The shower runs
Both hands on the tiles
Break everything but character
Break nothing but myself
Light cracks through the door
Render me still
Deflection. The ruse
The red herring was always the muse
It’s time to be stifled
A shadow is cast
Hot water drips down
His clothes folded neat
Nothing can die
The care is kept deep
But when I stand out
My elbow is held
And so is my throat
Motions strong as ever
Notions running thin
The sharp contrast of maturity
Blood trickles from the blade
The lack of suicidal tendencies
Where now do I belong?
Normality the sickness evermore
Cognition sloppy at its best
The light there at the end
A pretty lie, like all the rest
The eye contact examined
Silent rays then marked with “X.”
He kisses like tomorrow exists.
With the blindfold I can see.
Stones come lifted, truth bear and raw
I can do everything but believe
Words take flight, identity dies
But not before he kills me.
As I sat there on that makeshift bench
Of cinder blocks and a skateboard laid across
I watched him strum the strings like no one had before
He took passion captive setting my cold blood on fire
His emotion and his guitar akin in unison
With his fingers on the strings
He roped me in along with every soul in reach
Rhythm was his nature and silence was from nurture
And as I watched the artist feel, and his creation emerge
I felt a dagger through my heart
I realized that I could never sense true beauty as he did
Or feel pain the way he does
As much as I was captivated and in awe of him on that porch
I would never be capable of ever complementing him
I was nil but an admirer, a dilettante, trying to escape
For my calculating eyes don’t see beauty, my ears don’t hear melody
It cuts through me so deeply, the pang of truth that broke the seal
He deserved far more than anything I’d ever have to offer
105 days of swallowing my differences
I hate myself that I couldn’t any longer
For now I have my logic and my reasons
These empty bottles and this pen
My fading memories of him
And this heart that won’t stop breaking.
I examine the catalyst and the factors that led to it
To determine exactly how lucky I am
I enter a cloud of smoke filled with PBR’s and IPA’s
A world of long hair, tattoos, and instrumental rock bands
The bass penetrates my bone and writhes from within
A 27 in one hand, and me in another
A skateboard at his feet, backpack on his shoulders
He spits one-liners from songs I’ve never heard
Beer cans fly over the crowd when the music is good
And bodies do when it’s even better.
I explain my story to a visage I’ve never touched.
And has no last name.
Cheap cigarettes in late November.
I’m too old to fall in love.
An old house, transformed garage.
Paintings cover the walls.
Tall and slim, hair longer than mine.
I did not know then that they were his.
He asks me if I want to stay.
But it was the only reason I had come.
I break every taboo I have at once.
But I’m too smart to fall in love.
The tattoos come apparent.
The walls come down.
I find his soft lips through his coarse beard.
Cocaine sex, ash trays in bed.
A nightlong embrace, another taboo.
He shares few words with me.
Flip the vinyl as the sun comes in.
I cannot wait to fall in love.
Every night I lie with my back against my lover.
Wrapped in his arms I sleep in isolation.
Not before he admires the way my exposed body lies.
He can see nothing but his primitive desires.
I beg for words, any at all, but he cannot offer one.
Can no man get me to stay?
I reminisce upon the past. The ones I left for better or worse.
Here lies pedestrian affection at its finest.
For passion conduces an existence of nil but sex and incommunicable thoughts.
And the price of a cerebral connection is a string of faked orgasms.
I refuse to accept the two be mutually exclusive.
But again I lie in the endearments of another failed attempt to spite the odds.
He whispers utter adoration. Rested on my pillow, clumsily I lie.
The same way I’ve always lied, countless times before.
I look over his poor posture and wily smile.
Such mannerisms lay primitive yet deliberate.
Evermore alluring.
I slide his colorless nature up my floral dress.
To contract the most foul and infectious disease of obsession.
The kind of love found only in that of a dying creature.
Dead ahead I lock onto his clumsy web of deceit.
And engage.
I was never trying to make it out alive.
His cruelty will make a martyr of me, but I’m no saint.
I’d kill curiosity dead just to save a few cats.
A heavy heart, an empty stomach, a death wish.
I whimper into the ear of a stranger.
And down the neck of a twelve dollar handle of Russian spirits.
I ponder the source.
The knowledge that I couldn’t commit.
The prospect that he didn’t want me.
Or the fact that this gallon of vodka isn’t enough.
For tomorrow is still going to come.
26 May 2014
I remember the years of unrelenting apathy, how desperately I desired the ability to feel anything but indifference. Love was a spell, and I didn’t believe in magic. I was reckless, falling and abusing myself at every opportunity; there wasn’t anything I wouldn’t do to see my own bloodshed. Suicidal affection—kamikaze relations.
Then it happened. It was a snowy Christmas in Ireland the day he shattered me with the revelation of his longstanding attachments. He dared me to want it, and I indulged him. It was the price I paid to feel alive—to feel human. No adhesive would salvage this break. It wasn’t clean; it wasn’t quick. It was deep, dirty, and had taken years to fester.
There were several stages of it, and a good few had passed before I’d realized it. I’d traded a lasting love back home for a pipe dream over 5,000 miles away. After that, I tried afresh with another overqualified candidate, and the day I broke him I still hadn’t come close to embracing how damaged I truly was.
Six months in, when I returned to the land of Guinness and rain I started to comprehend, but I failed to recognize the signs when my greatest lover and worst offender held me in his arms. Further I neglected to pick up the pieces when he left back to England. Even three months later, when he wrote me from London to end it, I was too preoccupied with losing myself under the Californian sun in the gazes and thrills of part-time lovers with perfect smiles, slow strides, and no last names.
It took a full year to fully comprehend just how deep into those woods I’d gone. Fifteen months have passed, and still I’m circling the drain on the carousel of condemned souls. With the dissolution of hope, all sense of morality and self-respect has dissipated. I am now just a broken girl who is too sad to give a fuck. I don’t want to be fixed. I don’t want to learn names. I want a boy who is so fucked up he doesn’t utter a sound.
And I want him to hate me as much as I do.
I once caught a Virgin Atlantic to the dirty Pacific
For a blue eyed sailor on Whidbey Island.
With a Pink Floyd triangle across his heart.
Then in Madrid I got swept off the steps in Plaza de Sol.
Professed our love with our fingers.
In the pages of a Spanish-English dictionary.
I had to delete pictures from a weekend in Fort Worth.
It was there I found interest in the culinary arts.
I spent some time in a Grand Prix out in the Boston snow.
With a hockey player from Flint.
I left him for a morning in the Harvard dorms.
With a blue-blooded ginger I fell for in Cabo.
I once found redemption in the City of Sin.
From a reincarnation of a lost lover.
Ode to the blackouts in the city of lights.
Then there was the fierce and rugged Celtic Tiger.
I left my heart on the nightstand of a one night stand.
Before I got asked to kindly leave the country.
Though that was after I wandered up to Portland.
To catch a couple nights with an MC.
I made sure to catch his show before I caught a train.
There was the time I found the funk in the bottom bunk.
From sea-doos in Grand Cayman to his Staten Island estate
Then the lovely accountant from the horse races in Limerick
If only that silver fox would answer my calls.
I met a teacher in Dublin and a footballer from Cork
A med student from Athens, a musician from Georgia.
I woke up in a $30 million yacht in Newport Beach.
With the most beautiful lawyer I’d ever seen.
As I highlight this black book, it’s more divine.
That I will never discover her name.
I look down the page and their faces gleam up.
It sounds so lovely out loud.
I close my eyes and there is only darkness.
It appears so ugly jot down.
My heart scattered like bread crumbs across this earth.
Left like a trail, to be eaten by vultures.
With a hollow heart and an unmade bed.
I’ll never find my way home.
Happy Valentine’s.
14 February 2014
12:31am
Curse the falling star.
Trash the smoking candle.
Spit on the loose eyelash.
Wishes waste away with you.
I’ll conquer this world.
While you take her over.
Our paths won’t cross again.
We made sure of it.
A sunrise over Kelly’s Cross.
We will never watch again.
A stream of Oysterbed farewells.
Too many years to count.
I should’ve kissed you goodbye.
My losses cut me now.
In another life it happened.
I packed all my bags and left.
I followed you to London.
And you came out to Cali.
I nagged you to your limits.
You took me for granted.
We were more than lovers.
More than intellectual equals.
Far beyond soul mates.
We were. Just were. Together.
Rain Check The Reality Check 