My Soul Resides in a Haunted House

It’s so effortlessly poetic,
The disillusioned city lights
Screaming something vital at me.
I guess I let the sirens seem cynical
While I laid, half dressed, against my
Creaking bedroom wall, closed my eyes
And just listened.

I could smell the cobwebs burning,
First along the ceiling,
Soon to my nightstand.
I had creaked my door open.
Your heart pounded butane
Through flimsy veins,
Admiring Arachne’s work
In every corner of my mind,
Every crack in the windowsill.
And then, in all your glory,
You ignited.

I suppose it really is just that easy
To watch years of ignorance disintegrate.
With every pale strand
Charred black from end to end,
I yearned to hear the bumps in the night
And creaking and cobwebs and chaos
To give my soul a tangible reason
to feel haunted.

Now, I sit in dead silence,
Blowing voids in the smoke,
Ringlets in the fog.
Me, in the silence,
With ghosts that don’t know where the door is.

Internal Conflict on a Mountaintop

I reminded myself today what I live for.

I live for myself, and also for You. "You" are the silhouette of an oak tree in the distance in front of a cloudless sunset. You are the moon waning and waxing and waning once more, rising sometimes at midnight and others at midday. You are the frightful exhilaration one feels when standing at dangerously high altitudes, save of oxygen, and somehow not even caring in the presence of beauty of the snowcapped mountains in all directions. They stand so real and surreal that the familiar, yet hugely exemplified reaction on my tongue nearly implodes my taste buds although my mouth hangs open and empty.

Where did "You" go? Did I lose You in the fight to focus only on the colors behind the dark, yet breathtaking oak? Did I hide from the beauty in the wane of the moon while embracing the wax, or from the abnormality of it's rare rising in the midday while hoping for the world to mysteriously change, and stop changing?

If I stood on those mountains now, would I struggle desperately for air and in my moments of near-death weakness, fail to realize I have consequently seen heaven?

The myriad of differences between being long-lived versus living.

The day has come years too early; the one where one walks along a sidewalk of a crowded street and sees an eighty-year-old woman walking to the same beat, with the same fallen shoulders, with the same look of constant apprehension that he or she has oneself.

I discovered today that I walk from destination to destination completely reliant on this woman's cane.

I discovered today that I cannot smile without feeling my cheeks stiffen.

I discovered today that I have been robbed of years and years. While those who have lived as long as I begin to stiffen in their fingers and knees, I will have already began stirring in my grave.

The never-ending parent saga

I may never know if the circumstances truly called for a second chance or not, but it seems to me that they have never deserved it.

We argued today. Well, it was more of me being yelled at for once. Usually I do my part in the fighting, I'll admit, but today was different. My sister wanted to go see Sex and the City and I was really, really tired. I told her I'd go but if she was willing to go another time, I'd prefer it. So she went and told my mom that I refused to go and my mom flipped out.

Basically, my parents locked me in their bedroom and yelled at me. Their list of complaints for the evening: I am the most self-centered person they've ever met. My life is so perfect and my family is so great that I have no room to complain about anything (yes, these words actually came out of my mom's mouth). I asked to leave and my dad told me that if I did, my head would meet the wall. He then continued to tell me that I am the sole cause of all of our family's problems. Financial, emotional, blah blah blah. All of it.

Usually, I fight back. Usually, I will raise my voice back at them, stand up for myself. Tonight was the first time in three years where for all of the literally ten minutes I got yelled at, I covered my face with my hands and just waited it out.

I am sick of taking the blame for things that aren't my fault. I am smart enough to know when I push the line or when I truly deserve the grief they give me. I know when to back down, succumb to their ideas, even when I disagree. I know when I'm in the wrong and I usually take accountability for my part, although I never do so without pointing out their fault in a situation too. Tonight, I didn't say anything. I couldn't say anything. Tonight, I realized that I am a completely different person from three years ago, but they haven't changed. There are many reasons for why this is... but nevertheless, I cannot handle it.

I just... don't know what to do. I can't handle this. I can't handle any of it, and I especially can't handle it alone like I have been.

Bittersweet Things End Bitter

It has come.
The moth to the streetlight,
The poison in my gin.

I'm sick of waking up every morning
With a paperback romance novel
On my bedstand
and the warm body it promised
Would always stick around for morning coffee
Gone without a raincheck.

I've taken too many perfect pearls
Out of their oysters
Just to feel them crack in between my
Grinding teeth,
Never to be made into something beautiful.

These wings smoldering in the limelight,
The glory of that burning sensation is gone.
It has come.

My Own Dark Love Song

I wrote this the day that my horse had a serious surgical procedure. It's written poorly but I'll never change a word of this anyway-- it's so raw that, eight months later, it rips my heart out of my chest just as violently as the day of his surgery.

___________________________________________


There's nothing quite like seeing all your happiness fall in between the crevices and gaps of your life.

I really hate seeing you with needles in your back. I hate seeing every muscle between your ribs spasm uncontrollably and the way you kick out in protest when I even touch you.

Yet when you're drugged; I hold your head for you. I am, as usual, in awe of your effortless perfection. You are currently a little scraggly around the outer edges of your lips, but that's still my favorite place to kiss you. The hairs on your forelock meet in a clockwise spiral with a little bald spot in the middle. Your eyes are light brown, your pupils slightly glazed over.

You are very kissable here, in this sacred soft spot between your left ear and the beginning of your mane. It is always warm and soft there. It never changes. I want to barracade myself inside it, inside of what you have given me just by existing.

I whispered to you today. I whispered my fears of losing you, but more importantly, my fears of willingly letting you go. I whispered prayers that you'd realize how important you are to me, how much I can love you if you just didn't feel this pain anymore. I whispered prayers that you would listen. I whispered prayers that you could even hear.

Sometimes, I swear you can understand every word I speak and every move I make. I can predict you. I can communicate with you. I feed off your resillience and struggle in your indifference.

I love you more than anything in the world, but what am I? I have given up caring, for you and your sweet eyes look at me and I feel like I can go another moment knowing I am acknowledged by something so much greater than myself.

And then you break.

What if I should decide that I don't want you there in my life?

It's a decision, not a choice. A decision is carefully measured, thoroughly contemplated and eventually, one "decides" depending on what hurts the least and what can let one continue his or her pristine life with the least amount of effort as possible. A choice is reckless and one "chooses" depending on what elates the soul the most.

I choose you. I choose the bills, the heartache, the lack of progression, the risk and the disappointment.

But I live in a world of decisions.




Please heal. If not for me, then for yourself.
Just keep thinking, in complete ignorance, that I will never give up on you.

Eyes for Miles

You have Mona Lisa eyes.

I've been told that, too, but more when I was a child. Mommy would dress me like a character out of Dr. Zhivago and my sister and I would bask in the soft clicking and camera flashes. By the time we could string sentences together, we could rotate our heads to catch our jaws and noses at their better angles.

My sister, however, never caught the Mona Lisa eyes like I did. I won my prizes and acclaim, but also the ability to mystify anyone within five seconds of making eye contact.

They told me that my Mona Lisa eyes never seemed to end, that I had eyes for miles.

You, too, have such mastery hidden within the confines of the normal set of lashes. Wash your face! I break in seeing the dark circles around your eyes, etched into your skin a little more deeply with every oblivious assertion you make. Take off this mask adorned in pearls and splotches of color! No magentas or teals shine more brightly than the deep cream of your skin and the flushed pink of your cheekbones. Nevertheless, I can still see your irises beyond the Venician artistry you hold so proudly... and I want inside them.

Yet, I must remind myself that you are only as good as your worst moment in time, the worst self you have ever projected to shatter through the pristine looking glass I see you through.

You may have eyes for miles, but what road can one follow if the power is out and no one is home?

To Follow

I’ve known both the purity of a starlit desert night
And the comfort found in an illuminated city street.
I have lain on sands with my palms touching
Bits of dried sage brush,
My chest expanding and deflating
Rhythmically to the slow beat
Of the wilderness.
A velvet coverlet encompasses it all
From horizon to horizon,
But I somehow breathe more freely
Under this dark blanket,
Where I will never fear to inhale
As much air as possible
With every breath.
Yet, I now stand in a barren city.
As I walk, I feel nothing
But the vast nothingness within this road,
Nothing but my heels clicking against the concrete.
Do not call me to the sidewalk,
For I choose to sit on the yellow lines
In the middle of the road,
For this unsettling fog looms around each streetlight,
Glowing pale
And orange,
Like the ground below is smoldering.
While I may be from a place of
Expensive coffee cups and car horns,
I will never be guided
By smoke-surrounded lamps
Inevitably leading to the fire.
In the desert,
When you are the ice-capped mountains
And the tipis
And the sunrise
And the Sioux,
We see every star as the Northern star.

The Immaculate Narcissist and her Mudslide Brown Walls

I eventually did uncover something so much more, and for that I am extremely grateful.


_____________________________________________________




My stomach churns every second I spend in this room. The ceiling is too low for my taste and the walls were recently repainted, although the previous murky brown is still noticable underneath the white, leaving it a bland shade of beige only seen on color swatches and hospital walls. One can walk into this specific room with no previous knowledge of it whatsoever, smell the turpentine clinging to the carpet and feel an urge to know what type of person would paint a perfectly average room mudslide brown.

I know her. Its the same woman who later splashed the walls with the current color. "I change with the tides," she boastfully claims, "and it just happens that white primer depicts renewal and I am not ready to give the perfection of such situational chastity away any time soon."

So here I sit, in a crimson chair, at a wooden desk with these blinding white walls. One cannot remember why he or she wastes time here when there's honestly nothing to decipher. There's interesting posters sprawled on the walls to read, sure- if you find relative interest and artistic merit in having "truths" placed in your hands.

But I, begrudgingly quiet throughout even the most intriguing of conversations that take place in that room, stare absentmindedly at those walls. All I can think of is that appalling paint job from so long ago and whether or not I will ever have the chance to scrape this surface and uncover something less surreal than this seemingly "immaculate" narcissist.

A Con Artist

You and I, we have played this game before,
This same game of chess
In early Central Park.
You know the statistics as well
As we can possibly understand the moons
But you play with Southern charm
and a bishop or knight in deep pockets.

Time halts mercilessly
While you fabricate yourself
In a deep, deliberate drawl.
You reach inside your coat
Casually, without
hesitation, and
You cannot speak in the silence.

In this, you somehow tell me
I am beautiful,
In the milisecond you look at me
as though I breathe the air you do,
In this, you make me
cry in your facade, derived from
this
bittersweet
juncture of existences.

I ignore the black pieces you placed atop the board
until you call checkmate
on my white king.

Synapses

Page two hundred ninety of your
Political masterpiece speaks of
Your "sneering indifference".
I can't play the part that rings
For impartiality,
For I am from Jordan
and bask in the buoyancy abounding
from the Dead Sea.
I sail here because more than
a pinch of salt is needed to lift me.
I am moved by winds and rains
And grains of sand are able to
Burn mySweltering fingertips
To the point where the
Intricate ridges
Are no longer seen.
As you shift to page two ninety one,
I close my eyes and hear the soft clicks
Of your vintage typewriter
And weep.
For to know physics is to know
how slowly you are sinking
To the freshwater floor,
That your hand can blister from heat
And you will stay hovered over the flame.
To know you is to know
You will never understand
What it means to feel.