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?

silence, please.

they keep saying this is mine to make or break. they keep saying i have reign & i choose what it all means, in the end at least.

today that sounds like empty sound to slow me from drowning.
today it feels like the bullshit hurricane that's been tearing me for months.
today...
i don't want to hear it.

after all those attempts to abandon, after all those shamble episodes, i finally claimed my fate and was waiting my soul trial along with his.

i was ready for the question snare & the ugliness & the crush. i was ready to burn along with all my sisters before me so someday we wouldn't be destroyed by body to maintain our soul cage. i was ready make those eyes face what they'd done & to bury them to rot for it.

but then his brother took stage to cram my words back to dark. he says he wants to save me from them being twisted and shot through me, but he's just too weak to stand the fight.

i'm sick to my bones of being destroyed & swallowed & ignored.

i'm gathering the wind & the fire & this truth is going to burn.

bells

i said that winter's blooming. it looks like petals un-
folding.

& the summer ice ignored that teeth cold & the melt's begun its settle.

the volume was too low before, but now i hear winter's spring soundtrack.

you know the pretty bells that make soul lose gravity sense?

that's how this season's season rings to me.

maybe i can carry that with me & that march drawl won't bring me crashing back down.

i like this new soar.

loved

this year's day swallowed by nutmeg & thyme scooped my heart clean. it made my chest glow with the warmth that's been so far & few.

it made me think of that day. that day that kept me in bed for months, that day that wrote all those pages with nothing & everything to say. that day i thought i could never face, but gave me freedom beyond death.

it made smile when i realized since the dust settled may 2nd, & how the world puzzle no longer fit, that i finally could wake & be glad to see another day rise.

it made me remember that tainted warm i found that day in the courthouse; the best/worst, the loved/hated day, when my back was straighter than his.

& knowing the straight came from the man who made half me, and the woman that made half him, and the stranger who made sense of my anxious freeze, & the rest who swelled while my throat burst & truth finally stabbed his false.

they always said someday there'd be light that'd outweigh the shadow, and that thankful day made me see it's crest.

i remember her telling me about the seeds, how the pretty ones can't make it in the desert. the haggard seeds are the survivors; they don't faint with the heat blaze or the weeks where clouds drift but never shed.

i think i might be one of the ugly seeds. my water dried & my roots shrank & my leaves browned, but still i remain. & once the heaviest months were left for dead, i've begun my first winter bloom.

the rug being stolen from underfoot was this years gift. i penned on the first that 2013 was the year of the found, & it's proven true. my gritty, unwavering being outlasted the windy side & i know i'll remain.

i found it & no one can steal it. even him, with his story & this tangled web. my voice is unearthed and it won't be stifled.

that's something to be thankful for.