Week 70

I think of you
Underground
Ice cold.

There is a warm blanket
Of ice and snow,
Around you.
I look down
And I can see your
perfectly preserved
Face.


Can I lay there with you
Keep your body warm
With mine.
The thought of you being there
Night after night
On your own
Is unbearable.

It should have been me
But the universe is never fair,
Only chaotic.
It doesn't give explanations
Only situations
And lets us deal with it
In whatever fragile flawed ways
We attempt to cope.

I just want to curl up next to you
And keep you warm,
Fall asleep next to you
Forever.

Week 69

I lost my virginity at 22,
My cousin at 29.

I lost my innocence at 6 maybe 7,
That one I'm still not sure of
But I know it was stolen from me
At a very young age,
You can feel it when you press on my hips
The way they withdraw and hide.

I lost my fiance at the age of 28,
And I gained love back
At the age of 28 and a half
In the form of a dog
Who lost a leg
But gained a home.

No one likes to measure
The weight of life
In the form of loss
And gains
But what other measure is universal.

If you ask me what I think,
I know life isn't a measure
Of loss and gains
Because emotions aren't calculated
By gravity or weight or anything else
We can place a scale for.
Maybe life isn't a measure at all,
Just a cheap deck of cards that are dealt by inevitablities
And the universe keeps playing
Poker, cheat, blackjack against me
And I, with no ace up my sleeve,
All bets against me
Place my downtrodden chips
In the pot.
Every turn,
I'm all in.

Week 68

I feel myself getting sucked back in
Even though I never left

The hospital is cold and dry,
It makes my nose hurt,
My chest hurt.

My eyes ache
From holding tears back.
She asks me why,
I don't know why.
She asks me how,
I don't know how.
She asks me if she's alone,
And I tell her
Truly she isn't.
That much I know
Somehow
Even though mostly I know nothing
Except darkness
This same old darkness
 That threatens to close around my head
 And box me in.

I don't know what pushes me forward,
I only feel like I'm being pushed lower.

Week 67

I'm a romantic
Even if I don't want to be.
I was created to be a creature of love.
Why else would my eyebrows
Be so dark,
My eyes so big and round
So deep that everyone who
Looks for even a second too long
Falls deep Into the well,
The walls
As old
As the oldest trees on Mars.
Why else would my hair curl
Down my back
And frame your face
As I lean down to kiss you,
To envelope your lips
Your tongue
Your mouth with my own
Drawing yourself out with every breath
I take.
"Come to me, trust me, be with me,"
Every touch of mine
Whispering those words in your cold dark ears.
You see I was forged
By the distant boiling stars
To wake you up,
Shake you up,
Breathe life into your brittle bones,
Into your tender sides,
Into your spiny crustaceous heart.
"I'm a romantic," I whisper
Into your tiny body
Curled up into me,
Desperately seeking a love
You need but cannot give,
That you will never be capable of.
Don't worry,
I'm a romantic,
I knew that already.

Week 66

And when you come home now
To your now emptier house,
The colours in the walls
Are diminished.
What was once a brilliant purple
In the morning light
And a warm orange
Blanketing us in the daylight
Remains colder, greyer.

You pull back the curtains,
The view is of the ocean
It is stark and calm right now.
The ocean is as unpredictable
As the human heart,
Before your eyes it changes
Taking on shapes and memories
Of the universe before you
And after you.
It reminds you of the ocean in your own heart.
It reminds me of when I tried to swim with you.

The house is sturdy yet
The foundation built by experts before us.
And even though the house shifts,
You remain standing
And grounded.
You know you have a house still.
Days will pass
And each morning the sunlight
Will warm up the colours a little bit more,
Drive out some more of the grey
Until one day
With your little boy, you'll repaint
All of it together.

All houses carry happiness and sadness.
Greyness isn't the absence of light,
Just another shade of black and white.
The foundation is strong
And the house is sturdy,
And in the back of your mind
Once in a while
The memory of me swimming with you
In the navy blue ocean
Will make you smile.

Week 65

I want to think about life
On other planets.
The cold empty loneliness,
The noxious gases.

I want to think about the colour
Of the sky
And about how I want it to be navy blue
And gold,
But the reality
Is that the sun
Would be too far away,
And the sky would remain black
For most of the day.

The stars don't change,
Only I change,
Transform,
And become an alien
In my own skin.
I grow scales of resilience,
Of grief long passed,
I resist and I triumph.
On other planets,
I am a monarch.

I do not want to visit home
After years asail in the sky,
Even if its only in my own mind.
But I do
And the warm winter air
Causes my skin to shine.
Time passes by,
I once again walk through this world
Of loss
One step at a time.

Week 64

Colouring in the lines again
I am black and white
And grey.
It makes me wonder what colour I should
Start with.
What colour is humanity?
What shade
Or stripe
Or splash of paint
Can begin to reveal things
About ourselves,
About yourself
That we didn't already know

In some universe,
In some plane
Of existence
I am brilliant,
I am all the shades of
A fire
Burning hot,
Burning deep.

But not in this plane,
Over here
I am colour
Redacted.
And it is a fight trying to fill me in,
Fill me up.
But every day
I wake,
Stare at my black and white reflection,
And try to fill in one cell at a time.

Week 63

The emptiness persists.
It is a deep dark cavern
Lit up by Starlight.
There is a beginning and an end
To this place,
I'm just here in the middle.

I'm walking on sand,
It shifts underneath my toes.
As I slowly try to regain my balance,
My calves ache,
My muscles quiver,
Yet I take one more step,
Each step I take
Is one step closer
In this land of grief.

It's a much quieter world
Than I was expecting.
The silence persists,
Louder than the emptiness
The sky is a  navy blue blanket
In the sky.
This land is stark and cold
Yet beautiful
Like When we lay in your parked car
Looking over a city of lights.

I stop for a moment,
Sleep comes once in a while.
Tomorrow I will deal
With the ache
That today's journey has begun.
Tomorrow I will deal with many things.
For now
I will curl up
And try to get some rest.

Week 62

Sometimes I feel
Like I'm a vessel
Who is to be emptied
For the rest of her life.

So much energy
Leaves my body
That my muscles dry up
And every other night
Is characterized by
Migraines
Headaches
Abdominal pains.

Where am I rooted,
I wonder.
What water and soil
Cover my ankles
And nourish my soul.

I think the answer is
That somehow I'm a sapling
That made it despite
The odds.
It's probably why I ended up so
Brittle
And innocent.

I cling to the side of this mountain.
And as I look down,
the cold wind blows my hair around,
Drying me up further.
I look around for help.
"Have faith,"
They say
As they retreat home.
I'm left here
Staring at the stars
On my own.

Week 61

It's funny how landfills
Are made into beautiful grounds,
Golf courses,
Man made rolling hills.

I guess that's why sometimes
I put eyeliner on,
Darken my lids,
Give my lips that extra pout.

My heart is a voluminous
Collection
Of everyone's grief.
The thing about grief
Is that it doesn't decay,
You have to find some way
To incinerate it.
I searched and I searched
For some other way,
Turns out the only way
Was through a magic spell
Lost in the secret garden
When they ate the fruit of the tree.
How could they have known?

So it sits and it collects
And every day is
One more attempt
To let a little more of it go.
Until then,
It sits,
It stays,
And I cover it up with a little bit of
Black liner above my eyes,
A curl or two in my hair,
And my neverending smile.

Week 60

Maybe I'm one of those people 
Who just mourn
Slower and longer.
One of those people
Within whom 
Grief travels slowly through,
A barely perceptible trickle
At first,
So small and unnoticeable,
That they mistake me for a rock.

And then the trickle become a 
Stream
Caught behind my eyes, 
And I can hold it back
Redirect it through
The trenches of my rigid back,
My aching calves,
The constant headaches
From holding my head too high.

But eventually,
As all soft land does,
Everything starts to collapse.
Who knew that a few drops of water
Mixed with blood and grief
Could create this current
Flowing through me.

I pretend I am a dam,
But I am nothing more than
loose earth being swept apart
By the universe taking away
What belongs to itself.

Week 59

I told you
I gave you my heart,
And you told me
You didn't know what to do with it.
Polite me, I insisted you keep it
Only if you wanted to.

These things are delicate,
I suppose,
But I handle mine
As if it is made of steel.
There are metallic veins
That run bright and brilliant through it,
Each one representing
A time when I made myself survive.

At first glance,
You'd almost think it belonged to a robot.

It's not very often that people take
two glances at it
And notice the terse
tense soft bleeding flesh,
Throbbing,
Alive and whispering.
If you listen very carefully,
You'll hear it the strongest in the fall
While the leaves crunch underneath
My boots
And every smell is that of time fading.
You'll see it in the way
You make my cheeks fill with blood
And the way my shoulders relax
Around you.

So look,
I implore you.
Look harder
At my steel heart
And reveal what makes me human
What makes me a woman
What makes me yours.

Week 58

I think you are the third
leap of faith
I've ever taken.

I think the first one was
When I believed God and the poets
And said to myself
That love would come to me one day
As they promised.

The second one
Was when I listened to the universe
And opened up my soul to the world.
"The measure you give
Will be the measure you get back"
So I sliced her open,
Poured her out
And waited.

The third leap
is You.
And you know that
Because that is what you demand of me.
So I comply
Because obedience and humility
Are virtues,
God and the poets told me that
when I was only two.

I stand at the edge of this cliff
And it is high,
the waters below swirling and dangerous.
Yet I run and jump
Take a flying leap
To the other side,
To You on the other side
In faith, in hope, and love
My open empty soul carrying me higher than
I can explain or want,
Flying so close to the blazing sun and brilliant stars on my way to you,
Flying in faith
And in words
Waiting for other side,
Stuck in between.

Week 57

The cafe is busy at lunch,
People just sitting around, eating,
Jaws tightening and unclenching
Mindlessly.
I sit here
and do the same,
But my mind wanders to you
And the way your jaw
Tightens and unclenches
When you want to tell me something
That your head won't let you say to me.

But I see the words flow up
from your heart to your fingertips
And slowly you write them without meaning to
on my skin.
The way you trace lines
On my face,
My hips,
My wrists.
Your mouth doesn't move
But the words flow up still,
Flow into your eyes,
And causes them to burst into shapes and  colours,
shine brilliantly
So that when they meet mine,
They enlighten me to see you in my past and my future.

But this is too much,
Too much for someone with a beaten soul
To bear
So those beautiful words move up
And get stuck in your hardened jaw,
Your closed fists
Your distant eyes.

So what can I do
But reach over from my place in this universe to yours,
And whisper those words for you,
To you.
Slowly, I lean in close,
And let those words roll off my tongue,
Place my soul in your hands,
Rest my head on your heart,
And wait.

Week 56

When I think about you now
Reflect on your beautiful
Ethereal presence,
It feels like I am bargaining
With your shadow,
The kind my cat chases
Thinking that this time
This time he'll finally get it,
He'll finally win.

Your shadow is as beautiful as you are
Albeit darker
And haunting
maybe a little more pure.
I look for you within it
Even though it is yours,
It does not belong to you
Or to me.
How can one possess such a thing?

I don't know why the ghost
Of your presence follows me around
And in vain I try to close my eyes
Because in this state of half dreams
I see you here with me again,
Hands on my hips,
Lips on my heart.

Instinct causes me to blink
Dreams to disappear
And this sudden betrayal of my body
Hardens me a little more,
Molds me into something more and less
Attainable,
More and less human,
More or less yours.

I remember you in music.
I forget you in words.
I see you in these shadows,
Oh how I will miss you when you go.

Week 55

I don't know what to feel about you.
When you are away,
I think about the lines on your face
And the stories that etched them there.

I think about how you hold me,
Look at me,
Devour me.
When I am with you,
I feel like a piece of candy,
An unwrapped truffle.
And so slowly do you undress me
With your eyes,
Your smile,
Your thoughts.
And suddenly there I am naked
And you want to see it all.
You ask me about myself
And I prefer not to say
But you know it all, already
In many ways.

I build a wall between me and you,
And you plant seeds around it.
It will be beautiful, you tell me,
And I wait for them to grow
To cover up the dark red bricks
That was laid the minute we said hello.
They will be beautiful,
Those lovely bursts of life
Around the stark coldness of
Steadfastness
And reality.

Week 54

Hard days,
Hard times.
Strong migraines,
Hard lines
Etched into my forehead
While yours stay baby smooth
Your eyes stay baby blue
While mine darken
And rot.

I look at you and wonder
How you could have ever been mine
Remember when you held my head
In your hands?
I do.
I remember every painstakingly simple moment
That was what I was built for.
Now I can't love you anymore.
You're not even you, anymore.

But there you stand,
Tall and broad.
And every instinct in me
Wants to bury myself in you,
On you.

But I stand far away.
You are not the warmth of a
Freshly washed and dried blanket,
You are the ice cold frost
numbing my toes,
Putting me to sleep forever.

Week 53

One month since I kissed you.
One month since I nuzzled my face
Into the crook of your neck
And felt your hand travel down my spine.
One month since I heard that you loved me, loved me,
You always said it twice.

I sit here with our dog at my feet,
She touches me at all times
Like you used to,
Our legs entwined.

In one month
I have become the strongest I know,
And also the weakest I know.
I reach out and hold air
Where you used to be.

It's not that I won't make it,
It's just that a lot has happened in a month.