i like to stand in front

of the mirror

stand up/sit down/stand up/sit down

and watch the light die in my own eyes.

fasinating,

that buzz

of human consciousness before the deafening crack

the string

of tightness in our chest-

stretch stretch snap

the psychedelic colors,

my blood

like lsd bouncing blue blue black

i stand at a gas pump on a monday night

momentarily forgetting altogether how to put gas in a car

because

for a brief moment, i thought i heard my father

calling me home for dinner off the playground swings,

decades ago.

i think i was born this way. in a panic and

knowing that this is it.

i think i am a cat in my ninth life and

from the moment i crawled into the world,

squirming and skeletal, it was all panic.

i think i have lost something that cannot

be recovered. like i ruined the last eight

lives and am given one last

that i already know i will fail.

i think i am the kind of cat that no one wants.

in alleyways on fencetops under garbage bags,

the kind that ends up a pile of sticky fur

pressed against the asphalt of a highway.

i think my stomach sinks because i want

to be something more but am too afraid,

too sure that i am doomed. there is a

sinking premonition that my last lives

were ended on a desperate mewing note,

my claws grabbing on in denial. i think

of the pig in charlotte's web, and it echoes

in my head how he lived his life whining

'i don't want to die' knowing that he would,

he had to, he was a pig. but i think i am a cat

and there is no purpose. not even a price on my

flesh as something valuable, a profitable livestock.

nothing to love or be loved by. not an endearing

little pet to take care of. cats indulge in independence,

but perhaps inside they are bitter and lonely in the end.

i think i never wanted to be a cat, it is like being

trapped in a body i was never meant for. and the ribs

are restraining, the breathing is never enough and the

worst is being unable to speak. no cry for help that

a single soul would understand. here i am with no

language but panic, like the screeching of tires before

the inevitable car wreck. i think with eight lives behind

me, i can close my eyes this time and swallow the hurt.

i dont know if it is worse that i know what the metal

crushing my body feels like, or if it is worse to know

that i will never feel it (or anything) ever again. i think

i am a cat on my last life and you'd imagine after the first

lives i would not be afraid anymore. but i am a thing

of writhing panic and i think i was born this way.

i once read something about prisoners that went insane

from a special kind of torture, where a single drop of water

was dropped onto their faces over and over and over. i

tried to imagine how in the world it could be

torture, something so painless and harmless. but

the rhythm of the water dropping was irregular, meaning

the victim couldn't anticipate the timing of the next drop.

and when water, second by second, time after time,

drips onto solid rock, it forms a

deeply scraped hollow.

no one told me that loneliness would be so loud.

that it would howl and tear at me like hurricane wind,

strong and wet with tears

and the noise is shattering, it means hiding

for cover until this is all over

i thought being lonely meant quiet, meant

hearing the silence of empty space

now i realize that it is a hunger, empty

in a painful reminding way

i am not lonely for just the people i had

their voices and the way i knew them

i am lonely for myself, the person i was

when i was with them, my voice, my thoughts,

the way i knew myself

i am getting older alone

and it feels so cold

it feels like being the person left behind

when everyone leaves and grows

in my mind there are words i dont say

and feelings i am unable to feel, being lonely

is one that my body wouldn't welcome and yet

somehow here i am starving for something i

never knew i wanted and still refuse to admit i

need. i am alway left wondering if i deserve it

after all, for being so cold and locked up

there must be something i did because i

am hiding my pain from myself and it spills out

my pores and i'll never have enough pots and pans

to catch it all before it's too late and everyone sees.

hide me from the world, hide me from my own eyes

but give me one person who looks at my burning pile

and sees a life. Will there be someone that looks at the

lines in my hands and speaks my body's language?

because no one does, no one. and it makes me feel

unhuman. i starve for understanding. can someone

look me in the eyes and hold my secrets and know my name?

its cold and lonely where i am, with water digging into my

skull in a way that could be beautiful to anyone else. could that

be how the grandcanyon was smoothed over or the little star shaped

grains of sand? what if they cry out in pain, but all that everyone else

sees is beauty? and the same way the stars burn and rot and rip

themselves to shreds, we call them small and beautiful and dreamy.

so here i am starving and lying about how much i hurt

because maybe its better to pretend it is

beautiful maybe that is

what everything does on this dead dying dirt. i am

drowning and thirsting and starving and bursting

and the poetic nature is pain. i can't sleep with all these

words crowded in my head- all my own- but where they come

from i'll never know. i've been alone long enough to hear voices

that come from the ground and the sky and

it might sound silly but they are there and i'm

not crazy, they're just as lonely as i.

and it suddenly occurred to me, we persons are built

with a rhythm. a heart pumping life force in/out/in/out

yours is so unlike any other. millions of little beats pulsing evenly

on a rhyhmically spinning planet. an even beat in wake or sleep,

we never live a moment without rhythm. and so it makes

sense to me how irregular drops of innocent water

could rip a man's sanity to shreds when his being relies

on a ticking clock, something to hear and know is true.

he hears the water is poisonous. he hears the drips uneven.

his brain believes he's poisoned. his heart believes it skips

every beat. he dies of poison, he dies of heart attack. i am lonely

and my body finally heard the news. it finally realized all

the thoughts in my head echo to myself, there is no one

else on this blue empty planet, me and my thoughts and my

uneven heartbeat. and now, the loneliness

aches like a deeply scraped hollow

there are things that make me grieve in deeper shades than blue

i've forgotten that sadness speaks a language i do not and we

live in separate homes now, so what is this sickening feeling

that takes her place? when i say that i am crying what i really mean

is that i hear a deep crack in my chest and am sure that the real me

is suffocating, ripping to get out, squeezing itself through tears in the

corners of my eyes, through deep-not-deep-enough sighs, through the

ache in my stomach like simmering coals it burns to have someplace to scream

and i cant get enough air or enough words to tell my mother that i am glass

she is water. glass moves like any liquid of science, but slow, so very slow and

someday solid. and someday shattered. and someday grains of sand. i could not tell her which phase of the life of glass i am in but i take deep breaths, blow, and imagine shaping myself into a glass bottle, putting a message in it, corking, floating out to sea. will someone find me? will someone pull me out of salt water and storms?

there are 7 billion pairs of hands on this earth that touch the same things and feel something different. 7 billion eyes that see the same world in 7 billion different stories.

this is how it is to be a single cell in the earth's body. to take up space and leave no footprint. there are people that speak dead languages,

people that are beautiful with their windows closed. stories only in minds, never on paper.

and even the idols wake up shivering at night afraid to be themselves, the people in power

feel their hearts drop because they've never reached tomorrow. and me, i am afraid

because i haven't met myself yet, i live with locked doors and tip toe quietly down the

halls like i am afraid to wake a monster. i don't know what to feel. this mask is here too long and my body grows itself to fit it. i leave like day, i exist in leaving. i leave the night

reluctantly, hanging on, like a game defeated. i leave the table hungry and wonder if the hungers add up someday. i leave something of my heart behind when i wake up from a dream like i've left all i've lived for. i tell myself the room is a prison, but there are moments when the sun comes in and i realize it is me, my body, my cold mind. this is a mourning

in some color i never learned. and that is fair. don't believe that there are no unknown colors to exist. they do. and did you see the eyes of the people empty where their heart fled away? from grief or loss of pain, they lost something and they see between color. where words end, color breathes heavily. at school we learn that the colorful animals are the dangerous ones. you know when you see the shade of grief's eyes. when i say i'm crying

i mean that i wash that color out of my own eyes, but somehow it sticks. i will say it again until i am more than a cell that keeps the world pumping. i will say it again, louder this time. yet there is no beautiful way to say that i am grieving.

my fingers lost their magic touch, tips on keys they hover

no more words spill out, i grieve them like ive lost my lover

and its this covid world thats sucked the breath out of me

in an airtight fishbowl i forget to speak in poetry

my mood ring never changes from this deep indigo color

like it found a calm emotion & refused to take another

i keep it on like a talisman i’m calm i’m calm i’m calm

its begun to rust sickly green against the inside of my palm

a bing crosby song echoes from the kitchen to my locked door

mom sings white christmas, though shes never had one before

today i told her that i might just have to move away

she feigns hurt surprise, as if guilt will make me stay

we watch dust storm rain spatter the window’s muddy glass

and pretend its a wintery-cold storm to make time drag past

the grass is dead like scattered bones, there are no fall leaf trees

wind sucks at our front door's metal lock with a heavyladen wheeze

i force my fingers to write but cant understand the language they shape

and it translates in tears and panic attacks and unspeakable need to escape

someday i will remember how to eat without fighting and digging at my waist

ill write real words again and meet new friends and remember how things taste

my mood ring will shift tones and match the labels on its color chart

but for now i wonder how long it all will take in the waiting part

and oh

just tell her how you feel

because tomorrow is not coming

you will roll the red light without

noticing and crash metal to metal no

thoughts in between, some ironically happy

song on your car radio and you sing to it 'baby

i love you i love you' and you feel like you'll always have

another day another chance to tell her, and then you suddenly

breathe no more between the glass and metal scraps, you're gone

and please

just tell her how you feel

because tomorrow when she hears

the news of how there's nothing left of you

she'll be left behind with all the words you didn't say

and it aches and aches and aches let me tell you an old story

an old warning, the love is wonderful and someone always breaks

someone has to leave that is how time works at red lights and stop signs

just tell her now before she wakes up 40 years old married and missing you

tell her before the minutes sift past and in your last breath you sigh and say

i should have said i love you