anchor

I feel like I could write a novel for you, or about you, and it would require only a few more days of your silence as a form of assent, to spin it wildly from me. That would be a merciful thing for you to allow, for these thoughts to crystallize- right now they feel like goldfish gently slapping on the floor, always just out of my grasp. How is that possible? My wit never escaped me as it does now, though my self-assuredness has always come and gone. You could be like an anchor, and I could drop you quietly to the depths to bury yourself with the knowledge that I could not (would not) stray far from you.

tell me this

the feeling of being set free

despite a decision to the contrary

and it's open-mindedness

that is a trap-

it forgives you to make the weightiest decisions

and leaves my ember glowing, only.

i'll know anything before you tell me

because i've courted all the factors

to count them

and their numbers tell me this:

that you've excused yourself

and politely washed your hands

and left me to founder falsely,

for the sake of consistency,

at the table we set together.

but this bright mind is an expanse

a vision of glowing futures

wild, open fires, even

and the truest escape

you ever gave me.

Pulp

My gravest mistake is in thinking

I am more beautiful when I am angry.

But my anger is a sharp shadow

That files a form both lean and monstrous.

Look at my face.

The storm you find there will give you faults

you will never own or adhere to.

The gray of it will cut your teeth,

will send a stark whisper

straight to your pulp.

But what ache do I have

for souls who roll skittering from me

like marbles from wind?

Dry

we were fish in a barrel

gape-mouthed with trust

that life would carry on

like this...

or like that...

and suddenly then

wide-eyed

because Independence Day came early

with neither a whimper nor a bang

but a soul freed

while the blood of his body

let onto crosshatched pavement

my feet had tread for years

a school scattered

too many swimming thoughts to weep

too many mechanisms

like waves pushing me

to pick up a shoe, a bag, a shattered sense of scale

that i would never quite

piece back together

to be thrown back

and now the dull crack of it

sends me twitching

dry

gasping for breath.

For once

What would happen, then, if I asked you to marry me tomorrow? If I said that I had lived long enough without you and had suffered enough without you and had grown tired of it? What if I told you I didn’t want to feel discouraged anymore? That I wanted something stable and offhandedly eager? Something that I never had to argue for? What would you do? I’d put my money on running, though I’d hope for something more favorable to me. I wish that you would favor me. For once.

Why is it that you can envision a world where no soul suffers but you can’t imagine a life with me? Aren’t I a soul that suffers? That feels pain and death repeated, over and over again, at words that go unspoken? You’ve slain me a thousand times.

Dismissal is so easy. That’s it! That’s why she does it, because it’s easier than holding on for dear life, for being the last one to keep pace, fingers tight and aching as she claws her way into the light. I can’t not fight for it if I believe it, that would be unfair. But the factors that contribute go beyond ergs and effort. They include pasts and futures, all plain and forgone conclusions. Easy, remember?

But I’ve never been the easy choice, though my name is a simple one. And you’ve never been able to trust that I’m not too good to be true. Shame on you for that- there is no other shoe. There is nothing but a woman with holes in her socks and a disdain for dishonesty, and she’d tell you all about it if you’d ask. She would tell you stories and she would tiptoe around the house so as not to wake you.

Tragedy, with company.

The dissolution

I watch with diseased pleasure

that burns and spreads and folds in on a promise

you made me 800 years ago-

the last words to come straining from the split lips

of a dignified man.

And the last promise you would ever make,

aware at last of what bound you-

that i would no longer be content to suffer fools,

that we've fallen together like angels fall- blind and burning,

with the locomotive power to rip the color white from snow.

I believe your soul's response knows mine

and courts it to tragedy, for company.