Tuesday, August 28, 2007

book now firmly planted
in my bag again,
i pull it out now
when my fingers get itchy.
i am slowly walking back
to myself.
my brain has
turned back on,
retrieved my desires.
at night, i wonder about
unused words, lines
that need to insert themselves,
details not yet plugged into a page.
sometimes, i am afraid
of the sudden outpour,
the reveal of the underbelly,
naked pink secrets.
remember
when i displayed my secrets
in blood on my arms,
wrote them in capital letters
on the page?
these days it's safer
to play my cards close to the vest.
they are plastered to my chest.
i do not assume,
anymore, that those
who read my words
will let them remain
in hiding.
small matters.

those words i let escape
into light,
i pin,
wriggling,
against the black backdrop
of internet
anonymity.

Sunday, August 12, 2007

burn out

i've decided not
to go to sleep until
my jaw stops clenching,
an exercise to see
if i can wake up
without aching.
you look so calm when you sleep,
legs slanted toward me,
reclining into your pillow
as if in the throne
of sleep.
looks like a lovely place;
wish i was there.

it's hard to hold
someone already sleeping,
set into
their unconscious patterns,
limbs leadened
into slumber.
i try, but always,
in spite of the warmth of you,
feel
like an impostor.
maybe tomorrow night, we will fall
together, all tangledup
in one another,
and i won't feel like a voyeur,
when i'm lying
next to you.

Sunday, August 5, 2007

weakness

i imagine it to be pink-red raw
like rug burn on your knees
where all the skin is scraped away
and the flesh left swells, as if
compensating.
that kind of tender. that
way of laying a large, gaping
hole like that down,
one i've kept a festering lid on
tight for these eight years now
and now i'm open, waiting by
my wound
for you to come by, cover it,
help me heal
i don't know
what i expect from you.
i only know what i fear.
i fear
opening this, at all.
but these days,
i fear more
the blinding wall i built
around myself so tightly
that nothing
could get through.
not anger, guilt, or the agony
she put me through
nothing
could have broken that shield
down.
not even you.