the poet

the colours are going to change the leaves are going to fall, spiral, drift, fly without wings down to the ground. and they will hit bottom— dead. but they are not the end, just the possibility for a new beginning for the leaves will return fresh again & darling, take this bracing assurance  wherever you go that  so will you

the night knows me better than i know myself. 11am has seen my desperate struggle for breath, my choking as the sheets tightened their wind around my neck; 12am has seen my earbuds pushed deep in my brain, a melody spreading like a stain from one ear to the other- 1am has seen my empty gaze, my vague silence because i just - can’t - sleep; 2am has seen my furious scribbling that i have to get out or die; 3am has seen my aching heart, pounding itself against my ribcage to be loose; 4am has seen my violent screaming that i can’t stop inside my head.

there’s a great deal of space near the beginning of fall-time. all that summer was has shrunken in its skin and molted, and left behind a great aching space that the fall has not yet filled. it feels that the only way to occupy it again is to lie down in the grass, now cool with the burn of the sun, and breath the crisp air and feel how it scorches your throat like smoke and wind your fingers around and into the leaves to hear them crackle, and then slowly, slowly, the space will be filled until it is near overflowing and fall will have come.

-but still, i rise

when i die, when they lay me in the ground and scatter me over with dust, i pray to leave behind a legacy of overstuffed bookshelves and hearts flooding with warmth and a rushing feeling that i have done something worthwhile. and i hope to look up into the blinding light of how i imagine new life to be and hear the words, “well done good and faithful servant”, and even if i had doubts before nothing will ever prepare me for the torrent of relief and love and worship that will fill me to the brim at hearing that voice

I remember a time where truth had one meaning and wasn’t hazy like breath on a glass; where i didn’t have to worry about picking myself up from shattered fragments of my wrong choices, where the lies had slithered in between us and guided my hand. i remember a time where truth was white, and lies were black— but now everything’s grey and i hate it, i hate it. now it’s all a mess where we question everything we heard; where suspicion is a killer that surfaces between us  and seizes our words and crushes our meaning and returns it, broken and battered and saying something else entirely. now a foreign voice, not me at all. i remember a time when i trusted everything and everyone trusted me, and the things that the world tried to wheedle into our minds were just feeble inventions that we knew better than to listen to.

dusk creeps softly through the city, so slowly at first you hardly notice. it dips down, weaving itself into chinks and alleys and narrow splinters until everyone is aware that it’s arrived. it settles onto the things that in the day aren’t so frightening.  not so frightening, perhaps, but far less pretty.  and the stars follow quickly behind

get out get out of him i will bite and scratch and burn; i will become a tornado, a hurricane, a cacophony of anger and rage and pain— and it will all be meant for you i will rend you asunder tear out your eyes with my nails i will not rest until you leave him alone you leave him alone this girl’s love will defeat you and you will burn and oh, how it will make you scream in all the agony he has ever endured

he painted in blood-red with his fists; she painted in  light , as if she were the sun itself.

I have chalkboard shoes. They are supposed to be white, but somewhere between the box and my feet they were smudged with tar and age and now they’re mostly black. as though someone slapped a chalky eraser onto the laces and never swept it away. 

i have a fresh pencil, lead cut to a stark point and missing its eraser. it rests, ready for battle, in my hand. i grip it like a weapon, fingers taut against the edges. I have a brisk sheet of paper, blue lines marking out the battlefield. thirty blue lines resting against one red line. it is there to keep my word from slipping away and getting lost. and i have not a single idea in my head. my weapon stands idle; its point is pointless without my words. my battlefield waits in anticipation. but my brain is empty; no jagged bombs ready to force pain in the mind of my readers; no hidden tripwires ready to snare their thoughts and stagger them with its cleverness. my words don’t often fail me, but today they have. they don’t assemble crafted words into pretentious sonnets or trickle astonishing narratives into your ears or stain this paper with black and white bursting into colour or paint images of dragons or the sky or anything

when your demons threaten to overfill you; when you can’t hold back the fear as it crystallizes into anxious tears; when you are lost in your own head unable to find the way out— let me in so i can outwit this maze with you. let me at your demons, let me tear them apart with my teeth

you expected so much, what did you expect?

i never talked -  not because you had told me i couldn’t, but because you had never told me i could