wordplayground

...gradually the reliving 
is less severe, you
learn not to respond, like
forcing acceptance of events
unacceptable.

you fight this letting go, 
equated with some form of
arrant acceptance and
you have no way of wrapping 
your mind around [this]
as something we accept. until
eventually, you have no
fight to give and you carry
this deadweight of a wound
irreparable, which must 
join a collection of unrelieved
inert and festering masses, 
creating a personal
history and presentation
shadowed in sorrow.

you tire of those who
mistake the wound for yourself,
so you cover them where possible
and learn to speak a language
of healing and closure,
and with every trigger
you relive the moment alone.
let go let go let go
you're told but no one
tells you how...

...you forgot your lesson
in letting go and 
asked how, so
write this down
for the next time around:
live your life, 
collect the pieces along the way,
in time, the pieces make a picture 
elucidated.

in all your obsessive forcing
you never compelled katharsis.
wait for the pieces,
ex nihilo nihil fit.

every part of me
wants to make this right
except one,
and this time around
i'm listening.

six years ago
i saw myself in these birds
scavenging
whining
moving on.

today i am this broken bird
damaged
silent
alone,
dragging a broken wing,
watching in disbelief
confusion
as the other birds move on.

you saw that broken wing
and i...
i never saw it coming.

i made my peace
with these breaks
i must carry,
and i will not be broken by you.

i drag my wing across the sand
moving on.

disconnected
can't stop moving and shaking
can't sleep or can't
stay awake,
carrying around dead weight
on the back of my legs
and inside my spine
wishing i could scrape it
off and out, and i can feel
a feeling of discomforting
painful nothingness
inside my spine,
which might be
disconnected

i'm slipping into this
pain and paranoia, isolation
my mind dripping with black, with
words i have to force onto the page,
my days never adding up to
what she could have been in one
and i become so little in this shadow
of her, of my memories, of the moment
in time when we were entangled

i'm slipping into her, 

you have me
up against a wall
heart racing
pleading for more
with

lips
slightly
parted.

liberation so defined
in the end was equally 
damning. the grass is
always greener and i 
carelessly allowed one
door to close while
opening another.

constantly longing 
for a definition, i 
would anchor to
anything within reach,
then self-impose the
boundaries. in failure
i would return to the
darkness and frustration,
bottled up in the vain
attempt for success.

coming full circle now,
i realize the definition 
falls short, not myself.
there are no doors.
no windows. no walls.
i created this scenery
to mesh with one world
view or another, 
always thinking my own
insufficient.

desire would remain
unquantifiable and i 
would continue the search 
for a prime number.

everyone wants to be a part
standing around in a parking lot
writing down the license plate
and everyone pulls out their shiny
cell phone just to say 
i called the police and
we were all there
standing around 
watching,

like how i was there for 
two months in that hospital
room, which makes it my story
to tell like it all 
happened to me,

but that night i 
stood in the parking lot and
didn't even look at the license plate
and i didn't take out my shiny
phone and i didn't call
because we choose which part
of the world 
we want to be in
and mine is back in that city
around that hospital room 
and she is the story
i choose to tell.

and she makes me a playdough 
cake on my birthday, with 
2 candles because she's two and
she sings "happy birthday
dear my sister"

and she asks me if i like
my pillows and she asks me if
i'm happy and when she's angry
she asks me if i see her eyebrows

she wants me to hold her hand 
and she wants me to lay down 
next to her and sing chitty chitty
bang bang i love you and dance and
play ring around the rosie 
and make her playdough 
cheese for her playdough pizza

and she says "only my sister" and
out of the blue she says
"i love you" and she says "how
about that?"

and she wants me to hold her hand
how can i let go?

don't let me forget to tell you
i'm sorry
and i tried to save
the world
but my 9 oclock ran over
i canceled the 2
and three o clock
came too soon and
i never had a moment
to find the solution
which they printed between
lines on yesterday's paper
but
i still refuse to pay for
that rag of words
with a bible verse on the front
here at least 
we sell the (formerly-known-as)
twin towers times and
even in our epitome-of-
evolution kind of world
the towers fell
like your expectations
when 
i can't get anything done and
you expected this weeks ago
but i 
was trying to catch my breath
even still i needed a minute
to get the words down
between these lines
mixed with soy
and too much chocolate
like my thoughts mixed
with too much lithium, which
makes the words
slow in coming and
i could really use a day to
take on the world and
finish everything and
never sleep.

zombie apocalypse
but i'm 
safe behind a wall
with you

now

my sister knows my secrets, things
i never even told you
it was never about a real phone
call, it was the disconnect
and having repaired the line
these words become our past

i opened myself
to my mom and she proved 
everyone wrong when she responded
"that's okay" and now,
she loves me as i am, although 
she probably always did.

so we've moved on from these things and
the words remain as a reminder
of where we've been, they're
a cautionary flag of the devastation
of anger unharnessed.

but they're not now.

i'm tired of the abuse and
neglect and casual disregard
for everything i say.
i'm sick of diet sodas and
soy milk mixed with god-knows-
what and most of all
nicotine to shut me up when
i'm hungry and hurting. i've 
had it with the classic coca
colas when there's nothing else
available and the expired
freegan pastries when you're
too lazy or poor or cheap
for anything else. these
once-a-day nutritional meals
aren't cutting it for me, and 
i don't care 
if it's filtered or fruit-
flavored tap spring or mineral
water but something would be 
nice i'm working with
what we can but i'm floating 
with this constant flow of
carbonation.

she shuts herself in her room and
just
sits 
on that computer 
all day long
and you have to knock on her door
and 
tell her
to come out
and then 
stand outside her door
until she does.

the tears were sliding off my face
(too quickly)
i tried to catch them all
as if
i could have saved you from this,
if only i had tried a little harder.
you misinterpreted my presence
(curled up in your arms)
to mean something more
and i participated in the construction of that reality
now (all these years later)
i would come to you
seeking forgiveness for my role

wrapped in mesh,
a metaphor for how i tried to expose myself
selectively.
i used to hand out pieces
spread so thin so
no one could make a whole
from their collection.

if i believed in a god
he could fix all this
it wouldn't even
have to be
the
god, just a figment
to lessen reality's harsh
ness.

my entire life always comes back to this place
this beach
these grains of sand
has the silhouette of the palm trees changed?
have i?
the beach is washing away
and i feel compelled to let it take part of me with it
i belong to this beach as much as it belongs to me
but they built a wall around it so
the beach is without its own name,
identity
and so am i

you could be safe here 
in my memories 
where you are always laughing
and smiling, where
the darkness that swallowed you is
some other girl

cornflower blue, and so very
soft
we could sink here
into my memories...
this is how i remember you
giggling
naked
happy,
always 
cornflower blue.

this week i am 
your yellow adidas pants
iced coffee with valencia
and soy yogurt.
i am my baby sister's 
best friend.

how was i to know i would feel empty of a self? 

the music stops and i realize i've been sitting here over an hour. my legs are crossed and i've been sitting on my hands. i was doing nothing. i was lost in my mind doing everything. does this place make me crazy? i think i'm running from her but i realize she's gone so there's really nothing to run from. is this really me here, should i be here? should i be freezing my ass off in a place i hate with people i love? but there are people i love here too. and there's this place. the bird bath is still chipping. i've gone to crazy and back and some things never change.

i would first want to leave because i found reminders of you
everywhere.
and now, 
two thousand miles from anything you touched, i feel empty from
your absence.