You've Given Me A Lot To Think About

“You’ve Given Me A Lot To Think About”

Sound echoes when the air's this heavy

and they call it "mist"

but I think it's the pain of all our losses

making its way back down to the ground.

Do you ever wonder

about the slow disintegration

the water's making 

one

small

droplet 

at a time?

Because people travel to the Grand Canyon

to marvel at its depth

but they don't sit and stare

at their own backyard

falling away

a nanometer a minute.

I am really tired 

of standing where I do

and being collateral damage

over

and

over

and over

“So MOVE!”

they shout

but I get grabbed

again and again

and eyes and lips

and words beg

beg beg me to stay.

(“Please?”)

I lessen the damage

when you roll a low, low number

and I take the hits

just like you asked

but also the ones 

you seem to ignore.

I am bowled over by the wake

and stuck deep under the wash

and you stand on my back

to get to the air.

Is it a mark of your ignorance

or the bliss you find therein

that you look at me with confusion

as I tell you I trust you not at all

while I carefully tend

to the wound you gave me

which sits next to another

and another

and another

and more?

I am tired of being the ladder you climb

to your own salvation

while saying words

you think

mean more than your actions.

Sound echoes when the air’s this heavy

and the pain of my losses

drips slowly slowly slow

as I make my way

back down to the ground.

I am my own Grand Landscape

carved away 

forever changed

one droplet at a time.

Fragments

My heart has been broken

in so many pieces

so many times

I'm sometimes surprised

there's anything left

but I piece it back together

again and again

with emotional duct tape

and I soldier on

ever onwards

seeking something I'm not sure

even exists

this phantom heart

made

they say

to buoy mine

may turn out to be

the ultimate illusion

the Loch Ness Big Foot Dragon-asaur of my existence 

and I'm starting to wonder

if every time

my heart shatters

I lose

one

more

necessary 

piece

of a soon to be lost entirely

whole

fragments of me

left all over

ground into the finest of dusts

coating everything.

Laisser

pieces of you everywhere

waking me from calm

moments of your presence

filling silences I'd like left empty

a hundred hundreds we share and know

and yours are mine and mine aren't new to you

but how much longer

will this haunting continue

where you and

your memory - 

a word

place

time

photo

whispers in my ear-

catch me blissful

and unaware

reminding me of the pain

the hurt

the missing

that I've tried oh so hard

to put away

people change in increments

when you're watching them day by day

but the leaps and bounds of unknown personalities

will throw you off every time

when you're away

living a life built to bring you back together

stepping over and around

the pieces of you

scattered everywhere

forcing me

to watch my step

lest my cadence be thrown off

yet again

by your ghost

This Is My Winter Song To You

They're brining the streets;

the thin lines 

striping my way home,

leading me towards 

rest

and my heart.

You feel it differently than I do,

the cold,

It bites at you directly

while it just tickles my cheeks

and fingers.

Your layers get cut through

while mine buffer, protect, encase.

It's cold in here without you though

and we're better off end to end,

not stealing breaths,

not heavily trapped.

It was months ago now

that the wind made the streets confetti lined

and soon

the buds

and their unfurling 

will bring us spring

and the cold

will retreat,

hang silently in the air, with patience and tiny reachings

and the streets 

won't be brined

to stripe my way home towards rest

and my heart.

Fair Shot

you came in wounded

dripping blood all over my heart

and started out with driving home the point of 

no

not ever

don't even breathe those words, that thought.

But you said sweet things

and I believed you

and you took on roles

and I believed you

and you held me close

and I believed you

and I

I lifted you up

and held you close

and I

believed in you

whole heartedly.

But we never had a chance.

We never had a shot at what's now been thrown away

and I put that on them

and you

and the lies you forgot to clarify

and you insult me regularly - daily

with your insistence on how everyone but me

is what I know I am

and what you shouldn't be stupid enough to miss

we were broken from the start

and now and again

we refresh

renew

a slate not cleaned perhaps

but flipped 

and ready to be written on

anew

Getting Warm

I can't think of anything you could say

that would make me start to trust you again

I really can't

So while the hens sit and chitter to each other

cluck cluck clucking away about the grand meaning of it all

I sit here yelling at you in my head

too polite

too realistic

to yell at you anywhere else.

It was time you said you needed

so time you've had

a lifetime's worth

yet again

and meanwhile 

lives moved on

lives moved on

lives moved on and over and through and both nothing and everything has changed

really

both nothing and everything has changed

Audacity

a word he keeps using 

and now I may have to turn towards you

if you have the audacity to want to be a friend now

Now?  After all the things said and not said

done and undone

after the way you spoke

and treated

and asked for things beyond what's fair

or kind

or nice at all

You were the one who told me you were grown up

and could play with the other side of the room

You were the one who told me

that this time, THIS time you meant it

for real

and I would be the one

you knew I was

for you

grown up

and

truthful

Signing A Death Warrant

You can't actually sign them
til the thing/
person/
relationship
is dead
but you can write them up
before the death -
during the slow,
painful,
life altering
decline

Four years
four years of knowing
four years of lies
four years of absolute bullshit
disguised as earnestness
when needed
when deemed necessary
when pushed to an edge

four years of this
a life shoved into a box
a champion betrayed
for a love
never to be understood
always to be pain filled
two children
so enraptured in their fairy tale
they ignore the carnage
their story leaves behind

Is this the point where I say the loss of you
has been overshadowed by the loss of myself
as I tried to keep you alive and well?
Is this the point
where I say the loss of what never was
splits evenly
between your deceit
and my hopefulness
and belief in what you're not
anymore
and likely never were?