m afraid of my own shadow.

I grip the handle of my knife, cool sure metal, more sure to use it against another person then an animal.

Start a jog though it’s burned short by liquor in my veins, scalding and viscous. I spin around unevenly. I'm by the graveyard, which I trust the blades shadow is scary, but. It’s only covered in drywall as it try to gain a sample of paint from the wall for my mom. I can imagine it kissing my lateral muscle.

Ones I work hard for. My heartbeat clings, even as I’ll calm beneath the safety of overhead street lights. I hear the faint scream again, a bit off of the graveyard. Pay my respects silently; terrifyingly.

I look over my shoulder more than I don't, veering off my home path. There’s a beer in my pocket for enjoyment though I feel no inkling to drink it. I’m speeding up though the ache in my calves from wearing heels a few days ago is present: I pass a truck that is tinkering with the sounds of recently powering down thought it hasn’t moved in days.

My breath quickens, I see the bush that marks my nearness to home. I exhale sharply, checking anxiously around me before I turn, feeling much too like a person in an indie horror game with how I stumble into trash cans.

The lights from neighbours homes are off orange, glowing faintly but not enough to light the street. I’m near home but don’t stop panicking and my shins ache, begging me to slow but I don’t.

It is when I see the lights of my home that I exhale, check over my shoulder again. See my car. Check in its windows. I swallow stiltedly as I sit down in one of our lawn chairs, confident my dog isn’t barking to give way to my departure or arrival. My heart beats hard but I divert my attention to the calm, familiar sound of the plains flying overhead, heading to the airport nearby. I breathe in the scent of the rose bushes.

I relax. For now. Until my next episode.

I learned what forgiveness was today.

It is not, in fact, excusing their behaviour, nor letting it return along with them. It is the total acceptance of the pain they caused, and with it, the drive of apathy.

It is letting it go enough, allowing the leash to lessen just so that they escape your mind for at least a day.

It is not the resurgence of love, or any of her sister feelings.

It is neither disregard to them as a human.

It is the complete view of them as a stranger:

for they do not know you, despite their laid stakes or claims.

They do not have you.

They know someone who has run off your back like water.

You love me. But I am not as you pictured.

I am rife with experience, as it is made in the lines of my faces.

You glance at me like I am abnormal- something easily digestible in a peripheral, but clotting in closeness.

I am not sorry I continue. I am sorry the pain I brought. you- but you hurt me too. You do not acknowledge that. Happy to play a victim on our turntable game.

I smile despite it. barbed birds and heavy, serrated tongue.

I will be nothing they expect.

It is ridiculous,

the twisting of my tongue.

I think of you like the moon and stars has been brought down to eyeline-

yet I shift, and quicksilver insults unfurl beneath my enamel cage.

I release a heavy, puffing sigh. It feels like gunpowder to me. You don't even flinch at the residue- starlight and pure- in front of your feet.

You eye me strangely as I bow at the waist and grapple at my knees.

But you don't understand. You are so wonderfully oblivious, so when you ask my problem and I say you, you laugh like it's a joke.

But you don't hear my heart thrumming in my ears. Nor feel my anxiety rattling.

Both heavy hands on the cages around my heart- dark, and trying to expose itself- shaking.

I fight to keep you from my mind, and I spend most of my time like this.

So much so I forget how to spindle my own tales to you- eyes bright and watching.

You asked me, innocent, to describe the difference between your blue eyes and another's.

I wanted to call yours lovely. I wanted to say they'd capsize a dozen men. I don't; I just say they're paler.

Paler? As though they could ever dwindle?