The Shapes Of Everything I’ve Ever Wanted

Nothing ever made much sense 

My thoughts sang like a captive

Desperate and raspy

My skull a basement 

There was a pocket knife in my mouth and I hadn’t quite been able to reach it yet with my hands tied

So I etched tallies in my brain with my fingernails

(I’m surrounded)

Maybe I was counting wrong 

Maybe I shouldn’t have been counting 

I eventually ran out of space and I think was the point

The universe's way of humbling me

A witty way of saying ‘stop trying to do my fucking job’

The potential to fall apart just as much to come together

It winked 

It sat in my space with a smirk 

Invaded my privacy

All eyes on me

And I stared back 

Trembling at the juxtaposition of fate and all of its arms and legs and tongues

A beast but not a burden 

Just a choice

A series of never-ending fucking choices 

It’s all hot in here 

I always thought the world was cold around me but not in the distance where people live freely and don’t fear the questions

I sat around this screeching fire in the dark

It craved a forest to burn

My spirit is something like the screech of a teapot and the forgiveness of a highway 

(Both on a Sunday)

I’m trying to make this more about other things

I get tired of talking about myself 

I know there are so many other stories but I’ve only lived my own 

Fiction is still an auto-biography

Just with a costume on

I’m the type of person to… 

I don’t know

 To what? I asked myself 

For what? I asked myself 

About what? I asked myself 

The fire licked her lips

She knew I was close

To the mouth of an answer

The tallies turned to water

Finally good for something

They tasted like tea

Bitter and borrowed

But they were done asking 

They drained out my eyes

Life is somewhat like this

Like tea

You only enjoy it if you savor its immortality when it’s due

I grew up sucking the tea bag 

Asking for more 

And it’s not a pity but a shame that I never stopped to taste it 

Only to grieve it but 

Those are lessons in time 

The mass of truth is a brut and she’s heavy

I didn’t know how long I could hold it

I was just a feather tied to a dream and I was always a bit too heavy to be lifted off the ground so my feet stood stubborn 

They cursed the birds and said, “why didn’t you take me with you?”

It’s all <always> 

Coming and going but never known to sit still

To stay

All of this;

At the whim of gravity

Descendants of clumsy apples

That fell and altered the world but only ever knew itself as fruit 

In the center of a vast meadow with a single tree

Spring got lazy 

Forgot to let the wind carry me to my gravity 

Let me go stale 

So I grew on the highest branch of a lonely trunk and wondered why heights never scared me Now I know it’s because they feel maternal

I wrote about spring a lot and remembered

I’m better than that

Because I’m a poet and there’s this thing called winter 

And it was a gargoyle squatting on my heart that's always awaited a confession 

Its’ hands cupped like a beggar

It reminded me of the dying I hadn’t confronted and that would mean the lights are on and that would mean I had to look

I imagine that my blood ran like an upward stream 

From March toward November 

And it didn’t ask questions

But it silently examined the way it wound through a juxtaposition

An unsteady host

Wobbling and curious

(It judged me)

But now I find comfort in the stranger in me

The blind alley cat, runaway, half lover, forgotten seed of the wind

I’ve stopped acting surprised when I don’t recognize myself within my poetry and it is because of the simple fact that water flows in streams and sunk the titanic 

It’s all the same beast 

The same beating heart

And it’s forced me to love myself like a bonfire

A gentle wildness

Like the one that spoke to me in the attic above my eyes

In that is the acceptance that it all had the power to consume me whole

Like the ship that would never sink

But the difference is I’m aware of my humanness 

My humble bones

My ability to die right now 

And that knowing stands in the room like a shadow 

But a shadow I now love like a bruise I got from dancing 

She is just as gentle as me if not more

Reflective of everything I’ve been scared to admit that I still love

Don’t bother staring at my hands to make sure they’re steady and sure 

Because they’re not and that’s the point 

I want them to know that 

It ended up this way for the reasons we coin the term “elephant in the room”

Rotting becomes comfortable 

Being loved is a scarlet letter

Painted on my chest in lipstick for all to see that I deserve love 

And that’s the “elephant” 

The presence I struggle with

The trusting

The knowing

That

I deserve love as much as any

As much as him

As much as them

And that’s the truth in the flicker 

In the confessions of a captive

And now I understand the stranger

I can love her without a fist

So the fight between sun and moon subside

Over who would embody more of me

The sun turned to water 

The moon knelt before a flame

And my focus cleared

Around the round-edged, fuzzy shapes of everything I’ve ever wanted;