Special

Did you tell me I would be broken

when you called me special

Did you call me hopeless

when I begged for some forgiveness

Because now I am crawling

waiting for tomorrow

With a today so very desperate

that yesterday is hiding

There is no more point here

I shout into the echo

But I can feel nothing

other than I am special

Special for your weakness

Special for my survival

Special is what kills me

I cannot defy it

But I am sane and you are not

and here we are and there I was

when I cannot breathe out loud

lest you hear me moving

Far out of your orbit

spinning in slow motion

Trying to shout louder

than a kitten’s mewling

Will the planets find me

all my silent crying

Now I can feel nothing

only my plates shifting

Into old arrangements

nothing ever changes

If you could have loved me

let me be ordinary

The world would have opened

the stars would have held me

But now I am so special

the goddess of your nothing

What you hid within me

it was not for growing

It was all for killing

what was only dying

to be loved at all...

Nothing gold

I have been thinking of you

Reminded it seems by

the presence of

something sadder than

you or me

How very long I held on

to something I never had

the gravity to

control

When now I knock against the

hollow inside

the abyss you left in each

part of my whole

So much and so completely ignored

ripping the hinges off of the doors

catapulting me into a world where

daydreams remember

How I would like nothing more than

to feel the cadence of your

pulsating love again

Nothing more than to know it is me who

you tried with your heartbreak

to protect

Instead I am left waiting on the hill

shaking with knowledge of

lost connections

I am left on the pier with memories of the dead

their sorrow pointed toward

the horizon

Under water

was it ever thus?

the clouds mirrored in our eyes

the end of apology

the apocalypse of

us

No one mentioned Debbie’s name at work.  “What happened?” Jonah asked himself in the mirror each night before bed, just after he brushed his teeth.  One moment she had been standing next to the cart, complaining about tropical oils and the avocado Jonah had slipped in with their groceries.  And then he was holding the perfect strawberry in winter, talking to no one.  Only Bill, who Jonah sometimes came across in the cafeteria during their mutual mid-morning coffee break, had said to Jonah, “I’m sorry about Debbie, man.”  Jonah pretended not to hear him.  He just asked if Bill knew who had won the basketball game last night.

The lost room

September 17, 1986

My happier self has returned!  Grey skies are gonna clear up, so put on a happy face...!  Excellent idea!  All I needed was a few hours of moodiness and an ice cream to get me back to my senses...after all, I’m the only person who can make me feel better.

I remember how something could

break every word you 

spoke

make you sound like 

you were

choking

The long shadow

Because I will miss you      when I am all alone

I will ask my questions       then wish you had come along

as I sit here with my head between my knees

my hand trailing listless in your wake              no real difference between a 

choice and a mistake

the stars led me everywhere but gone

if I could I would ask you please     I would shout it to your 

stones and rivers and trees

what were we doing here                   

how could we have been so wrong

What decorates the walls

She has a memory.  One beautiful memory.  Carefully held in the palm of her hands, so that no one else might find it and steal it.  She must leave it nowhere.  It must always remain with her.  The memory of that one summer morning, while they still slept.  The pavement of the driveway cool on her bare feet as she stepped into the shadow cast by the huge Mountain Ash in the front yard, the sun burning golden at the edges.  No one must have this moment.  This moment must never be touched.

Because she must hold it so close and so carefully, she cannot hold onto any others.  She lets the pictures framed in broken glass fall through her fingers.  There must only be one world.  One world, underneath the tree, where no one else exists.  Let the others sleep.  Let them all sleep.  She is a girl standing in the shadow of a golden halo.  She must never step out.  She must live here forever.

this voice         does not scream

these eyes        open only to dream

these lungs      too full of fire to breathe

The deep freeze

I am of the winter people, you see,

of a place where the snow causes

no sighs, no filaments of regret 

to pierce the skin as one

remembers warmth and

light.

Here winter is a relief,

a signal that what is

inevitable has come to

pass.