The Closed Off Lover

He refuses to offer
a piece of his heart,
he cannot trust
it'll be kept unbroken.
He keeps his feelings
belted smart,
no chances for emotions-
they're left unspoken.

He offers his rut,
fresh and mastered.
Decides it's the most
he wants for now.
The heart that's growing
a case on him,
is being plastered
at the mere longing
to exchange a loyalty vow.

There is hope he will
change and offer more-
with no guarantee of
his final choice for a future.
There is hope, at the depth
of a bruised heart still sore-
she can keep holding him together
like a silk threaded suture.

The Secret

Sometimes, when I dream of you,
the other stars fade.

The Sun and Moon make love,
and eclipsed sonders evade.

Venus & Mars cuddle up cheek to cheek,
when I worship you in my bed.

The secret of loving you,
explains how the universe was made.

Undone

His fingers are removed from inside me
his hand taken out of my pants
the pain fades away
until it never
happened.

I remove his ugly old tshirt
my blue lace blouse is back on
comforting against my skin
I walk out of his house.
I've never
been there before.

His phone number
leaves from my phone
digit
by digit.

His smothering
cigarette
beer breath
mouth
walks away from me.
He has never
touched me.

His texts fly away into nothing.
He has never
contacted me.

I have a picnic with my friends in reverse.
We regurgitate cake until it's whole,
then take them back to our houses
out of our ovens
until it's batter.
Just ingredients on our shelves
that can be made differently next time.

Everything happens in reverse
until it hasn't
happened.

Until it's better.

No Longer

//I can no longer distinguish--

pain from pleasure;
abuse from affection;
contusions from caresses.

//Embraces could be delivered--

in tightly-clenched fists;
words of affirmation in abasement;
trust in forced hands.

//I can no longer tell the difference--

between love and hurt;
dark bruises and soft kisses;
belittlement and support.

//All i do decipher is the aftermath -

the tears,
the marks,
the aches;
hot showers soothing
stinging skin,
shaky knees and
trembling hands;
the nauseating guilt;
encapsulating,
overwhelming fear...

and the sickening inability to just walk away.

The Colour Thickest of All

Close your body into mine--

for it's 4am and the rain is lashing
down, potholes in the sidewalk
swell from the weight of the
water--

endless.

But we're sleeping under
the mango tree
we planted together when
we were seven?
You're snuggled against my bony chest.
You're safe inside my arms.
But
Who are you?
Why did I pick you?
What was in you,
That I fell?
Heart first and aching--
my curled toes and chafed elbows following course?
Do you deserve
my blood?
My bile?
My sinews?
My stitches?

Turns out you're the dopamine designed to destroy.
Yet I find haven now--
it is the crinkled yellow seed of a rose that spreads into bloom--
tended by tender hands
and allowed to keep its thorns,
despite the danger they hold.

Love, I name it.
Destined to droop.

But I am a careless pickers of hearts.
Savage and ruthless.
I trample my own garden as
the delicate puddle of blood
chokes your throat as you gag,
tasting of smoked salt and rust.
I scream.
We dance out a scene. Yet,
It hurts to see you die.

My pockets hold secrets of death,
a small vial--
the eye refuses to linger on.
But on and on it does.
Like a tongue missing a broken tooth,
lapping over the scar tissue hungrily.

We deserve it, I whisper--
as the second vial goes down.
It takes thirty minutes to bleed out
and I count each one down
with a passion you made me
hide from
Myself.

As life slips out of me
in the colour thickest of all,
I think about those nights--
when you held me down and took me.
I refused to close my eyes
somewhere around the
eleventh time
as you whispered in my ear
with wine stained teeth.

I refused.
Because I plotted.
And waited,
waited,
held my breath
as if it were made of pure gold.
As if air were diamonds.
I will get back to you.

Now I watch you shudder
and take your last breath.

I take the rope from my picnic basket
and wrap it around the mango tree
we planted together when we were
seven? 

And for the last time,
I snuggle you against my bony chest.
You're safe inside my arms.

At  4:34am I kiss
the shallow cheek of Death.
My only regret being not doing it
soon enough.

A roar from the crowd--
"More! More!"

but there is no More.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Could-haves

Generic poetry
And a Father who left me

Generic photography
And a Mother who I believe loves me

But how can you die, before being born? 
Sometimes I imagine myself trying to commit suicide in the womb,
On the 8th month my Mother was pregnant with me,
The man who never sat me on his shoulders,
Never made my family breakfast,
And never brought me in to 'Bring your Child to Work Day',
walked out of the door and carried with him all the could-haves of my childhood.

How the human body reacts to Trauma

sometimes,
when i tell stories from my childhood,
i spit out the first age that comes to mind,
because half my life is desperately scribbled out,
in an attempt to deny the past.
sometimes,
when i see something too close to a half-forgotten fear,
an almost-familiar face or
bruises in the shapes of fingertips or
a certain brand of cutlery or
the most trivial tiny things,
there is nothing i can do
but remember
and remember
and remember.
sometimes,
when someone asks me what my worst memory is,
i laugh through the cobwebs
of all my half-buried remnants
of a hidden childhood that
i will die before i admit out loud
woven between my teeth and tongue
and never answer.
sometimes,
i play old images of faces,
people i’ve tried to forget for years
over and over again like a broken record
and i hope that
my dozens of contorted expressions
of fear and pain and begging
follow my ghosts to their graves.
sometimes,
when flashbacks become a common ritual,
i do not let myself cry
and i dwell on the thought
that i deserved every word
every hit
every second
and i still do.
sometimes,
when i cannot sort out what is real and what is not,
i decide on the comfort of denying it all,
because i am built, now, on lies
shaped in the foundation of a safe home
i did not live in.

you

R A R E L Y   S E E N.

DEEPLY FELT.

Abuse

For you knew of the girl whose cheeks were so pink, they'd be mistaken for sweet peas. 
And whose skin could be misplaced for butter paper.
Tongue as innocent as the boy that cried wolf, 
And eyes as golden as yore. 

You knew of that girl, count every school day, 
Where she walked through the door, head bowed and heart prayed. 
'neath those bangs, whose color is as dark as our breaths, and as shiny as false tree, 
Whose eyes--exotic--bluer--bluer than a thumbtack and bluebells set out by sea. 

Whose eyes are mismatched by plentiful lips--small as the silver spec on my shoe, 
And shimmered 'neath sterile light, as if she kissed the face of Mt. Rushmore, too. 
With those high lips and V-line chin, which connected with her pencil neck to her petite body, 
No breasts or bottom, with legs as thin as stilts and as blinding as our phones, 
She holds the body of a cradle, and sings like a tongue-less canary. 

Always kempt and proper--her hair tied back with a lovely noose. 
And shoes worry not of dirt--for she never played outside. 
Resting 'neath maple-wood trees like a bunny--face and knees tucked by arms, and that's where they reside. 
Many boys had asked for her hand in play, but that bunny went deeper--deeper into the flesh hole she burrowed. 
"Painfully shy, she was." They said. 
And that pain was her devil. 

For you knew not the cause of those florid, pink, cheeks. 
Whose purpose means nothing but dead machines. 
Whose eyes rung bright--struck the world alight, 
Yet, they themselves could not see. 

For you knew of the girl whose cheeks were so pink, they'd be mistaken for vintage bust, 
And whose skin could be misplaced for bile. 
Whose eyes mistaken for lust, 
And face mistaken for tile. 

For you knew of the girl whose cheeks were so pink, they'd be mistaken for heat, 
And whose skin could be misplaced for bleach. 
For again and again and again, the belt beats. 
And hello to endless murder. 

For if you drew closer and closer--and closer, you see, 
Blue waters and purple veins clash--wash again and again 'gainst land--and befit the word: queer. 
For if you drew closer and closer--and closer, you see, 
Innocence knows no bounds and eyes no longer see flavor, 
For if you drew closer and closer--and closer, you see, 
Exotic eyes bled--rained--pink--and pink--and pink with grand fervor...! 
For sometimes it may frighten you to know, 
Not all persons are truly healthy, 
even those who you hold truly dear.

Bury

for we fall like moths at the strike of lighting.
and slip to earth for change.
we sit in 10 seconds of silence.
yet we never wish for years of action.

for we cry into the heavens--to God--in disarray,
false water in our glossy eyes.
for with magazines and a host,
atheists are our middle name.

knees soaked in kerosene and eyes used as ashtrays,
we are fire coated in and of itself,
for we burn midst tear-sealed lips,
and expect for the earth to revolve.

for we lay unclad together in bed,
whispering cloy gooeyness into ear canals,
and tie each other up with thorns,
for kink--we say.

for we are sadomasochists,
emanating soulful breaths with heads tilted back,
at the thought of a bullet in our marrow,
and chuckle off--chuckle off lots,
at the red we draw from that hidden blade we borrowed.

they know not of what we think,
for we are madman in a cradle,
with large starry eyes, we look for inspiration--intention,
and--when asked for and found--the parents don't see those stars anymore.

for we are heartache,
and bodies with stones in our hand,
for they don't understand,
the power in corpses we seek.

for we are the heretics,
the verses in the Bible no one reads,
for when sought out and seen,
we bathe in the honeyed milk and spoil it.

for we are selfish--even if we beg not,
we are hypocrites--even if we needn't be,
we are labyrinths--even if redirected,
for we are killers and everyone knows,

all we need to do is bury our weakness 'neath the meadows.

The Tilted Eclipse

How lonely have you been, my love?
Why did you watch the red swill down the plug hole all alone?
Why did you have to live that way and watch Life seep out of your tired veins when they don't know how to come back home?

How lonely have I been, my love?
That I did not blink twice when you smiled at me?
Why did I have to live that way and ignore the homecoming of a survivor who wears the most beautiful scars?

How lonely have we been, my love?
That we drowned ourselves in the bubble of fermented mess?
Why did we have to live that way and slit the throats of our desires neatly to save our prides from a mild scratch?

How lonely can we now be, my love?
Now that I've known your worth?
I'll cradle your smile like a titled eclipse
and kiss the constellation of your freckles back and forth.

And the only thing
blossoming full and red,
will be our hearts-
and Love will find a way back home.

The Autumn Tree

The thinned seams of my consciousness rot way,
One fabric at a time,
Leaking your images against my will...

There flew a smiling face-
You look happy and flushed here, contended with a momentary meeting.
Your infatuation for me was so pure.

Then there's a heated image of yours, frozen, concentrating hard on that deep kiss i extracted from your perennial source of selfless elixir-
tucked safely within the folds of my cerebrum, this one comes up to haunt me during many a lonely nights.

There's this one again, I personally find irritating-
An image of you with that ear splitting grin, laughing light heartedly at my expense. I still hate this.

And out of the many, last one reflects sadness. Staring right through me with mixed emotions. Conveying indecipherable messages. This one lingers a tad longer in front of my eyes, making sleep difficult. You know I hated to see you unhappy.

And so my defective consciousness keeps shedding images like a seasonal tree I mistook to be evergreen.

How long will this Autumn last?

Elizabeth and the Sunflower Garden

Elizabeth and God exist in a sunflower grave. Her mother and father slit her stomach open and watched the blood pour out like neon confetti.

Hilary and Brendan were thirty-five and thirty-six years-old. They stabbed their daughter thirty-seven times. They don't know why they did it, they just couldn't think of a reason not to do it.

She begged for her life. The yellow petals of the sunflowers caught blood-drops and, after enough struggle, floated down to kiss and lay on Elizabeth's slow-twitch body. Hilary looked at Brendan and said, "What does this mean?" Brendan shrugged and said, "This is new to me."

The garden was an oven, and digging her grave was like pulling back on a cheap, plastic latch. Elizabeth had pale, pre-cooked pie crust skin. The slits in her stomach looked like peeks into a cherry stuffed filling. Crinkled lips looked indented by a stainless steel fork, back and forth, side to side. And the soil rained upon her like the reversal of hot vapor, returning home.

Elizabeth and the Sunflower Garden.

Dear Boy

Dear boy, do you believe in midnight confessions?

'Cause I don't.
When its three am in the morn and our hands are numb from reckless texting and I say I love you so much, please don't fall for that shit.
I tell you, just don't.
That's just me running high on emotions because sleep wont come.
And the three am me is not the one who will be going to entertain your nuisance in broad daylight.
There's going to be a tad more bitchier, whinier & an insensitive version of me who will be going to visit you on dates.

Can you deal with me?

Don't go thinking about how many words of mine make you go running to the dictionary and how I'm wrapped in mystery.

Dear boy, it's temporary.

Are you weaving future fabrics here? And dreaming about twins who will have my eyes and your hair?
Hell no.
But dear boy, there will be a day, when I'll be too exhausted to stay up till three to tell you I love you.
I will get a job, and lead a monotonous life, get frustrated.
I will have maybe seventy two scripts to check. And I'll be suffering from back pain, start wearing glasses and will not be sporting winged eyeliner anymore.

Then, dear boy, I will be sitting on a chair, and it will be around one in the afternoon, and I'll stop scribbling with my pen to pick up my phone to text you in my perfecly sane mind and say I love you so much.

And I tell you, dear boy, you must believe me then...