The rain is drumming on the rooftop.

You have done so much this past year - 

you have struggled through hurricanes,

climbed mountains,

and battled deluge and flood.

All this you have done, and more -

but now the hurricane is gone,

you stand at the top of the mountain,

and the deluge has melted into a morning in spring.

All is peace and night,

curled in your bed,

you can breathe deeply

and listen to the sound of the raindrops.

Arrow in the sea, for someone else

You promised me something that's impossible

And I believed you, knowing I shouldn't

You told me your wishes, and I didn't like them

I continued to ignore what you really meant,

The scorpion should have ended you,

so I wouldn't have to,

Yes.

It was a mistake,

But now I see,

that my tears ment nothing to you

No form of words could express my sadness

and now revenge.

Eros was blind, and I fell too far

And now I am falling to erase my memories of you

The wind is caught in my throat,

I have everything, yet they are all out of my reach 

I'm glad I put you in the stars,

so people beyond my time can learn this lesson

A room full of strangers

With my friends' faces sewn onto them

You've changed so much,

Or is it me?

You're all so happy together 

In sync

But what about me?

I am an eternal observer

Tasked with consuming memories,

Holding onto them in the fire of my belly,

Forging and tempering them to gold,

A shining monument of what used to be. 

I am lost in the aisles of memories,

Searching for something I do not yet know, 

Perhaps that is the wall in between us.

But 'now' hurts so much,

So I'd rather look at those gilded times,

This is the price of being an eternal observer.

The hard memories always seem 

To weigh more than the fun ones,

Sagging in the bottom of my stomach

Like rocks when I need to float.

The hard times always seem

More memorable than the fun ones

For even the fun ones bristle with the encroaching knowledge

That perils lie before us, just around the bend. 

The scars always seem

To stick out more

Than the perfectly good skin beneath them,

For that is simply the way our mind works.

prelude to the morning zombie 

I know this type of evening.

I see the hand there, not of a friend

but of my prickly companion of consequences;

o night, grant me a soft and easy way!

but the stars have no such thing to give.

sighing and glancing sideways.

when i write this novel, when i'm chatting before cameras and wealth, when i'm drumming like it's in my soul, when i come alive again...

and, homework as well.

perhaps life will be better in an hour or two.

(it will be worse; this we know.)

i shall let the body electric take me. 

Those mirrors I broke so I wouldn’t have to see myself cry

Smashed with that vase of bloodred roses that you thought would rein me to you forever

But I did cry.

I don’t know why.

My motto was to be unbreakable. No one could get to me.

I was unbreakable. But only you got to me.

Shaky breaths. Mouth corroded with spit and silence and bile. Just laying on that hard, cold floor that matched my hard,cold world.

It hurt. I hurt.

Bland,blank world. Everything was too quiet. My ears were numb to the ringing of your calls, trying to give me hollow apologies.

Hair tattered and matted.

Heart ripped.

Everything was tilting, turning, shaking.

My world was turning upside down.

So what if you didn’t care?

I did.

Silent tears finally streaming, followed by echoing sobs that finally break the quiet.

It’s over.

And so are we.

I’m on my own now.

I find myself running a race that I have not chosen

Down, around and back again

Out of breath, the only thing I can do is keep going

I see the trick you are playing, right next to me

One hand in the air, the other hidden

I know not to be distracted, but I look anyway

An open hand, calling for the gifts of Aphrodite

And the other I do not see, behind the veil that she draws

I do continue running when I see a flash of gold

A golden apple fresh from the Hesperides

Rolling across, I do not hesitate to grab it

Oh, that's just the trap you had planned

I see you finish before I start.

Water is so beautiful

Even as it fills my lungs,

I look up and see the mottled surface from beneath.

It's truly beautiful.

Maybe if I weren't clawing my way to break that surface

I would be beautiful too.

Maybe if I could let my body float, trust in the process

I could elegantly glide into a melded form,

Become one with 60% of my weight, thick and heavy,

And be transmuted into smooth molten emerald too.

What do you think?

You, whose lips taste of seasalt

You, whose flowing hair is bleached platinum by

A constant stream of chlorine and sun.

You know, you are water too;

You inundate me so completely

I could easily believe you are the ocean. 

You pull at my heartstrings, unravelling them, laying them out

And tugging as if by magnetic force, the moon herself.

You push yourself into my sea of consciousness 

Every waking hour of my day with a fervour

Only matched by the crashing of waves into themselves.

Indeed, I could spend an eternity counting

The freckles splashed over your nose and cheekbones,

Dripping from your tanned face like a stray droplet,

Clinging onto a lifeboat who would never notice me.

But one day you would find your way into my lungs

(it is a short journey from the heart, after all)

And crush me in a flurry of bubbles.

I would be gone, foam left high and dry by a disappearing tide. 

Let the Sea Turtles Prevail

The sea turtle dove beneath

The waves, as she swims towards

The sandy shore, calling her,

Her first home. In the cover of

Night she lays her eggs, buries

Them like precious treasure,

Before drifting back out to sea,

While the moon is still aglow.

Time passes by, and the eggs

Are finally ready to hatch. They

Slowly emerge from the sand,

One by one, they break from the

Darkness of the shells to the

Faint light of the full moon.

Days pass and they make the

Treacherous journey to the

Ocean waves, beckoning them

As their second, true home.

One by one, the waves sweep

Them away into the water,

Following the glow of the

Moon as the turtles dive into

The ocean. From then they

Spend their life, eating and

Swimming peacefully, though

All may not survive, still one

Continues to swim, until

She hears the ocean shore

Calling her back to lay eggs,

Continuing the cycle, to

Let the sea turtles prevail.

(For World Turtle Day) 

On the outside he's a flashy colorful masterpiece

but once you start to crack him open

you find that he's hollow.

Oh, how I hate

Pertend, of course he's an actor

All you care about is your shell?

How did my sister fall for him?

I know from the start he was nothing

just a poser

And now she's in tears

over nothing,

just a shell.

When you wake up

you go right to your mirror,

gaze, go ahead, gaze Narcissus,

gaze until you fall in,

there will be no one to help you,

right? Because you pushed them all away.

I watch and I see

whom do you want to please today?

that's right, throw yourself away,

you come wearing purple robes,

and you leave wearing your own skin.

Time to apply your makeup!

what's happening to your skin underneath?

roting away...

Away because of what?

What could be so important that

you torture yourself everyday?

Stop, I say

But you are too far away

curling your hair,

Burning it until it can do no more

and I turn and see you spraying perfume

Am I the only one who hears it scream

"you are not enough" 

you’ve sculpted this picture of who you want me to be and

you’re such an artist because this lie feels

alive, reach out and touch the stars, they could be mine if

I could jump into the twinkling galaxies and

forgive and forget, let you do the holding on for both of us, but

I step back from the edge, close my eyes on the

fantasy because I can’t live your falsehoods, no matter how

hard I try, stop tearing me apart because

it isn’t and it will never be, and

I’m tired of being sorry for being broken, I know

you only value pristine glass while I’m just

fragile stained windows of blood, but even after

shattering me and grinding your heel into the shards, you

don’t know just how much I would give to

still want to be trapped in your crystal fairytale- 

I’m sorry I lied but

I can’t even tell you that, can I?

you still don’t know

and it’s not like you asked directly or it’s all black and white

more like shades of gray

an obfuscated crystal ball with swirling fog

or dour rain in a suffocating blanket

the air presses down

(that’s why I tell myself I can’t breathe, you know)

does hiding the truth from you even count

if I’m also lying to myself?

(you would say yes, but I can’t ask you anymore)

so I keep telling myself I’m making the right choice

after all, it’s less, so it’s safer, right?

(but not if it’s also longer, my conscience whispers)

(not if you never healed in the first place, my chest screams)

points of knives threatening to close down like in one of those cliché movie scenes

but it’s okay, because if the knives already hurt then it doesn’t matter anymore, right?

(you would tell me no, they will turn into red-hot molten swords)

(you would hurt for my future self, but you always cared about me more than I did)

so I’ll just laugh through the pain (but not too much, you know that hurts)

keep running (even though you’d tell me to stop)

and someday when my heart has caved in you’ll see it

maybe you’ll wonder why I didn’t tell you about it this time

but I can’t and it’s not your fault, it never was

it’s better this way (even though you’d say it’s worse)

(and I’m sorry anyway, for so many things, but mostly because

you don’t even know why)