The world has fallen blind, deaf, and dumb.

We see, hear, and know no evil yet speak it fluently.

Our breaking hearts are the drumbeat for our steady marching.

We march like toy soldiers, under direct orders - leaving heart and soul out of it.

Yet we beg for humanity.

May God bless us afterall, if his grace so wills it.

Tell me how to heal your wounds,

the ones I have created.

Tell me how to bring you back,

how to replenish what was depleted.

Tell me how to say sorry,

in a way that’s less cliche.

Tell me how to hold you tight,

and take the pain away.

Tell me how to break the silence,

when I’m all choked up inside.

Tell me in a way that’s kind,

because I already want to hide.

Tell me if there’s such a thing,

as starting from the top.

Tell me that you’ll love me again,

or tell me that you’ll not.

Time.

So much fucking time.

Too much to know what to do with

But still too little to do anything I could come up with.

I lied.

I lied in bed and I lied in emails.

I told everyone I was happy

I told everyone things were lovely.

Well, perhaps they were lovely, but I was never happy

I just thought that with the way people screamed ungrateful at me

for having such a sadness hang over me despite my escape from common stresses

I thought that people would rather hear I was happy and that everything had gone away

Afterall there were more people to put a smile on for now,

there were more reasons to wear a mask.

I lied.

I lied in agony every morning and every night in the dark where no one could see me

and then I lied on the phone when friends would call and ask if I wanted to hang out

I always said yes, because I was too afraid of wasting time.

I lied every time I laughed

I lied every time I smiled

I lied every time I said it all felt better

And now I’m paying for it.

Here I am too exhausted to keep facade, and I still have everyone staring at me

Believing that if I were somewhere else I’d be better

That I’d be okay

That I’d be …

happy.

I lied.

And now I’m too scared to face the truth,

too unknowing to work out the kinks I’ve caused

They told me silence is golden, but when silence lasts too long

It’s torture.

Something to sing about
Is the way your waterfall of hair
Cascades over your eyes
Falling between
The lines
That hang under them.
The lines that murmur more
Than tears ever could. 
As well as your cautious breaths
That easily fade in and out
Not even close to being stripped from your lungs
And the way your smile still holds people at bay
When it shows, though rarely
How your face is nearly the epitome of perfection
In its imperfection
And how you’re as beautiful inside as out.

The cuts are all red

The bruises are blue

I’m sick and tired of 

all the abuse.

You lie and you cheat

You put up a ruse,

and what of me?

Oh I’m just what you use.

Katharine.

     She was an unusually gorgeous girl, the kind of unlikely cute girl you’d find sitting in the library with her glasses pushed down on her nose while reading an Agatha Christie mystery. Her eyes were a gorgeous caramel brown and her skin was as smooth as the third sip of beer on a rough day. She didn’t know how beautiful she was, how her lips were the curvature of a lifelong dream, how her eyes felt like home and how her body not quite as frail as she wanted was curvacious and lively and made you want to salsa dance with your hands on her hips the entire time. She didn’t believe any of that, in fact she spent more time staring at herself in the mirror and crying than she did anything else.

      She always told me she was trying to fix this or that about herself and I was too shy to tell her she was perfect the way she was, only a bit too honest. She gave her heart out like it was some penny she found in the bottom of her old car’s cup holder - something she had dug through a million times for a quarter or a dime or even a nickel. She wanted to shine like silver. I could tell by the way she begged me to love her that she felt like spare change too. I wish I could have loved her a time or two, because she was always basing her self worth on how I felt about her.

     My opinion was her lighthouse and she demanded to find it lit up and shining on her. I couldn’t love Katharine though. As much as I tried and as much as she threw herself into me, I couldn’t find it in me. She destroyed herself over it and spent hours of every day talking about me and how she just wanted to be fixed for me. Friends would come to me with concerns about her wellbeing, telling tales of her desperation for my love to be hers even still - months from the last time she and I spoke. It made my heart skip a beat every time to realize a woman was throwing her life away trying to change for me. This was never what I asked for, in fact had she stayed the way she was and not felt obliged to be perfect I would have grown fonder.

    She was always strange that way though, since the moment the two of us met. She was starstruck by me and wanted to be my princess, my queen. She wanted to be the very muse that set my inspirations on fire. She wanted too much. I don’t know where she is now or how she’s doing, but I know she’s mentioned me a bit and that she’s still trying to fix problems that aren’t there for a woman who never asked her to change. Maybe one day she’ll wake up and realize she’s tired of trying and she’ll set herself free. One can only hope for my dear Katharine.

If you want to know me

and I mean, really know me

Be the person I can call late at night and talk to until dawn

Around 2 AM and on, I will start babbling incessant truths

I can’t stop and won’t stop

Everything I feel and think stumbles off of my lips

If ever theres a question you want an honest truth to

Ask me at 3 am

My heavy eyes match up with my heavy world on my shoulders

and I will tell all.

Newark was cold and rainy like everyone told me it would be. The subways were crowded with people that were all concentrated on their watches and small briefcases or jackets they had hanging over their arms and wrists. I was off in my own little world viewing everything in the way I do most things, as if it were a movie scene. I noticed an old oily mark on the window of the subway that said ” BORED “. I daydreamed about some young child sitting in the seat and drawing the word in early morning fog. It had been a long week of meetings and information and I just wanted to get back to the hotel to pack up my things and head home. But then right before my eyes the city transformed. I started thinking about New York in place of Newark, and a boy I had loved long ago. He had written me a letter - only one, and I still have it locked away in a leather box. I don’t remember where he was working at the time, but often times he’d spend all of his spare time talking to me. By the time I started remembering how my name sounded on his lips the subway had stopped and it was my turn to get off. There above the stairwell stood the hotel in all its glory. I went upstairs with a heavy heart, wondering what had happened to the boy I had loved so long ago - wondering why he had never sent another letter. I decided to  lay in bed and fall asleep; I decided to stay another night. 

Livid lilacs and star-kissed ambers have made their mark across the skies. This sunset has never looked like such a dream and it has never made me miss you more. Emptiness sets into me like thick black ink into parchment. My bare country feet are sunken in West Virginia clay and you’re a thousand miles away. I guess the sky is the one thing we share. The sky may not be as sweet as your kisses, or as comforting as your touch, but I think it’s big enough to be your heart. When I look into the sky I see your true colours, your heart, all that you are - and in a sunset like this I can’t help but wish you were here. 

SPYder

This morning I took a shower, as I do most mornings. The only thing different was that I was back in my old shower, the old rarely used by anyone else shower with a window leading outside at just about breast level. I saw a spider on the faucet. I didn’t bother him because I knew him to be harmless and lord knows in a place like this you can use a spider or two to keep away the flies that try and escape the winter cold that comes through the summers in stripes and strands from time to time. He was just sitting there looking at me while I casually shaved my legs, and I began to drift off into Wonderland. Suddenly in my mind that spider could speak and he was heartbroken at the sight of a woman shaving her legs. He was a spider afterall, and he liked a bit of arachnid-like hair on his womens legs, and while he preferred his women with eight legs, if they had lost a few in battle he wasnt so shallow as to not love them and admire them just the same.

I started to giggle a bit at the very thought of a spider scolding me on my human habits. Once I finished and began to wash my hair the spider attempted to crawl up to a higher place as if to watch what I was doing more closely. That was when I decided to name him Spyder. He was my little shower spy. The spider sat there doing very little of anything, but suddenly when I went to reach for a washcloth to wash my face, my eyes saw something I don’t think I’ll ever forget. Spyder committed suicide. I say suicide because it looked like it was no accident. He simply walked right into the half inch of water in the bottom of my shower, and let himself drown. He did not struggle, he did not hesitate, and he had not tested the water before hand. He simply walked into the water and died.

Again my mind went to Wonderland, but this time in a less humorous daydream. I started to imagine that all spiders and insects could speak to one another and that perhaps he knew his days were short. Perhaps he preferred to know his death, to meet it with bravery than to go out unpredictably. It’s funny but just because of a spider in my shower, I started thinking again about how fragile life is, and how it can be lived in so many ways, and ended in just as many. I took the spider up in a bit of paper once I had drained the water around him, and I buried him in the dirt of one of my house plants. I figured if nothing else, he could help the soil.  While most would reject this and think it crazy, I honestly feel like I had a connection with Spyder, I feel like for some reason, even though we were so different, even though all of us are so different - maybe we’re made out of the same stardust. Maybe every bug and every human being are the same when you look beyond the fibers of their being.

Or maybe I’m an over-thinking loon. Who is to say?