a Friend Who Knows the Tide

The shell of your breastbone is wailing again

my cradled ear

the imperfect translator to your keening

echoing

ocean of silence.

“I don’t know how to manage my hurt,” your words say

the world’s mimicry a lost whisper on your chapped lips

intimately synchronized

utterly certain and I

one girl

two hands

many years

I weep

raw and run ragged and raging and regretful

helpless and hell bent, holding and held.

I weep for the hurt that will

never

be caressed, just

managed and manhandled, manipulated and multiplied out of the

sheer

suffocating

need to be loved.

Your breastbone tells me of it, when it can

when it has energy enough to speak against the denial in your core,

universe made

universe deep,

an impossible adversary, even for the

watery maelstrom

of your heart

yet still it tries to fight

tries to gather the right words.

It does not have to tell me, though

Because I

intimately synchronized

utterly certain

with few years and frightened loves

I, stretched thin over threadbare words

had only one lifetime long line, once

shout and sorrow forged, stretching for

miles

and miles:

“I need to manage my hurt.” I gritted.

unspeak it, undo it, unmake it for

safety and salvation and surety I have to

that’s what my breastbone would have told you

still tells you on days of fracturing

silent and small

You can’t just undo a soulbrand of secrecy, you know

minutely managed, perfectly prescribed

needing to be, and fulfilled in being

universally understood

universally unseen

I needed it, then.

then was different, you see…

please see. Then was harsh.

So my ragged edges

inward turned for the sake of black and blue burnings

punctured and punched

calloused and calm

they kept me safe for a while…

until I stuttered and everything crashed

I splintered, of course.

And it should have been the end.

But then…

the unicorns

the dreamweaver’s

the lightbringers came

to remind me where the wishing wells were

to take me to castles on clouds

and squirrel me away to

cloisters of peace I thought were forbidden

secret blanket forts in tucked away corners meant for smaller shoulders. I

shrunk

and didn’t shrink at all, perfect spirit sizes in seismic layers,

unearthed in deluges of fluff and nonsense

cocoa salved and story saved in the

unorthodox halls of fairytale

where they gave me holly wreaths and

legion white candles to crown my wounds

dusting snowflakes over my blue lips

until they silvered

and my ribs expanded

holding the hands of my ancient and unborn

until my multitudes remembered the very

fundamentals

of breathing

of looking in a mirror and seeing

nothing

but light

in the frightened faces and jutting ribs

nothing but a Winter queen with too wide eyes and a pocket full of wishes

learning to tell a story in

the tender tracery of hoarfrost

across a real

imaginary palm

learning to talk to my bones– learning

to inhale

and inhale again

until her…my.

Until my heart was full of misty morning

and my lungs could spasm themselves out

against the nearest chest

multitudes in tremulous toe,

still not making up for

all the tucked away years and

tucked away authors but

starting to try, starting to try.

When I had enough breath to go back on script

my uncertainties craved the pages I had always known

the familiar failure to feel

But my dear ones told me no. And no again

until I learned it was that line

scarred and bitter and jagged

that burning, burning line they took objection to.

And they were so gentle

so breathtakingly, beautifully, boldly gentle

that even my deepest fears couldn’t argue, so

the script is longer, now

inked in red

tattered and torn

lightstained and watersplashed and labyrinthine as the stars

that line is still at the center

but circled and crossed out, now

raw and pulsing right beside a

messy scribble of a NO in block letters

reluctantly bound to the paper with many fingertips

over many days of

candlelight and darkness.

Some cheeky bastard managed, somehow

to draw a butterfly in the middle of the O….oh!

maybe it was me.

I’m not sure, but

I know a little.

I know

a thousand kindly hands sent ten thousand handkerchiefs

feathered pens

dreaming mothwings

puffs of cinnamon scented air

to brush the tears from my cheeks

and I know that

they aren’t sent from so very far

or from so very many as I might think.

And each time, each time they bring me

shooting moons and teacup ballets

evening gowns and mirror lakes

creased pages and soaring songs

and a distant, distant skaters waltz

under dancing fireflies and ancient carols of love

the soft center is always

a little no for the

weary, weary girl

who still bites and kicks

and scratches the pain

her adversary to safety

her weight of a thousand stones,

vicious when the moments get lost between cracks

quiet when I can whisper a shh in her ear

and send her to the garden of dream

where she weeps for what is lost

and sleeps under a lullaby of faerie wings and swansong.

Her marks

my marks

still come out in the wash, of course.

But that’s fine.

It just means I’m a collage of ink

and scratches

drawing blood and

painting it back through

tattered skies and thunderclouds with

smiling faces and overfull coffee cups

whimsey gone mad with sadness

sadness soothed in the arms of something like hope.

My pain is a perfect patchwork soulskin for the poet in me

empathy fluttering

expressions fleeting but

ravishingly, ravingly really, really real sometimes…

enough times.

So I only have this one word to give you now

bobbing at half tilt

incongruously small in the roiling seas unfolding

behind your

bruised and sandpapered eyes

swamping you

slurring you

sweeping you away,

But I want to leave it with you anyway

two teary letters

to freckle your cheek

a NO with a note tucked into its

fragile curves for

when your multitudes can read it

or when your bones learn how to

inhale another way:

Take it from someone who knows, dear one

the blurry writing says.

Caress.

Your.

Hurt.

Signed

a friend who knows the tide

Where are you now?

I don’t remember if these are the right words. I don’t know if they’ve ever been. Where are you? Where are you, pretty words, fractured soul. Where are you, the tiny voice whispers, so afraid, timid. The monsters are running wild again, can’t you see them, it whimpers. Where are you, fragments of feeling, fluttering in the wind of life. Were you ever there, were you ever something good, something real, substantial? Where are you now? I can’t find you and I can’t find the end, god I can’t find the end. I’m stuck inside myself that is not myself, the pretty porcelain mask is heavy, the girl in the mirror will out before too long, where are you now? So lost. The monsters are out and I am lost. God, this is all a jumble. I’m so very tired, fading, fading. Falling… where are you? Can’t find it, too much shadow, light, not mine, never mine.  spaces are shared, cobbled together, hobbling along the broken tile, mourning what is lost and what has never been. Am I dreaming this endlessness? These monsters? No, can’t be, they are too real. Yet it has to be a dream if you lose a soul because it is of air. Is it as silent as the sea I wonder? I hope not. Even a dying soul should keen to the sky, should burn, if only for a moment. I hope mine does, hope I have accomplished something, can’t find it, can’t find it. Where are you now?

 

All you know are Shadows

do you know what poisoned smiles are?

do you know what the color or feeling or sound is so big it would swallow you without a second thought?

do you know what it feels like to be ripped apart on the inside, not because you care, but because nothing and no one and no word is safe?

do you know who I am?

I do not say this out of entitlement,

nor of self-pity. I am where I am, proud of it, and of the fight I came through to find it.

NOR do I think my life is some great sorrow.

No, I speak out of terror, remembered and real mixing into a heady intoxication of horror that leaves me breathless, curled up on the floor, hands clenched around the voice I dare not use.

you see someone with wings unfurled as far as they will stretch; but I have not forgotten the cage I still remember how to enter, when needs must. it is not broken as easily as telling me where black and white are. for my soul is painted gray, and I am a master at the brush. all you know are shadows.

Poemskin

they start with my skin
slowly peel it off
in curls and bits and pieces.
I have more skin, it seems
than any other person
they have to eat a lot
to find me
little word fingers
little thought tongues
lapping at the blood of me
when the skin is parted
after the pink and grey of vulnerable is nibbled away
left among the bones
and bloated words
overfed
is a pulsing red poem
it cracks my ribcage
crawls fourth on run-on sentences

knits my flesh back together
with brisk efficiency
and breathes in a spark
My skin regrows
and it starts again.
I have more skin,
it seems
than any other person

The Hole the Prophets Made

this burning hole inside me is the thing the prophets made.

I use it now to hold the ashes of my faith, mislayed.

The healers tried to plant there, but they brought no fertile seed.

the worriers came calling, with their trite, sad things to read.

the mystics babbled in my ears, and said it was the truth;

and filled my head with images that took away my youth.

but all of them forgot that I’d a core made out of ash,

and I had lived a lifetime with an overflowing cash

of pain and memory gone wrong to fuel my sceptics soul.

I cannot look away, you see, from that great burning hole.

Dreamers

The dreamers are the tired souls

who hold the world aloft;

who fill the aching, messy holes,

and make the edges soft.

But dreams cannot a city build

without some bones of steal.

They only leave a glossy guild,

and little do they heal.

But still, they spread the dreams out thin,

although they know not why.

They do not know how to begin

ignoring our great cry.

So dreamers are the tired souls

who hold the world aloft;

who fill the aching, messy holes,

and make the edges soft.

Shadows

I trace my shadows in the cracks between worlds,

When no one is awake to see.

“We are sad and afraid,” they say, and I feel it in my bones.

So I find the edges,

Tattered and familiar,

And trace them with reality and dream.

I write on them with everything I have.

Step on all the floorboards that overlap,

Universe to universe,

Life to life.

Each difference is a paintbrush;

A splash of feeling,

Or color,

Or sound.

I take my meager collection

And weave a quiet for them.

“Here,” I say.

“Come look and see. You don’t need to be sad anymore. Let’s tell a different story. Would you like a muffin?”

Sometimes, they listen.

Sometimes… most times…

My balancing act pulls through.

They still,

And eat,

And give me words.

But sometimes, they are too strong

Or I am too tired

Or there aren’t enough differences

Or pretty words

To hold the world up anymore.

So sometimes, I am a shadow,

Walking through the cracks between worlds.

Speak to me

If you speak in poetry, I will answer in kind.
If you speak in silence, I will fold you in it to tell my story and let you breathe me in.
If you speak in tears, I will reply with my eyes and the salt of my soul on my lips.
If you speak in touches, I will paint my all upon my skin and lightly caress your hand.
If you speak soft and gentle, I will blunt all the edges I can reach for you to hear me, even if they cut me open.
If you are afraid to speak, then I will sit very still and wait for you to find the words and will.
And if you cannot speak at all, I will seek to know you differently.
Any way you wish to speak to me, I will learn your language, even if it takes a thousand years.
For I would reach the unreachable, talk to those who never have a listener, wrap my arms about the falling and catch them where I can.
But little, painful little, I can do for those that bend and bind my tongue,
Less still for those who block their ears with voices of their own.
And this? This is the truth I cannot ever speak.

The Knowing of Me

I am not pretty. I am ugly, a map of rotting fragments, sharp edges that cut even when I don’t mean to. I am not pretty. I am not straight, or cold, or bright. the wounds I make are deep and crooked, a crisscross of pain and memory that no one can undo. I am not pretty. pretty is dangerous. it’s a pain I haven’t yet learned to deal with, a set of fears I have not yet learned to wield as knives or shields or anything in between. you do not understand the danger in it, the implied threat of being noticed, of a stray compliment sinking home, hitting my skin, burning away the shadow that keeps me upright. You do not understand the fact that I cannot afford to be pretty, cannot afford to be noticed. But you do understand something that I cannot… no… will not, that I desperately need to be called so anyway. And I don’t know what to make of that. So I loop endlessly around my mind and gently disentangle myself from yours because it’s all I know how to do. I hold myself taught with all that I am, and all that I am not, and all that I cannot be. I close my lips, press them hard and thin and iced over until there is nothing left but a paper-sharp smile, and that, that in the twist I call a soul. Is pretty. No matter what else it hides. And in this way, I’ll float right past. Or try to, at the least. Try to be nothing, nothing nothing nothing sliding across your skin and away into silence where my worth, or lack thereof, cannot be called.

I will

Take away my loves and I will love soft like the soil does, slow and deep and nurturing, hidden beneath your feet. Take away my dreams and I will dream in secret like the blossoms do, closed tight til coaxed open so petals can paint the air with living color and a cent as sweet as life. Cut me and I will heal like water, flow around the shards you shove inside of me until they are nothing but smooth, round balls of weight. Even take away my soft places, I will fold away like paper and scribble myself in any empty place I can find. But don’t you dare take away my silence. My solitude Inside or out. I can’t fight that. I can’t fight that