that glow

the sparks where the remember happens.
i like those final ticks where they're bright
and i remember.

though the beams crumbled &
windows shattered,
my me is iron with the 2014 count
down.

i'm brimmed with those that
like my shine, even when it's
mottled in crazy.

& i'm chasing path that means
healing & right....even if that means
empty bank accounts.

& i have found my place. &
grown roots that that run
deep & won't be threatened by the
wind whispers or smoke.

here's to a shine & the ram & a new 3 hundred & sixty-5.

solstice

sometimes the shine doesn't come through.
brick is brick
light or shadow
aside.

maybe the bricks need to shatter & split so
the flame can come through.

brick doesn't know how to burn.

maybe that would make the winter
harsh
melt &
spring could bloom early.

they say honey's sweeter
& fire seems to fair well with
the bees & their nectar.

those brick words & their
vinegar dose
seem to be more fight than
they're worth.

does he know

i wonder
if you think about me.

i wonder if they're right
& you marked me the day we first met.

i wonder if you knew
that i would try to destroy your world
in hopes of getting mine back.

i remember
when i thought that you were the wounds you claimed
& that maybe i could save you.

i remember thinking
that i was fire & i'd burn you first.

but that night came.
& you tore my soul from body.

remember what you said to me?
you told me to give myself
you told me to love you.

instead, you took, &
you decided my bones were love enough.
you didn't look satisfied after you were through.

maybe that's why my veins run dry &
days like today, i'm still your shell.

& when the after came
you chattered those sorry words, & said that you were broken too,
& that i mattered.

but you forgot to mention it was
only to the point that my tongue controlled your fate.

now you're buried in concrete
& somehow i'm the evil & you
befell my victim.

tonight i wonder
if you think about me in your shackles.

was it worth it?

"biophily"

end is dead,
and that's what we loathed.
the shift & the fluid feels so
sandy &
unsafe.

but then the concrete & its rough
feels so ragged
& makes our art bleed.
why are eyes so lopsided
& we miss it?

i guess free means shift
& it gets locked when we
love solid.
i need to toe dip
& lose myself in the float.

nights.

i shattered them.

all the ones with the crooked brows

& their brothers too.

their shards feel good in my mouth.

& the ones left,

they mean love. even when they leave,

i know they'll be back.

& my hand will be held once adventure

ends in home.

the magnificent might be shinier

but it doesn't always know unconditional.

blood & glass & those warm hands

keep my grin upright.

pure

that word again.
the one that's haunted me since
little hands barren of any
horrid
when they were soft
and potential steeped.

that word boxed how to wonder
and told face how to be mirrored
and settled clothes on frame
and kept laces tied.
it was my map & bible & sun.

but then those soft hands met
seared
and that brain met tree-snake
and that face heard evil
and the clothes became misshaped
and laces began trip.

that's when the dark took hold
& brain became enemy, blooming with hate lures
& face shamed mirror for fear of storm
& clothes didn't hide what i'd hoped
& knees stayed locked to ground...
it seemed safer to drown than plunge surface.

but then he said it.
"pure"
& i think he was looking at me.
& he might have meant it.

dust.

it's the slack lies.
that i am not any
one.
and i'm not.

it's the rabbit hole that takes me
the one that taught me to
swallow
all the sludge they burned me with
or at least what i thought they scorned
when my stumbles got stuck in lamp light.

my black seems worse on the pavement.

odd how the snares linger and
make for more black.

how the black made for the creation of
shadow
& self i never meant.
but the bless is that shadows
are less than dust.

maybe the shadow dust can be taken
& my marbled me return.

only.

i'm not sure i'd missed it, but looking into chest, i noticed.
my hearts' ears are under water.
i wondered vaguely when they took the plunge.
i didn't hear their breath buried somehow.

they choose when to hear, and these days aren't them.
if only they'd have less auditory charge.
it would make my head clear,
and we'd all accept it.
the close & the tear.
it'd be fire proof & hard,
not just bubbles that we don't understand.

sea water let's us believe what we dream.

but those bubbles aren't filled for a reason.
the sounds they make are inked & final.
even upon deaf ears, true is true.

i wish those bubbles didn't make my deaf heart break.
if only.

stuff.

odd how our throats turn up & down.
& that heart bleeds words,
& words give heart,
but when lips shut & blood words go unsaid,
everything shuts.

how do i learn to let those words scab?
they're drying in my throat &
cracking my soul.
does it get easier to swallow words
once their dead & dust?
does it get easier to stuff heart
& deaf my sound track?

seems its the easy road. or the right one, at least.
why does it feel so coarse?
i'm choking on distaste for this iron-riched breath.
it's not the kind that can be brushed,
not without ripping scab & making those words ring.

silence is tearing my sleep.

the door revolve.

the spin gets dizzy & it makes my knees knock

i never noticed all the sameness & dots & criss-cross

must have been that out-of-sight-out-of-mind disease

where none of it sticks &

head hits same wall but no memory is made for it.

my cerebral swim in the haze feels better than the clear days.

at least in the gray I can lie & truth can tuck & we both can take cover

at least for a spell.the white & black & crisp catch up

but at least it’s delayed with the lightening & rain.

thankfully not all days are stormy.

funny how when you say the gray and it finds its edge your lines don’t disappear

how is it that your head builds brick of shadow?

none of its walls prove true as chains from the cloud lurk

not to say that the hole doesn’t gap and the fire doesn’t scar

but I’m not cast out and my world didn’t dust.

freedom doesn’t always shape to be light as i’d hoped

stepping in sun can weigh like those brain bricks

where the words with their edges still make for heavy

even with summer glaze & water blue & blooms praising sky.

maybe someday it’ll fill & bricks will banish & his fate won't crush mine.

wheels turn

the times like deja vu when the rough strikes, & i remember: i survived.

the moments when i hear the glowings of my strength & courage: i prevailed.

the days that i thought would be the end of all be: i survived.

never before have i buried myself in a self-love cloak, where i can look back at my blood-worn soul & smile at her reds & raws & be proud of her.

but these days on the roadways, i find her catch in my lungs & i see her for what she is: a survivor.

i survived, & i over turned tables & i broke old shadows & my arms are thicker for it.
i prevailed, & i made my words heard & i made his lies blind & my legs run longer for it.
i survived, & i have never felt so loved & blessed for the battle.

had my soul quiz not been so taxing, had i been given a chance for a guide, i would have missed the truth. i am woman & i am love & i am a survivor.

"scars speak more loudly than the sword that caused them."

the wheels turn & my days get brighter & the uphill journey's no longer ragged.

summer's bringing her shiny joy & we've begun to remember the other.

death & its blooming.

you know when fire souls collide? how they smolder & their burn makes you believe fairytales really are forever? how their smoke is more pure than any of smoke stack & you loved to breath it?

when their smolders turn embers & embers turn ash & there's no phoenix left to rise, where does that love go? i think it's dead in the charcoal dust, even though it's the antonym to any bedtime story. i think it festers in the souls & is etched like a nightmare they can't forget; how did something so velvet become so brash?

he said that souls forget that clock stops for no one & each tick strikes both soul & within minutes they won't recognize the other. that's why when the fire souls try to make man fire by match, it sputters & chokes. their burn will never be the same, & they suffer for it.

but it doesn't have to be that way. they can remember the old fire burn & the beauty reds & orange & whiteish-blues.

the trick, 

      there's a trick. 

letting the memory of the fire be just that; a remembrance of what was, rather than dreaming it to higher heights. when beauty becomes virtued, here's where the ugly spiral turns...where the soul(s) dig to earth center in search of past flame, failing to see the truth.

        the flame's dead.

that doesn't make it less real; it still kept the souls warm for a spell & their licks were theirs & no one was brave enough to touch them. but the soul can't be time-capsuled & neither can clocks & a moment lived is stuck behind glass. the souls see the imprints & wish it had stayed, but birth of once bright always seems to be daughter of ash.

thinking of those flames & the papered lesson they learned, it reminds me of the year i thought was stolen. with the turned backs & the dark night & the uniforms that made him disappear behind bar. i built my life in those mountains on a tower & hoped i'd someday return to the regal life once lived.

but the earth kept spinning & the backs stayed turned & no parades presented themselves to welcome me back home. i kept waiting for all the dark to ash, for the phoenix to rise; i kept hoping for my return to my towers, liberated & loved. 

then the wind spoke up & i knew; the parade was never to be & my castle to be abandoned & my heart shattered in time. his words & his wrath ruined the foundation of my pretty days i'd lived in that deserted forest. i withered with the unjust turned backs & the dreams of hours & bliss passed. i became one of those fires souls beating my hands against the glass; i hadn't learned that a splintered clock still can't turn back.

and somehow, the truth sank. the backs would stay turned & those bright desert days were long buried, but my heart hasn't lost beat. i still carry those days & the bloom those mountains wrought. i'm better for losing the faces attached to the turned backs & there are other mountains that shine. the truth sank.

i thought they broke me, but she's alive & well.

she may have shifted & her soul more lined, but she hasn't gone. 

& suddenly i returned to the castle to destroy its false promise.

brick

by

brick.

freedom is sweet, & my soul's grinning for it.

the after.

i still wake up and those numbered days of his with the key on my chain are on my brain.

i stop when i'm in the morning coffee pour & wonder if anyone can smell them; the prison letters that tell me where he sleeps.

when i'm driving my car and he looks at me, the one on the corner; does he see that i said the word that changed lettered name to numbers?

when she says the innocent word & it hits my ear & starts the steep slide, does she hear the anxiety that rings when she pulled the unknown trigger?

maybe when i go for my city park run after work, they can see the victim he saw in me & they'll start their plot too.

i think those might all just be whispers of the scars he left those ten months past. i hope they'll soon rest.

some say i'm writing a success story. the ones that see my feet, the ones that are still moving. the ones that leave the house that used to be glued to bed because the loss & the hate & the disbelief was too great. the feet that didn't get me away from him in time, those feet eventually learned to stand again, and they say it's something to be proud of.

odd to have normal normal job & normal apartment & normal routine to be a call for pride; someday i'll just be me & he won't be following me in my dreams & stalking me in my days & i'll blend in. i won't worry that his evil is staining my present & those i cross will notice my old wounds.

i'm more me but still he stays. i can't wait to finally shake him.

chains & maps & the empty

that rattling's still shaking through my brain.

eight months & seven days later, & they announced his three year future. eight months & seven days of ache & death & birth & break, but relief is yet to set. eight months & seven days later & his days numbered haven't changed my life, or the pieces of it that remain. they didn't magic themselves into a newness or freeness, they're still jagged & fragmented & not what i ever wanted.

i think the worst part is that he's carved out his own safe in my memory hell & i think he's there to stay. worse, thinking that those three-hundred & sixty-five times three of his are terminal, & mine will continue to fall day out & in til my chest pumps its last. he's tattooed himself on my shoulder to stay, but i'll be wiped from the beginnings of a thought the day his jumpsuit & shackles are no longer his.

his chains don't mean what i thought they might; my world remains his rubble. i thought i'd be light but now i'm a shell of his destruction & the war's over & i'm still empty. it's like all those other things; when the ball drops & touring world-acclaimed ruins & all the supposed monuments that leave everything in its place when you'd hope for ground shatter & sky split.

the climax came & went, and here i stand...lost as ever. i thought my life was on hold til that day fell. i thought that i'd spring back into me when his future was set so that mine could regrow & bloom. but it's all the same & my voice is no longer needed & i don't know what that means.

how did i get here?