Liquid

for many, the sun’s rising is a new start,
a spark of freshness and hope,
of some new unknown,
of possibility

but the sharp rays peeking through the black curtains were anything but;
they were sinister tentacles gripping and pulling her into the known,
which she fiercely wished was not

her blurry eyes were smeared with yesterday’s camo,
her mouth filled with sticky secrets she had tried so hard to swallow but never digest,
and this morning was just another in an endless slice of time that never seemed to pass

so she reached to the bedside table,
desperate, not for the glass of water,
but for the two small pills that would begin her swift transformation from a solid,
something rigid, too tight,
to liquid, not flowing and fluid,
but a stagnant pool of nothingness,
however fleeting it may be

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Autopsies

my poems are all autopsies,
but rarely postmortem,
every pen scratch the slow strangling of some fragment begging for mercy,
while a new fraction is agonizingly birthed in its place,
innocently awaiting its white-gloved examination

Stricken

I lie awake,
once again losing the winding race against my thoughts,
when grandpa’s old clock breaks the wicked silence, striking midnight,
disowning the hour in boldly apathetic song,
and I wonder if it is just in a house of dying,
that one becomes so aware of clocks

Delicate

what do we allow to lie, hiding,
in the margins of our silence?
in the sinking absence of all impetus?

autumn leaves change not by choice,
but by necessity,
a silent, inevitable reaction to all time passed,
to all interaction that came before,
an inherent response to the wholeness of their surroundings,
to their experience of living

first, it is a slow loss,
almost imperceivable,
then a maelstrom of many stimuli at once,
eventually becoming the catalyst to something so beautiful and transforming,
it feels extraordinary,
because it is

then, there is a necessary letting go,
a freeing and frightening fall whose landing transforms into something fertile,
something that slowly,
not painlessly,
decomposes to feed their own roots,
to prepare them for days to come

what do autumn leaves know that we do not?
what lies in the margins of our silence,
in the delicacy of our awe?

Blister

some days, I can’t feel much at all,
but I can smell my own grief,
overwhelming, distant,
like the first hint of smoke hitching in the wind,
a foreshadowing of something larger,
gaining momentum

but there is always too much to do,
and never enough time,
so I snuff it out,
pinch the red hot phosphorus of it between my tired fingers,
leaving behind only scorched, raw skin

it’s fine,
it’s fine

I keep repeating it to myself,
but as I go about the day,
one mountainous thing to the next,
I keep catching a whiff of it,
and I can’t help pressing the blistering it leaves behind,
both comforting and chilling

and I wish I could just take a needle to it,
relieve some of the pressure,
but I can’t –
I can’t say I miss her,
I’m not ready yet

Origami

as the weight incrementally increased,
she folded her desire in half,
then in half again,
and again,
until she could barely feel it at all,
tucking it into that hidden corner of her heart,
a minuscule origami equal in measure to her worth

Familiar

amidst the chaos,
amidst all I don’t know,
all that isn’t mine to maneuver,
all that is out of my reach,
I know this familiar misery,
this misery that’s all mine

and I can make as much as I want

Somewhere Else

as we sit in the quiet,
I wonder,
is enough of me still located here?

I lead a pretty normal life:
I work, I have conversations,
I make grocery lists and cook dinners,
I parent my children,
I am a wife;
I am not always stuck inside my selves

but it feels so often that part of myself is in this place,
while, at the same time,
the most important parts are in a different place,
a place that can’t be accessed in the mundane,
a place so deep I need to be alone to open,
be alone to sift through and allow to be free

you gently break the quiet;
you speak to me in your raspy voice and I can hear you,
I can talk and follow along the well worn paths we’ve created in our many years together,
but my most important parts are somewhere else,
and I can’t seem to locate them

Time

I have been wake-walking in a worn-out tired that’s perpetually nauseous,
ravenous for something, but not hungry, exactly,
raw in a way that takes me by surprise and frustrates me;
the most trivial things are the last straw,
and there seem to be so many lasts

I have learned it’s not possible to wake up on the wrong side of the bed when you never really slept,
when there was no restful sleep,
just the tiny spaces between the cyclical blips of a never-ending SOS

and no matter what face I put on,
I am not greener on the other side,
I cannot find the sweet, restorative spot,
and too many days it feels like life is a zero sum game –
you only win until you lose again

I have been here before,
in a place that was a slow slide into conscious unconsciousness,
and the difference this time is that I know where I am,
I know who I am as I rest my head on the warm side of the pillow,
because I don’t have the energy to flip it,
and the flipping is never fast enough, anyway,
is it?

time isn’t on my side, which is funny,
because time is the only thing that matters,
isn’t it?

and I just keep asking myself:
what would be the point of living,
if we didn’t allow time to change us?
if we didn’t realize that time is the purest form of love on this earth?

Prison

papering over the cracks doesn’t make them disappear,
but life is prettier when you do,
isn’t it?

but pretty is temporary;
paper is thin,
the sun goes down

I often wonder where other people go when they turn off the lights

are they peaceful?
do they drift and dream?

or, are there some, like me,
who often wander into the crevices within themselves,
digging around inside the shadows of their blackness,
clawing away at the dirt of memories they wish they could forget,
running from maybes and what ifs,
grasping at illusions,
hoping like hell no one else can see this fitfully desperate place?

daylight ignorance isn’t bliss,
it’s only fear postponed to a later date,
and control is an illusion that can only really be felt in the letting go

denial is the most destructive form of self harm,
isnt it?

it’s such an exhausting work,
and the truth is always there,
lurking in the shadows,
refusing to be silenced,
demanding to be seen when the lights go out

it’s a self-inflicted,
ruinous prison

I built my prison meticulously,
with solid walls made from bricks of guilt and obligation,
walls that seem to have no doors

but the way out is always there,
I just can’t always see it –
I have learned I just have to be willing to watch myself crumble