Life is weird. I’m responding with poetry. Here are two pieces I wrote in the last week.
I should have known better...
Every time I pause,
take a breath,
relax the muscles in my chest that I swear
are keeping my heart from ripping
its way out,
my breath becomes a gasp.
Is it longing?
Surprise?
Fear?
Maybe it’s everything all at once.
“I’m fine.”
“I’m doing well.”
Sure you are.
But my defenses grow complacent and
every spike of resentment
I plant in the earth has shallow roots and
Hope big-bad-wolf’s in the times of quiet but
spikes horizontal don’t protect my soul from the damage you deal.
You deal.
Your deal.
Always your deal.
Maybe I should have known better.
Empty
Have you ever been empty?
Unaligned in time?
An artifact of the past,
No longer memory.
Unfound, I imagine life before,
Feeling important,
Carrying messages of love, of hope.
“I’m on my way,” he said.
“Where?” I want to ask, but he disappeared,
back into the street.
The door on us slammed shut.
I can barely remember not feeling empty,
Metal bars holding me hostage,
watching the world through plexiglass,
blurred and scuffed with age.
Long fingernails, not an embrace but
A passionate scratch.
No amount of contact made her feel whole either.
The grass grows up around me,
Blades tickling,
Embraces me.
But fullness doesn’t happen from the outside in.
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