A Taste Upon the Tongue

written August 8, 2010

This parade of letters
These words, one after the other,
Flow from mind to pen
And linger like the memory
Of blackberry wine--
A taste upon the tongue

That's what you are,
A taste upon my tongue.
One that is more fiction than fact,
In the way of memories.

I loved you in a way
That I'm afraid to repeat
Because I'm not who I was
And my capacity for love--
It has only grown.

We've grown apart
A willful determination on my part.
Neglect on yours.

And now--I'm reminded of you
In another face, another voice.

And it makes me wary.
Makes me yearn.

Love yearns in me,
Yawning in its wakeful sleep,
But I'm afraid to lick my lips
And discover that same taste upon my tongue.

Wishing for the Moon

Wishing for you to see me
Is like wishing for the moon.
Futile. Pointless.

Leaves me with surround-sound shadows
And these endless taunts for myself.
(I always know what buttons to push).

This wishing is a defeat,
As it passes from thought to tongue
Until it's as though
My world has grown too small.

Insecurity.
It's something I learned young.
I have fostered it behind closeted doors,
and in return it has taught me caution.

And I think, now that I'm older,
That I want nothing to do
With any of it.

What do I have left?

A wish.

Love: Return to Sender

Love is a grown-up disease
It gets into my system
And I can't fight it off,
Though I try.

Love is a sickness
Eats at my stomach lining
And kicks sanity around in my brain.

I burn from the inside,
I burn for you.

I send you pieces of myself
But they're returned to sender
Or never acknowledged at all.

There must be too much
In this package deal
And the sepia-toned mistakes,
The grief that tastes like defeat,
It all becomes a bitterness
Buried in my heart.

Free

written July 28, 2010

There's so much I want to say, but don't.
Too much emotion hanging by a phrase.
The silence is all you hear,
But I have all these voices in my head.
Voices that keep me from being me.
They hinder and protect,
Until I feel fragmented instead of free.

Fireflies

Written July 16, 2010

A handful of fireflies
Light up the blood in my hands--
A red glow under my skin

A few more fly around my head as though
Anxiously pacing
Waiting for the birthing to be done

But it's never done.

As the lights in my hand fly out
The red pulse of life under
My skin fades away...

If you can't see it, is it still there?

Fireflies dance in my daydreams until
I feel I've made no progress where you're concerned

Birthing hurts.

Succor for the Beast

Wishing for a way to stop the press of lonliness,
Or the anxiety in my every breath...

I spread bitter gifts on the ground and they soak into the earth,
Like water for the seed.

And then the gift of wine--succor for the Beast.

I bartered my life away for a handful of pills.

Now I worry that I'm someone else,
Someone I could be but don't recognize.

But she is me, a part of me
I'll always be--Like a hole born to a heart.

Working toward something,
Pretending I'm a part of my own future--
It feels strange.

Foreign on my tongue,
As my voice often sounds to my ears
When I laugh with you.

Vaca in a Hospital

Written April 13, 2010

I thought I was past all this
That I had somehow evolved
But I'm suddenly back where I started from
And no one has given me a reason to stay,
Least of all me.

Wanting to die, to me, is like
Wanting air when drowning.
I'm drowning in a sea of dry land
And I can't stop the great gasps of air

It's changed, this wish to die, evolved.
But there are still times I don't trust it.

All my hurts are multi-colored
Color-coded
Always organized in my mind
Because organization is procrastination.

Self-harm of the worst kind--
The worst damage done--
Is not with a blade.

Can you handle me at my worst?
So few can.

I want a way to wash away the pain
A sea salt bath in an ocean of tears.
Yours, mine, all the tears of the world
Might just make us clean.