Laughter falls towards me
from their mouths a million coils
that slide across the floor
nipping at my bare feet
The quiet places are fading
so quickly from view where
peripheral coos are closing in
so I will blend in
my sequin studded camouflage
an armor in the face of smiles
so cunning towards their prey
It is a party after all
True love is not caring who they love most
It’s being happy they have so much love to give at all
It was the moment I gave up,
When so many years of caring too much
collided with the end of a road,
One they had told me was full
of endless possibilities if I gave
enough of my heart to it
I held my chest open,
sometimes with chains and crowbars,
The force of collapse at times
seeming too much to bear,
and on days when it weakened under
the pressure of it all, I used my own hands
to pump life back into itself.
But I bled more than it could bleed.
and the road is gone now
it is barely a dirt path here
at the end of it all.
As an homage to the tide, I tear myself apart,
let my skin split into rivulets the same way she
fractures the moon over her body.
I have not the tears to pour onto the sand
the ways she courses relentlessly over the shore,
but I have enough to drown in while
my cries build into her own.
You broke my heart with words and whispers–
music that clung to me when everything else was falling apart.
Honey dripping from your mouth, I drank you in, every bit
then sank to the bottom of the sound.
How did I ever think I could give you up?
AutomaticPoetry
He was kind until kindness became apathy
soft until numbness filled him with regret
and when I first saw the way his eyes sparkled
I thought they would inspire in me
a thousand songs I could sing to him over a lifetime
but in time their light became another beacon
–distractions calling ships towards muddy rocks
He said he loved me, I think he meant it
until ‘I love you’ started pouring out of him like
pleasantries about the weather, and one day
when he said it looked like rain, I cried like
he had just told me he’d never loved me at all
He was everything until it wasn’t enough,
he was my friend until he became a stranger
He was perfect
Healthy, happy, to you there is only life
But one day I know you’ll be gone
and I’ll have to learn how to live without you.
When we go, we don’t come back,
and yes, our memories are sweet
but still they are unforgiving —
The spirits of limbo lurking in the dark
extending comfort through silence
I can’t hold a memory in my hand,
they are not cold, not warm
they are not loud, nor are they soft.
When I’m lonely, I can’t reach for you,
You will fall so deeply into my mind
becoming a chapter in my mythology,
a story I will tell to resurrect the past
One day I know you’ll be gone
and I am plagued by the fear that
your memory will leave a hole in me
that will fill itself with loneliness.
He is dreaming.
Caught between the lucid waves of sleep
he dreams of blackness and of voices
on the other side of his cloudy eyes.
Every night, his muscles turn taunt
against the bone and trap him in his visions
of worlds parallel to the waking earth.
But tonight, the world is dark and the
paralysis creeps too far into his body.
His blood is cold, his marrow yellowed
like dead skin hanging from a nail
What do the voices say? They are far away,
waking songs of familiar faces
songs that are wet with tears and whose
wails stick to his heart–build up
in a muscle which has forgotten how to beat
His bed feels shallow. Too close.
Too warm, and too narrow
and far too stifling
to quench the stench of still blood
trying desperately to prove
that it can still race
One by one, the voices get louder
They wander into his dreams
and then leave–shadows chased off by the sun.
Don’t go, he thinks
but go they must,
I want to wake up,
he does not know that he can’t.
In the world of the living,
mournful hands lower his bed
into the ground.
In the world of the dreamer,
the gentle thud of the earth
covers what’s left of his ears
until his dreams are silent as the grave.
Dear Sunlight,
I haven’t seen you in a while,
Or felt you on my skin.
I wonder, maybe, if you’re still there
Or if you’ve grown tired of making the long trip
To sit on my cold, unforgiving skin.
Sometimes I see you
Swimming with the waves
Glittering on each crest in a slow, passionate waltz
And I miss you.
I miss your warmth,
Your caress,
Your love.
You are mother of the world
And lately I’ve felt like an orphan.
Dear Mare,
I saw you together with Sunlight
The way you reach up to kiss her freckled glints of light
The way you catch her as she falls
In cascading ripples of heaven.
Mare, I have no one to catch me.
I miss you the way a child misses
the soft comfort of the womb.
I miss your swaddling embrace
That made me feel like I was safe
You were the bed I lay in for eternity
And now I only have restless nights
lying on the cold floor.
I slept with you
and felt myself become a current in your sea;
Suspended in your vastness,
I was tragically infinite and wonderfully limited.
You are the home of my spirit,
But lately I’ve felt homeless
Dear Moonlight,
Do you lay your body across the night
The way you used to lay across me?
You used to confide in me
gossip between the stars,
Orion and Scorpio and the secrets they composed.
What songs we shared between midnight memories,
And you waltzed across the night
Full, then new, then gibbous
Just to make me laugh,
smiling a crescent smile.
I knew such sweet love then.
And I see you now and I feel cold—quiet.
Each star is a tear you’ve cried
I wish I could wipe them away.
Then the night sky would be only ours
A ballroom where we could dance together
And laugh again
And where I could feel you against me like I used to—
My only love
Where have you gone?
You are the song of my heart,
But lately I’ve felt voiceless.
Dear Orion,
Moonlight told me your secrets
But you never hid them from me anyway.
When things were what they had been
We reached across light years
to grasp towards each other’s light
leaving fingerprints on each other’s cheeks.
We reached as far as we could
And felt freedom in the distance we crossed,
Wild and reckless.
Now my muscles ache
And I reach as far as I can
But I don’t feel you reach back
And when you do, I think you’d rather reach towards someone else.
You were my only friend
No distance too far that we wouldn’t traverse.
I fear I’m on my own,
Without your three stars to guide me,
as your bow looks towards a new path
that points everywhere I’m not…
All the places I cannot go.
With you wild tundra was kindred land,
But lately I’ve felt I’m just a vagabond.
And I cried because nobody loved me
And I sat underneath the stars and the crescent moon
Those who I always turned to in the past
And I begged them
And I asked them why
And I cried to them
Wondering if I would be alone with them forever
Just the three of us in the cold black night
Please
Please
The moon on my left
Orion on my right
So familiar
and so cold tonight
Is that twinkle laughter or, I wonder, do they cry with me because they understand my pain and can’t do anything about it
I wonder if they choose to do nothing
And I feel alone but I don’t feel empty and I think that’s the worst part of it all
Having a full heart but no place to put it–nobody who wants it
I feel like my fullness is only worth something to the dark
When everyone else is asleep and warm inside, holding onto another’s flesh instead of hazy starlight
I sit on this roof with heart overflowing
And watch with sorrow, turned bitter salt, as it falls onto the concrete
The soil for lovers–I am only love
Left alone with starlight
No, you will never be the saddest person on earth.
There will always be someone who is further lost than you,
and you will always feel you are the least deserving of other’s care,
But there is nothing wrong with wanting someone to understand your sadness
There is nothing wrong with desiring sympathy.
You are not the saddest–equally, your heart is not misplaced
just because it doesn’t want to go it alone.
We are all sad sometimes, and tears are not meant to fall in solitude
but in the comfort of knowing they are felt by another
whose heart is open to yours.
Ryoness 