Come Find Me

I know you're out there, somewhere.
I need you now, in fear that soon may be too late.
We can escape the demons of our past that creep behind our backs.
When we are slowed by nostalgia, they catch up and grab our ankles, laughing as we fall face-first into the mud.

Let's outrun them, together.
No, let's grow wings and take flight. 
That will leave them no footprints to trace our escape.
Make them as lost as they made us when they cashed in their mortal state to become the ghosts that haunt our hesitant hearts.

Come find me, resilience.
I need you to reconstruct my severed soul.
Hope went up in flames when my fears grew hands and strangled me.
I need you to reinvent love, because all I know of it is falsities and masks and hollow promises. 

Poetry Stirred by Silence

I know you’re 34.3 miles away by road 

And 18 as the crow flies

But I haven’t talked to you in exactly 26 weeks

Which is astonishing because

Although there were only 47 days between 

The moment you first kissed my lips

And the moment I stole that last kiss from yours, 

I was 100 percent sure that we were soulmates

100 percent of the time we were officially a pair.

I still haven’t added up the reasons you left

And subtracted that from the number of times

You told me you’d never lead me astray

I think, if I divide that by the circumference 

Of the hole in my heart…

Well, the math gets too convoluted.

What have you done with my shiny?

This oasis never looked so thirsty.

I wished you to life during a meteor shower

Abundance never felt so empty

Until you showered me in the stones

That failed to fortify my crumbling heart walls.

You taught me that pain 

Is weakness leaving the body

Weakness is loving you from my kneecaps

With my hands pressed tight together.

Not one prayer escaped my lips

Until you told me you wanted to be alone.

Your emotions grew stagnant

Indifference settled into your heart

Like a thick onerous fog.

On your breath I smelled stale air 

That stillness when something dies 

In a deep dark corner within you.

Your cold demeanor sunk it’s claws

Ineluctably into my optimism

Twisted it backward

So I had nothing to look forward to

I had no way to look forward

Disoriented, no one ahead

Just the culpable ghost

Of your wasted promises.

Promises are baby teeth

Intended to gnaw at everything

Gentle and frivolous

But never puncture pacifiers.

Designed to last the early years

Then painfully fall out

Leaving a big awkward hole

Where a smile used to be.

It takes so much time to heal

For a more durable one to relieve it 

And even that new one

May grow in crooked.

I loved your snaggletooth

It tickled me from the inside out

To see it wildly disrobe

From your stoic mustache

Which disguised your faintest smiles.

I would twist every fiber of my integrity 

Just to see your smile clearly

To see those eyes ignite 

Crows feet reaching wide from your beam

Like arms outstretched for an embrace.

So when the weight of surmised loyalty

Became real enough to breach

The clasped hands that cradled our bliss

I crumbled like dirt onto your floorboards

Instead of spilling my tears feebly 

Like red wine on your pale carpet.

It took a knife fight of self-torture  

A forged facade of understanding nods

To forfeit my resistance to letting go

Without leaving my mark

To make your spring cleaning easier

To help you erase me completely 

Instead of putting you through the trouble 

Of counterfeiting a one-sided story

With bandages over the verses

That vilify your image

When your guests point and ask 

“What happened there?” 

I know you never told our truth to anyone

So I’m helping you grow into a better person 

Who doesn’t have to build a plinth of lies

Upon which your ego can mount 

To stand taller than your honor

I will allow your eraser to wipe me clean

From the pages of your life

I will allow your broomstick 

To jostle my stubborn footprints

Burn the poems and the postcards

I don’t care anymore. 

You’ll never know about the way

I fizzled and popped inside

Shaking like a hot kettle

Screaming “drink me, I’m ready!”

Urging you to sip from my internal tantrum 

Burn your tongue and say 

“I shouldn’t have left you on the flame so long

I regret it, it was wrong of me.”

But I’ll continue to fade 

Without kicking and screaming.

All my baby teeth are gone

And I’ve got a good man now

I don’t love him like I loved you

Because you taught me that being madly in love

Is an unsustainable trance

A rabid kiss that spreads through the veins

It gets stuck in the joints of your spine

So every time you bend backward

For someone you’ve just met

It hurts in more ways than one.

That’s how contempt becomes contagious.

That’s how skepticism strangles the imagination.   

I learned that cloud nine isn’t magic 

It’s made of ice crystals settling on dust particles

Too often stirred up by the restlessness of solitude

And let’s be real, honey 

Humans can’t build homes on that medium

They don’t sew bedsheets from heartstrings

Or illuminate exit signs in the confines of depression

My depression taught me 

True love doesn’t speak

I never told you how my body felt

The week it purged you

I knew it would scare you

I know it hurt you too

My heart disintegrated 

Into that empty space

It got molded that way

And now only fits into pieces

Opposite your shape

And I like doing puzzles

It sure beats doing math.