...

I'm always sorry that moment you get home
Because today I spent curled up in a ball
Watching the sun drift down the wall
And the other yesterdays.
Today I thought I'd watch the sun come up
Change of pace
Since I kept company with the moon
Dry quiet leaving my skin cold.
I haven't thought a unique thought in days,
The pauses leaving me bewildered,
Had I even been thinking at all?
Two days ago I cried into your pillow
Because the weight was too much
But my friend called me because she had a feeling she needed to call.
I haven't slept at the right time of the day in at least two weeks
I haven't worked out consistently in a little more than three.
I was sorry when you came home today because I've been so depressed that I've laid looking at the wall,
Filling space
And you ask me what's wrong so concerned but nothing is
It just hurts.
I want to run and run but can't find my motivation.
I want to read and research but I can't stay focused.
I want to do more than sleep, shower, take care of the dog, and sit quietly.
I want to not feel the self inflicted pressure of getting a lot done or appearing as though I did before you get home.
I want to sleep at midnight and get up at nine thirty
Instead of five in the morning until one in the afternoon.
I want someone to listen, but I don't ever know what I would say.
Just the feeling of someone near to ease it when it's most difficult.
I want to tell you I'm sorry,
Because you love me unconditionally
And I'm still illogically afraid everyone will think that I, the future therapist,
Am unable to fight off my own depression, therefore crazy.

New Beginnings

It's been a long time since I've felt the stirring to write, or the ability.
It's not poetic like usual, but I want to tell the story, in all it's grittiness.
Over the past few months I've felt my world change and illuminate in a way I never thought possible.
I spent the summer exploring myself, sitting outside on my front steps smoking and drinking with my neighbor,
Looking at the veiled stars above the city lights,
Drinking coffee under the tree at the park while my dog explored the area we'd seen a hundred times before.
My emotionally abusive (he'd disagree) boyfriend broke up with me for a beautiful girl he'd been friends with
And I slipped into a relationship with a close friend.
I look back and I feel guilty because I know now I ran to him because I needed someone that didn't have me parking my car two blocks away before I got home so that I could cry where he wouldn't see.
I needed to be myself and know it was okay.
It was easy to fall into talk of a future and it went too far.
My ex and I still had a lease and we still had chemistry and I found myself wrapped in his sheets between times his new girlfriend would fly in
And I would see mine
Feeling that torturous question of character.
You know what I hate most?
I loved him still.
I hate him and I love him and he was a virus inside of my heart.
Thanksgiving came and despite the way my family loved him, it didn't feel just right.
We were at dinner and my mom thought I said something in a way that implied I was ashamed of something she did and I clarified what I meant.
Immediately, in front of everyone, he told me I was selfish and mean.
It happened again.
Later that night we talked and he didn't ask me what had happened between my mom and I, why I felt it was difficult to show emotions with her,
The dynamics and the history of the messy coming of age I had.
We didn't see eye to eye.
Instead of asking me how I felt and listening, he shut down, said he wouldn't say anything at all.
The attraction was never there.
I hated that he was this intelligent person who let bad choices earlier in his life cause him to lose the fire and ambition.
And so, until my birthday I didn't talk to him much.
I couldn't even try anymore and I began to resent him.
On my birthday, my friends planned a going out to a bar and so I invited a guy friend of mine to come along.
I don't know why I did that, but it seemed like what I wanted in the moment, to flirt, to be free again I suppose.
My two friends and I went to meet him at the bar, he said he brought his friends.
It was an Irish pub style bar where the drinks were strong and the crowd was relaxed.
We walked up to the table and I saw him.
Not my friend.
His friend.
I only saw him the whole night and we talked and talked, but he held back.
When the bars closed down my friend was making out with one of his friends and I was going into my friend's room.
I don't know why we had sex...
I look back and I think, that was the moment I knew I couldn't keep up with this game where I was telling myself that I was this empowered woman who was attractive and smart and doing whatever I wanted was part of that process.
When I went home that day his friend and I messaged and a week later he was driving 45 minutes to my city to have dinner.
That moment.
I want to hold on to it forever.
We talked and talked and found that we had so much in common and soon we were back at my apartment.
There was this moment where we paused and suddenly leaned in and kissed and it was the most amazing moment, but it was amazing because that was all it was, a kiss.
He stayed over that night and it was so perfectly innocent.
We saw each other the next day and the next and then I went away for Christmas and my friend that I was dating and I fought and discussed the end.
I was honest with this new one, I told him I didn't know, but I needed out of this.
There was a struggle, I couldn't say the words I needed to say...
Finally, it came.
I was having this dual relationship and I had to end it.
That was the first shift, when I started doing the right thing for once.
And for once I was spending time with this amazing person who kissed me and told me he didn't want to sleep with me yet.
He said, "I want you, but I want YOU."
The first pieces of all the broken things I had tried to clean up began to slowly come together and then all at once.
I told my ex we couldn't sleep together anymore when it happened a few times when my new guy and I were seeing each other and he was upset.
He said that we had an agreement and I was manipulative and not a real friend but for once, doing the right thing, having boundaries, sloppy ones, but boundaries, was more empowering then anything else I had been doing since.
Things exploded with growth from there.
The moments are so beautiful and so pure, so infinitely perfect.
He touched the scars on my thighs and never said a word.
When I asked him he said what happened in the past doesn't define who I am in the future.
When I cried after a sad movie he held me close and kissed my head.
When my ex moved out because he was mad at me he drove three nights a week to my city to watch my dog.
He took me on day dates, lounged with me and watched movies, spent all his free time and was so proud of me.
I can't tell you how fantastic it is to be with someone who you can trust completely and who nurtures your soul and heals your heart.
I didn't think that I was going to live this life, after everything that happened to me. I felt too damaged, though I had pieced myself together as best as I could.
Somehow I found this amazing human being that I thank God for because I know I did so many things that didn't warrant a deserving of this.
I got a counseling internship in his city.
I'm traveling to South America for spring break.
My dad went to jail for domestic abuse against my step mother and I still can't sort out how I feel about our estranged relationship, where we try and keep in contact by strings.
And at two months and a week, he and I signed a lease together.
It's crazy and I know it, but I think he's the one and life has never been so beautiful.
Nothing and everything makes sense and finally I'm making the real right choices.
I know this was a bit lengthy and not in my usual style, but I can't even do anything but feel it all so deeply.
I miss you all, say hi and let me know if you're still out there!
<3

Disease

I look for you among the willows
Hunt you on the breeze
Hold your hand tightly
Plant on your lips disease
I'll capture you every moment
Leave you on your knees
The hounds are there watching silently
As the withering completes
Listen for me as a siren
Catch your breath as I pass by
Hold in your scream
Honey I'll show you the best way to die
Confuse you with paradise.

Mortem Aestas

His hand wraps round her neck like a sultry, sharpened drape

Lycan fingers clasping and counting
Each delicate vertebrae

 Gently stroking the exposed ivory 

Lips close
Teasing
With breath frost aquamarine 

He has her little humming bird heart
On harlot knees

Emerald pines bare witness silently

To summer's setting in her opaline eyes

Ask for mercy
Pray

Diminishing shrouds of vibrant pride 

A darkening rush
Of snow flaked breeze 

And suddenly find
The forest lonely. 

Still Here

Hey guys, I wanted to make sure everyone knew that I hadn't dropped of the face of the earth. Grad school and my work schedule have made it really challenging to write but I've been working on a creative piece, so if anyone is left, I'll soon have something for reading and feedback.

<3

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.

Empty

There is a certain feeling that nestles down in your heart when you enter an abandoned house.

An unnatural emptiness that seeps through your scuffed twelve-year-old sneakers, 

Causing you to pull your jacket closer. 

Carefully touching the deep brown varnished hand rail. 

Wincing at the creek of old protesting stairs,  looking around to see if anyone heard. 

They hadn't. 

Touching the bubbled white with tiny pink flowered wallpaper at the door jam. 

The gravitation to the lit,  empty room is necessary, 

But the clouds are black and the trees bend and sway in the wind. 

The kind of wind that it takes only a glance from curious eyes out a window to chill. 

This time I pull both jacket sides close. 

Cornfield a dull tan with the poor shaving of the combine razor leaving scraggled roots of stalks. 

And the old tractor trying to quietly sleep under the protesting trees.

Its so still. 

So still compared to the picture displayed by the window that I must go to the next room, feeling dread prompted by the dark space to the left where you enter the attic. 

I can't pull my jacket any tighter around me. 

We had gone to my grandfather's house for Thanksgiving,

Now filled with us and my new grandma's married in family. 

It was so difficult to remember this additional cousin's name. 

Landon.

But everyone giggled as I loudly whispered,  "What's lingerie boy's name?" to my aunt. 

Not that I knew what that meant, 

Not that anyone knew how I had concluded the two sounded close. 

Kids sticking olives on their fingers and sucking  them off, all laughing. 

My new older cousin Cassie had said "shit" outside. 

And my mom looked tired. 

Then one day she couldn't take it, the meanness that didn't take leave when the alcoholism did. 

Grandma, now not my grandma,  promising to call. 

She didn't. 

And there I was, visiting the empty home. 

Except, it wasn't empty, just my grandfather downstairs. 

There are some cacophonous stirrings so loud that the heart screams until the prefrontal cortex vibrates with every beat.
It's there, subtle
Screaming
So loudly that my neck and shoulders hitch up into the base of my spinal column
Until I crumple into sleep.
"I have feelings for her. I'm breaking it off."
The phone is cradled in my hand, illuminated from being pulled away.
The ceiling is that damn popcorn texture.
"Are you there?"
Clearing my throat, "Yes."
"You abandoned me."
"I thought it was best to stay here for the summer and work on myself."
"Why couldn't you have done this last summer?"
"I did what I felt was right. What I thought would make me a better person and better girlfriend."
"You abandoned me. I gave you my whole heart for two years. She wants to be as committed as I do."
My head rolls to the side, I need to take the damn dishes to the sink.
A tear rolls onto my pillow.
"I'm sorry."
"Yeah, me too."

What made his house feel that way? I often pondered.
Absence of soul or self or love?
Order.
Chaos.
Rinse and repeat.
The choices of upheaval and bonding that turn endlessly.
Key turning in the lock,
A dog wagging himself side to side in greeting.
Darkened familiar doorways and a screech of sliding windows.
Summer air.
Rough concrete underneath and smoke curling to the sky.
"This place is kind of depressing, no offense."
I nod.
It is.
And I wonder, is this what empty feels like, from the other side?

It  was finally the day. 

The day that I hung my head and arm out the car window,
Dissolving into air, beauty, and infinity.
It was hour three of the trip,
The mushrooms leaving my neurons awake and a light of dry,  crackling existentialism.
"Can you see it? The worst is over."
We had driven to the ends of the city and back with a soft glowing cigarette between our fingers.
Music pumping and throbbing through blasted speakers.
"The monsters in my head are scared of love."
I'm so happy...
"Fallen people listen up! It's never too late to change our luck."
My friend grabbed my hand and squeezed and smiled at the power lines wizzing by.
My other hand softly moving my bangs from my face, also smiling softly.
I could see myself in my apartment, sad and chained to the expectations of someone that didn't love me.
Then casually closing turning a page with the scene displayed until I could no longer envision it.
No more use for it.
"So don't let them steal you light."
"Don't let them break your stride."
I pitied him then, for the cruel things he said, for the things he needed to do because he hurt inside and so hurt others.
"There's a light on the other side, raindrops falling behind."
Lighting another cigarette I sunk lower in the passenger seat, alive with the knowledge that I loved and was loved
Even if some of the other things hurt with a dull, invasive ache,
This was the most beautiful moment.
"It's a revolution."