Peace and Other Things

"You'd think with as many as I already have that I wouldn't be nervous!"
"Hey, that's okay. I get nervous too."
My hands are clasping and unclasping on my chest, forced breathing in and out calmly.
"I'm just going to use the q-tips to feel around and then I'm going to mark it."
"Okay, is it going to hurt a lot?"
"Um, some people say it's the same as a nostril piercing."
Cringe.
"That one hurt, except my second one. I was drunk in Greece when I got it."
He chuckles and makes a mark on either side of my nose.
"Alright? Are you ready?"
Breathe out.
"Yes."
"Breathe innnnn, now out."
On the breath out I feel it go through the center of my nose so accutely, involuntary tears running down my cheeks.
The metal slipping through in place of the needle.
"Wow. I'm really happy with that." he says, smiling wide.
"You look like your'e trying to be like every other girl." he texted me.
I don't think so.
Because I'm smiling too, and it's been a while since I've done what I wanted without inhibition.

He is lying next to me, quietly now, leaving me to the gentle epiphanies of the night.
"I'll only be gone for the year. I'm serious about you. Where you go, I want to go."
The coquettish smile is what I know how to do best,
But in the night, when he is fast asleep, I push his arms and legs from their smothering embrace.
Cringe at the soft kisses on my hair and shoulders.
I was cautious, dragging my heels and promising I could only look out for myself right now.
Couldn't be in another relationship.
Then we were a rush of skin.
Loneliness dressed up as self-empowerment seeking refuge under the awning of my friend.
In the morning I look at him as I get up for work and turn away.
The warm feelings of watching his smile as the dog runs around the park abruptly fading.

I almost said your name in place of his.
Biting back the bitter poison before it left my lips.
Still etched on my heart.
They say you shouldn't carve your name into trees because it scars them.
But they say a lot of things
And the scar is still there, throbbing.
Somehow my thoughts always turn to you...

It was a double date with a coworker that she set up and ended with
His lips on mine,
breath infused with beer and courage.
Hands in my hair.
"I have to ask, what are you looking for?"
There it is.
Heaving the eternal internal sigh.
"I don't know, to be honest. I recently got out of a relationship so I'm not really looking for anything right now. What are you looking for?"
"A relationship. It's been about a year and a half since I've been in one."
I didn't text him back the next day.

"Sunshine. blue skies, please go away.
My girl has found another and gone away.
I know to you it might sound strange
But I wish it would rain."
I didn't cry when you said it was over, not much.
My arm hung lazily from the open car window,
Frankie Valli telling me that big girls don't cry
And the Temptations singing about their girl
All of us wishing it would rain.
To wash away those things that you say...
"I think she's the one."
"I still love you and you're both amazing women."
"I can't be in a monogamous relationship. It makes me lie and that's not who I am."
"I miss you."
"Love you hun."

You are the winter.
You are the fall.
The sunny days when the trees bend and sway,
Light reflecting a million beams and the clear blue sky a translucent array of veins.
The hope and promise of warmth and serenity only to feel the scathing death of cold.
Beautiful, misleading, lost.
I wouldn't call you a storm.
Those are majestic.
Honest.
They only promise the driving rains and rolling thunder.
All those pass through the destruction stripped and cleansed.
You are the season of death.
Conspiring.
You are death and I wither under your gaze.

Thunk and clink go the weights on the Olympic platform.
Rhythmic vibrations
Taught muscles strain at their sinews.
Break me.
Make me anew.
I haven't passed through the fire.
Yet yielded ice.
A gentle glow melting from the inside.
Not yet.
Don't thaw yet.
Don't come back yet.
"I wish I had never met you."
"You don't really mean that, but if you do, that really hurts."
But I think,
I think I really do.

Or do I?

What would you say if I told you I was no different than anyone else?
I rip my stitches out early too,I
Feel the pulsating of my beating heart and the words uttered in haste.
The ones we should keep to ourselves
Drunk on sunshine and pain
And indifference.
"Just because he had to come back for school it doesn't minimize the summer or change what's happened. It's not like that. I don't think I have to tell you that, but it's important that I did."
I guess we are the insane as we ignore the mirror's truth
In Flames on the Itunes que and the sidewalk scorching my bare skin.
How long can you stand the flame and not be made ash?
Find the exit sign and disappear.
It doesn't take long, in case you were wondering.

I'm guarded and therefore I can endure
A little bit more 
Just a little bit more

Sinner or saint?
Does it really matter in the end?
How we all choose to live our lives,
Does it really matter?
This summer I learned that maybe it doesn't.
I think in the end it's only if we are happy and don't needlessly hurt
Or allow ourselves to stay caught in someone else's crossfires.
I smile for those that are in love
Genuinely mean the congratulations of good news for others.
No matter what, it always comes around.
Something like the ebb and flow of the tide
And other over used metaphors.
Know thyself
Wishing on the heads up penny I found.
Get up and try another day.
It's all going to be okay.
And that
That brings me peace.