Blue Lenses

I got there late, but I want to go back regardless.
I miss the day when my hair was blue
and my biggest worry was having the color fade -
how unlike the wind that pulled at my chiffon skirt
I'd have to dye to stay the same.

Mid-day lazy Shadows on the floor, a theater troop -
glances never in disguise;
abundance in laughter and reconnaissance.

Truth is told -
the best times are shared with kindred souls.
How I smiled when I knew I'd see your smiling faces
on the days when
My pappa's pilot sky blue button-up
used to be my fashion Law -
how jeans made it more perfect,
how it was so hard to just say "No" to black.

---

I love you all.

I think it's the first time I dream of a mountain. At the side of the road. A slab of stone of sublime proportions with all the promise of the earthy smells, cut in half for a car's passing.
I was in a car. My car was the only one that could be spotted for miles.
A more detailed look revealed that it was not just the one mountain, but a mountain range.

And I waited, impatiently at the bottom, wondering whether to venture forward between such looming giants.

I had never felt this anxiety around mountains before.
No, only underwater.

"I like your fire.
It reminds me of my own...when I am less confused."

---

Forests, forests, forests.
Thick and dense, dark green leaves
that suffocate your steps.
Give them to me.

I am not apt for this life.

To Samhain

I feel my roots growing thin -
too much no-name wisdom and detail-seeking
surround me
and the ground is suddenly covered with ash.

Where are the echoed murmurs
and the bump-bump steps
and the shaky door?
The stalking smells,
the mending silence?

Has the veil between our worlds collapsed
so as to never rise again?

Oh, how lonely, very lonely these days are,
and how empty too
without the dead.

I'm always thinking about the end.

Right now,
it feels as though a huge, dark cloud
which had been hovering above my head
has been removed.
Clear, windy skies
are ahead.

Why can't I have more days be like this?

Live.
And let live.

It's all over now, kid -
take it or leave it.
You cannot carry so much weight upon your shoulders
so if you have to walk,
walk now and walk slowly
but fast enough to catch up with the last wave of shameless sea salt.

You can do this -
can't you?
All too high riding horses once
you've lashed your eyelid open once or twice with disturbed, jumpy branches.
Jumpier than you, higher than you -
You've fallen off the horse now.

How will you get home
if you have already lost your legs
to old, old battles
and your memory
to sad, sad tales?

A Nod and a Smile

I like my cheeks
very much.

As I like everything else that comes in a box.

Of Suicide and the Great Ones

Up here

where the wind blows,

where it is just the wind and you -

the wind as the only witness -

it would be easy to be mistaken with The Girl That Was Never Seen Again.

So many stairs.

So much red haze.

And

Nothing to impede your fall.

An Attic on the Bed

Yesterday
we sipped on sweet tea
with spicy tongues -

How to long for long nights

in old, Victorian attics.

In bed

we shared stories under

a white tent of sheets.

How to long for nights

when you could speak,

a top six feet of gravel, stone, and wild grass.

---

Wherever you are. Whatever you've become.

Morning, Glory

I suddenly feel the heart turn whole.

A moment of complete happiness.

Richly simple. Simply precious.

French toast.

Coffee.

Made be you.

For me.

Nobody else gets to smell like you.

I do not get to miss anybody like I miss you.

And perhaps it becomes apparent - sometime too soon -

that this is the now you wanted, but later.

You had just started soaring through pyramids

too soon

to have your winds cut off this Spring.

And perhaps old Arab tales are wiser than your concocted truths.

You do not lie this time -

You simply wish to mold

an unwashable kabuki face.

But where will you splinter off to this time?

When the leaves that fell have regathered on ancient roots

and the sun has begun to rise higher?

Have you enough weight to lay anchor on this sand

Or will you find peace adrift, once again, under the weightless ocean?

Will those Gates of lapis lazuli reign alone?

I am sinking.

With no ground to stomp

I thought I would stay high up for a while longer

but

with no walls to contain me

I am simply too much like a gush of wind.

I rather like the decaying of memories -

like silhouettes of trees dancing upon a white sky.

I am usually in the woods

because I do not want to feel like this.

Somewhere in the radius of this space

I can believe that your eyes are walls

and that they follow my steps into deep sleep.

Somewhere in this radius,

I can forget.

Shamelessly.

---

Feeling = How I can control how I am inadvertently consumed by others.

By you.

Check-List

□ Learn how to speak.

I am no longer interested in re-visiting old warfare grounds,

appending broken spirits.

□ Or else this world will belong to ants.

I had not realized death was so near.

I simply had not realized.

There is still grime gathered at the bottom of the shower curtain.

And we are pulled toward opposite ends of the pool -

I cannot kick fast enough

whenever I should pace myself;

breathing in salts

suffocates our tryouts.

I cannot get through to you

when the coast is so near;

I cannot get through to you when I'm with sharks.

Blue ones, Hammer ones, such big, great, Whites.

But mostly Mako.

One can never go in too deep, you see:

silence threatens, threatens, threatens

like sonar bouncing off reef walls,

as if there are no other feet

pacing over the trenches.

I simply had not realized.

[...]

In order to be this far off shore,

I had to be alone.

So I woke up at 4am.

So I read until my eyes hurt.

So I was not there

when the mundane echoed your name in its morning dew.

And so, here I pulled a stunt

which I had not pulled ever since I began to lay still on the right,

your right.

But so I know now

that I stand scared.

Because I happen to like that side of the room,

because it so happens that I like the way your stare bounces off my cheeks

just before you kiss me;

because feeling your hand at

the lowest part of my back

as we walk

elates

me.

I am not the cheeky kind.

Neither do I wave fingers.

Oh - No.

I am too moody for my own dismay,

I disregard coherence and reason.

My bones are crunchy due to cynical oppositions.

My mind is best when left in blank.

And there is no map that will even guide me

to any one of my thoughts.

Regardless of my esteemed deconstructions, I MUST admit:

Russia was never this accessible.

And I have never looked forward to share snow

'till you said I would enjoy the Winter up here.

Obscura

So I sway back and forth.

So I sway.

Bliss has so many, many faces.

So tell me:

When was the last time you named mine? Or hers?

---

Ah - to be all too understanding.

How very short-lived are the perils of the temporarily amused.

Omitting is over-rated.

So is candy-coating and denial.

Suggestion?

Teeth-grinding reality-check.

Kill-Joy

Kill it.

You.

Whatever it takes to keep the planks steady,

whatever it takes to keep me frozen.

Let me dangle on the tide.

Trunk

Do not fret the night -

silence will creep in like it once did

before breaking it ever became an option.

You will relentlessly try to uphold the present,

wherein the grass tickles the space between your toes

and you are no longer treading upon a cold, strange land

sipping on brandy.

No, suddenly you have returned to a hole inclined

to greater levels of humidity,

chugging wine and wishing the stars could read your lips.

---

Words like violence

Break the silence

Come crashing in

Into my little world

(...)

Cuscús

Because our shrugging of shoulders

and shy stares;

well-hid smiles

and tickling nails

playful hair

and dangling earrings

are full of what if's -

we have so many notes

and letters

and looks

that will remain unread, untouched, and unfazed.

---

You never really expect to need a suitcase again.

Bound

"He broke you."
Au contraire, ma chérie, he didn't break me.
He put me together - as best he could - every time, be it by action or word, no matter how unmade he was himself, only to disappear in the morning, leaving no trace behind.
His seeming alchemical trade followed by his nonchalant non-existence --- that was always the mistake.