some things are worth bruising for.

you were a creature of velocity

quantity, not quality is what occupied your mind,

a machine composed of all there is to do.

you move mindlessly, churning blank pages forward

because you are afraid to spill your thoughts on paper,

afraid to slow down and face the light

reflected in this prism you’ve created.

you are a robot man, a creature of iron will and you can force

your way through anything but not through everything

because there are some battles that you won’t face—

close that door and walk away and don’t even pretend

you once saw beauty in that face because you are a creature of doing,

not feeling, production, not inflection.

i skipped stones on the lake that day,

the same day i skipped past the introduction and cut

right to the kiss

because i am a creature of believing, not doubting,

feeling, not re-routing.

but you are a robot man and all of my belief cannot turn you into flesh and bone

you are unbreakable and i am not and i’ve learned to become alright with that

to let the wind sound through these hollow spaces in my soul

because what else is it but the sound of music filling emptiness?

i skipped past the exit signs inside your eyes, the flashing lights that warned me

not to enter and with both hands on the steering wheel i veered inside your bloodstream

and swam through your veins

and you were intoxicating, the feel of your heartbeat like opium to my troubled mind

but there were some places that not even my fingertips could reach

because you are a robot, man,

and i am not. and all your batteries and metal parts are things that i can’t clasp with

my warm fingers, ice cold you break away and leave me

breathing, not laughing.

realizing, not reacting.

but i know now that it was enough for me to sail your coasts and watch the sunrise,

to beat against the prison walls around your heart

but it is you, not i that is the captive and so i turn away

another step to ring the bell to sound the nell of deaths cold sting

for there is no heartbeat left to summon life into the chasm of your being.

but you can do anything —

or else you could, you told me once

you are a robot man, a cold hard steel man

but i am not, and never will be

and two things never change,

men and their machines

who we are and what we create

i turned off the lights and left you in the room,

your mouth still churning out blank pages,

every unspoken word another space to fill the distance between

me and you,

the robot man.

lift those heavy eyelids.

i’m tired of the bullets we all carry in our backpacks and of our tendency to shoot the messengers and the ones who are different. because really i just want to know you in all of your complexities but there are hand grenades hidden in the promises we make as we swear we’ll never destroy each other i begin to doubt that it is true because all i’ve ever believed was different than this, i once swore i was a princess but my daddy never did remind me of that dream; but he did leave me with a suitcase full of boulders, weighing me down with all i never was for him but today i leave that behind and watch these stones turn into sparrows lighting my way with lanterns in their beaks, feathers just beyond my fingertips reminding me of more, reminding me that the words we speak are more than words when they rise up off these pages and become a part of us, it is a life-giving work that we humans do. and so i dedicate this one to you, the one whose dreams may never come true because hell, at least you have your dreams and that is something. at least your eyes still close at night and open upon paradise, in the hallowed corners of your mind you still have hope for more, a vision of all that could be illuminated by the electric beating of your heart inside your chest. and i will love you forever for the words that you own, both spoken and unspoken. the syllables behind your eyelashes contain the greatest speech i’ve ever heard and i promise you tonight that i won’t let these wolves tear your happiness away, i’ll hold you like a lover till the morning breaks upon us and finds our consonants and vowels intertwined and something like a sunrise hovering in the space between our lips, our messages nothing but words of wonder and the bullets in our backpacks exchanged for empty shells. there’s nothing wrong with being different, darling. there’s nothing wrong with wonder.

just leave me your stardust to remember me by.

i sent you my heart in a box,
the postman promised to have you sign
on the dotted line
before entrusting it to you
but maybe he forgot
or maybe he just decided that it wasn’t worth the time
but either way i’m here
and you are there
in this age of television blues and artificial coloring shot with needles
into our artificial conversations
i could tell you that i miss you but my words would come up empty
because anyone can say them
and it doesn’t really mean much
i remember when our words turned into touch
and i could feel the ache of all the things you couldn’t say
compressed into the space between your fingers and your breath
that lit the darkness sparking daylight into the street lamps
of these broken asphalt creeks
each dotted yellow line another sign of just how far away from me you are
and i can’t make myself pretend
that this is right and this is easy
and when did simple become so complicated
and when did all the right sayings become so cheesy
and those three words became the preface
to sweaty palms and cold dead hearts
because the kind of love i look for isn’t artificial love
the love that becomes cancer, eating away at us like
 boys and girls becoming the masters of each others hearts
 turning beating organs into tools of mass destruction
 when did we step away from all that we became
running back into ourselves
into the things that we forgot
into things we promised in our darkest dimmest hours that we would never  be.
why is it so easy to take off our clothes
and so much harder to open our hearts?
or maybe they are one and the same
our silence screaming
“know me and love me because of it
or maybe despite it.
hold my hand with all it scars and all its battle wounds
the outside signs of all that we have overcome
because hearts can’t scar
the same way palms do,”
the way your hands shook the day you let go of my heart
and let me on my own and told me it was better
and told me i was stronger than i thought
but these are things i knew already
things i felt when my heart beat steady
and words came easy, when my feet found rhythm
on the sidewalks of your shoes, my heart all tied up in your laces
and the sun illuminating both our freckled faces.
those were the days before fear swept in on the back of a
tv commercial promising love and selling promises
the day before you left me that note in shaky handwriting,
“i can’t know you and love you the same”,
when the red sunrise became the color of my
beating heart flayed raw and aching,
when i scooped the fragile remnants into a cardboard box,
addressed it to your name and made the postman promise.
the weeks turned months where i pressed my face against the
windowpane and waited for your answer,
then realized that the silence was your answer
and maybe we are all just cardboard boxes
holding aching bleeding hearts
stamped over again with the places we’ve seen
and the people we’ve known, pasted with those little signs that tell us
“handle with care”
but who listens to those? not me.
i left my heart in a cardboard box in the postman’s hands
and maybe someday he’ll show up on your doorstep and ask you to sign
but you’d better know it is a great responsibility
because hearts don’t just break,
sometimes they heal.

on valentines day:

“Be loved. Be known. Love people and know people. Be so brave as to raise a hand for help when you need it. Make friends and make sure they know they matter. Be loyal to them and fight for them. Remind them what’s true and invite them to do the same when you forget. If you do some losing or you walk with someone else in their defeat, live with dignity and grace. It is a middle finger to the darkness.” — jamie tworkowski

a day of pale skies and a real kiss.

the words i want to say to you
are words that i won’t ever say
the syllables formed on my tongue choke and burn out
before they ever reach the surface
though my heart pumps them forth it is a wasted effort
because my fear is my best guardian and i will always hide behind it
building wall after wall and it hurts to hide behind this fortress
my hands clasp each other so tightly
afraid to clutch anything else
i sometimes think of the sound of your breathing but these
memories in my ears are only ghosts that haunt me
every night but i will make it through
and with or without you i will stand,
or so i tell myself
and all that i wish for is all i’ll never have because it isn’t
nearly that simple,
though these lines appear so straight,
cut in my mind, the real world is full of questions
without any easy answers
and i want to say these things to you and let you know
but i am breathless,
the mystery of flight and love and life and dying are all wrapped
up in these moments that i can never voice
and words are not enough and these syllables are meaningless
another collection of pen on paper to remind myself of everything
i’ve lost and it is you
that i remember when the daylight cracks the surface of the night,
when morning birds take flight across a crimson sky
scattered, windswept in this dawning of a day i can’t quite face
but like a puppet on thin strings i pull myself together,
a master of pretending and i would rather lie and tell you that
i don’t even have a heart than voice to you the simple truth —
my heart beats faster when you walk into the room
and without you it falls silent
and all i’ve ever known and ever wished to know is this.
but i remind myself today and every day
that all the words i want to say to you
are all the words i’ll never say.

i might have cried for days, but now that seems light-years away.

You didn’t have to pull me from this sinking ship, but your hands clenched my wrists and dragged me from the depths and for a moment i could breathe, caught between the turmoil above and below. tossed and turned by these waves that still crash on shore in the light of day, they pummel me with blow after blow. my eyes are crusted shut with sand and blood and tears and the pulsing of these oceans is all that i can hear, even the sound of my heartbeat is drowned out in its cadence. the pain comes bit by bit as i realize i’m alive and my eyes struggle to open. the daylight on these beaches illuminates the breaking apart of all i’ve ever loved upon these rocks, this ship i built and sailed alone. this grief is tumultuous, rocking me to and fro and i am lost inside it again and again, but some spark of vision lights upon my eyes and then i see you. you offer no words, no answers in your eyes deeper than any depths i’ve ever seen. your steady grip eases me upright and you sit upon the beach with me, the storm subsiding but the waves still crashing, the pain still throbbing and you don’t open your mouth to speak but i know that you know, that you have seen many such shipwrecks and pulled many lost souls to safety. your silence is enough as you sit upon this beach with me and help me breathe.

then i’ll head out to horizon lines, get some clarity ocean-side.

we stood upon the battlefield with our fingers not quite touching, “will you remember me forever?” I asked, but you told me then that you couldn’t make promises and i remembered, though i somehow made myself believe that this was different, the cracked edges of my dreams still look broken in the light. though i’m small, the twisted bridges that we built couldn’t span the spaces in my heart, and like waves on these beaches i spread myself thin, recede and try again because i want to believe in something more than me, more than wars waged a hundred times over and lessons never learned. i’ve scrubbed my skin raw more times than i can count, but i’m washing myself raw with dirty water. my hand could flip this switch a hundred times but never once shed light on who i am.

can we bind these broken wounds?

my hands are small and shaking with the darkness i possess, i need your hands to stabilize me but your arms can’t quite reach. though your face is right in front of mine your soul is far away and i can’t reach and i can’t reach and i can’t bare my heart when all that covers me is fear.

can we burn away these broken pieces? i’m afraid of fire but i’d gladly face that terror if it would bring you home. though i’m a prisoner in this mask i still believe in freedom, believe that sunlight may yet spark the things we seek and call them out by name, names i can’t remember but things i can’t forget and i am hidden but i want only to be known, this tattered soul wants nothing but a flag to raise, in these troubled times

will you be the hand i hold or will your fingers slip away? your voice calls out just far enough away to be a mockery and i’m afraid to cross the miles to span this distance between you and i but i know that when i find you i’ll be home.

my crippled legs can’t walk but i would gladly dance for you, gladly pull these pieces together and hold your broken heart in both my calloused palms.

are we broken just enough to become whole together, can we bind these broken wounds and make something to remember?

i won’t ask you again to remember me forever just to hold my hand this once, find something true in all this darkness and cling to it like something golden, light beyond this shrouded scene enfolding in our eyes and truth be told there’s nothing better than the reflection in your mind and the moment that i see myself inside.

can we simply dance like children while this battle wages on?

can we bind these broken wounds and call the innocent back home?

is there something worth believing in, some destination untarnished by what we have done and who we have become? though all else disappoints me and a beggar i’ve become

i still believe in futures, still believe you’ll reappear,

that i’ll bind your broken wounds and i’ll watch you come back home.

it’s the sound of the unlocking and the lift away.

the sun and moon remember us, though the halls within our hearts now house only ghosts. your voice still echoes in the hollows of my chest, the silence of things remembered is nothing now but an aching in my bones. i still think of how the syncopation of our breaths used to make the light break, sparking the sight of things brand new but today i am afraid to open these eyelids to a world that goes on. I don’t know when my freedom fled on the back of the night or when the world slipped sideways and we all fell to wishing. i want to believe in something better, i’ll turn these bones into concrete if it means i’ll never shatter. but i am nothing but porcelain and my heart is simply fragments of the same, held together by some simple means but always waiting to collapse. i don’t know when the sunrise became something to fear, when we buried our heads under the sand and wished for shelter from these simple truths. though this world is a battle my heart refuses to be a fortress, my best intentions at defense are meaningless and you have stolen all the best of me, a surgery that hurts more than it should but it is healing. i can’t find the solutions to the questions that i ask, but the problems seem farther from me the nearer you are and your fingertips seem like answers in themselves when they are on my skin, the light behind your eyes a promise to this world. and we were there, we lived in those days and broke against the walls of life like oceans on the shore. maybe we forgot what it was to be, maybe we covered ourselves under so many layers of protection that we buried ourselves underneath. when did fear become our keeper? we were kings and queens in this garden of promise but today there grow only weeds cracking the pavement, the sun doesn’t shine here anymore. our shaking hands make promises that our lives can never keep, this is all that remains of you and i. my hands shake lighting cigarettes destroying promises burning down this world and all i’ve ever known and all i’ve ever loved is all i’ll never find again.

i’d hit the pavement again but all my knuckles are broken.

if i close my eyes will you spin me around like a child? moment by moment we grow into something i can’t begin to explain, far beyond the reaches of this setting sun we build our kingdoms and we dwell here in between dreams and reality. your shaking fingertips betray all you’ve ever wanted me to know and i begin to believe in tomorrows when i hear your voice, trembling with all the weight you carry just inside your chest. will you cover me with this love like a blanket and hold me closer than i’ve ever known? your heartbeat wills this chasm in my chest into life, these dead bones pull together and i dance when you are near. you are the answers to all the question i’ve always wanted to ask but couldn’t find the words to voice, your energy is electric is volatile and beautiful and you draw me near with love and fear. i can’t force these dead legs to move but you bring life to everything you touch and all i want is to be yours and though i fear to speak these words i know you already hear them. you know them like you know me, like the sun spoken into existence in some time i’ll never know but you remember. will you bring life into these lungs and chase the cobwebs from my mind? the ghost towns in my soul are filled with life again when i find you and these phantoms disappear. the breath behind every syllable i’ve every uttered is not enough to voice who you are but when your eyes are on me i find strength to stand, you are good, light beyond comprehension and joy inescapable are carried in your palms and when i reach to you you reach to me and i am broken, but you touch me and i am whole.

i knew.

We were never whole, just separate halves diametrically opposed to all we thought we’d be. Your heart beat beneath your rib cage was a rhythm I couldn’t match, in the pools behind your eyes were depths I couldn’t fathom. The sun through our windows turned us into gold but like midas you turned to other things and I turned into stone, a cracked edifice composed of all I’d ever wanted to believe of me and you. Our days turned into cobwebs, straining in the corners of these old forsaken buildings, like heroes forgotten we became our pasts. One more thimble of regret is all I need to fill these pages, spilling drop after drop of blood I cry with unheard words, you are not the one I knew. A whisper turns to shouting turns to words choked through voices we can’t recognize. I am not what i expected. You are not the one I knew.