commitment[problem]

please
do not doubt
the depth of my feeling
for you.
know instead it
is my scared heart,
running like mad,
so afraid of being
ruined
that it never begins
to live.
know that i hope i never run.
why do you think
i hold on so tightly?
in the middle of the night,
i am just as scared of me
foolishly leaving you,
as you, leaving me

apathy amounts to

i used to keep journals,
jotting my days until they seemed
to bleed into the paper.
you never realize that you
are dead
until someone tells you -
and you go back,
poring over the entries
one by one - i swear
i am alive...
when did it change?
when was i finally pronounced
DOA
when walking these halls...

numb

is it bad
when you can't feel yourself
at all?
i am beginning
to believe
i don't exist.

pear scent

here, these days
a touch is too much
my skin crumbles at the sight of you.
i can still see the scars
thin white lines we share.
you mean too much to me -
one Whisper and nothing else matters.
cold fingers pryed you away
they were mine, they were yours
anybody could have taken this.
our bond - too precious to last,
too painfully eloquent
with nothing but wistful smiles.
i wished and waited for time enough -
one long night to say goodbye.

while you were trying to mold me into someone else

and what a blasphemous
prophet am i
tripping out my destruction
in softly rounded letters
bitter regret for future
circumstances
and what was i thinking
who was i kidding
the dysfunction, tears
and angry silences
could never have constructed
a marriage.
i never could have played a
housewife right,
no.
you always knew who i
was, and i'm angry
yes,
so goddamned angry
that you never accepted
what you saw.

home

you were beautiful, leaning
against the barre - your
old home - how could you
ever have left?
and i suppose we all
wish we could be you -
to have a second shot
among the stage lights -
for it not to be too late,
for the injuries to
disappear...
to go home again.

Aphrodite Mourning

if it matters how many
years it has been, i care not
years are mere minutes, it
only happened minutes ago
his dark head bowing to the ground
blood pooling to create the windflowers -
and they are everywhere this season,
like cheerful reminders of my pain
beautiful stabbing heartache.
i am no more what once i was
my beauty lost and torn
among his final bloody breaths
in his death rattle and descent
into the underworld.
my tears have poured, trying vainly
to heal the eternal open wound.
ay, Adonis, lovely creature
you did not even hear me in
those final moments, you were
too far gone
to feel my lips caress you
for the final time.

self-reflection

i don't bother
looking in the mirror much
anymore;
i know
what i'll find.

tell me dear

tell me
pull me
pushing fingers
into my belt loops, hands
guiding my hips to look
straight into your eyes,
"i love you,"
the way we play
with grownup words
and infatuated glances
lips insistent
and oh-so-gratifying
we'll make love,
we'll lie together
and say "don't leave,
just stay for a while."
we'll be perfectly content
to be discontent
with the small amount of time
we have -
we'll gasp our goodbyes
with laughing eyes
and flushed faces.

escaping

it's a drowsy freedom
the early a.m. hours
low lights low on gas
low on everything else
low on life
we escape temporarily
stretching the hours
to fit our needs
wasting ourselves in
drunken bars
for meaningless hours
we drive to leave -
we should just keep
driving, we'd forge
something out of
the nothing we left behind -
but we return every morning,
sorrows half-drowned
in the night.