this is a house of refugees, fugitives on the run my father ran, my mother ran, i trail behind, caught between their footprints a family of prey, lonely and wounded, and skittish to the touch, hiding, hiding, from the excruciating pain; but hiding, most of all from ourselves, phantoms in a pantomine, a house of avoidance, a bitter sanctuary in the shadows.

#poetry

do you understand you speak to a ghost- that returned to its body, freely and unchained you see only the intact flesh that healed, but god, you missed the rot that nearly devoured me inside out from beneath my skin i wish you understood, i even wish you'd been there rotting with me under a desert sun not knowing at all how wrong we would be about dying and death

#poetry

i'm the first to see the writing on the wall, to pack my things and slip out, sometimes even in the dead of night. before you even know to look for me, i've fled to the city gates, chased by fires that haven't caught yet but i know my body is made of gunpowder and you are my unlit match. i think i confused fire for water, sought out a spark to lighten me, a desperate pretense when all i crave is to quench this lonely thirst

#poetry

i get excited by the impossible drawing near, like a dizzying glimpse of the sky from beneath skyscrapers; our best effort to pull the heavens closer under an inescapable gravity.

to fly would invite death from the fall, for once i taste flight, will i remember how to land? inside me, i am both Daedalus and Icarus, father and son in painted wax wings, my despair rising the higher i soar.

because in my dreams, i am flying, flying like falling in love, flying like making art, flying like flying, flying like wanting, wanting, to feel the same awake as i did asleep

#poetry

i fall in love with dreams, but i slip from their grasp down to the earth below where my roots shall bury me in water, soil and light i, the foolish seed that wished to fly

#poetry

this is a house of victims who overreact and who fight back who want to cry but won't a house of cruelty and forgiveness of truths and not truths but never lies this is a house of parts parts of me reacting to parts of her reacting to parts of him reacting to the stories we keep telling ourselves traps sprung from the long-dead and this is a house of new beginnings born of pieces of a long cycle, finally broken and put back together again anew a cycle, perhaps, of survival

#poetry

i wake up, feeling love and immediately, the loss of it your side of the bed cold and perfectly still a dream so quickly fading from my memory a fantasy, in truth, this was never your bed but i don't know how to want you less

#poetry

i spend my days building on sinking sand, the tide comes in and washes my life away so i will rebuild and rebuild and rebuild burying my most precious possessions love and hope, deep in the cool dark sand i am locked between land and sea, not made for either so should oceans rise, know i will remain here standing in the sun's warm embrace

#poetry

i toil and i ache and i yearn and i toil i toil and i love and i love too deeply and still i toil i work and i miss chances and i overcorrect i bide my time and wait for a moment and the moment comes! and i stumble and fall and hurt in a torrent of words not meant to be said i toil and i toil and i toil yet still i sweat and i bleed and i cry and i toil for all the bleeding and crying, i cannot stop for i am caught in the difficult labour of birthing something new from my life something easier than this, perhaps

#poetry

this is the abyss and what can possibly comfort it now? this gaping maw, broken open long ago who can go back in time to fix it back? i seek the answer all my life. lovable now, but what about back then, back then!!!! was i lovable then too? or is this love only something i grew worthy of?

this is the abyss of everything i will never be. not comforted nor saved nor reassured at the ages i needed most to be. i stand at the precipice, holding back everything in me that could never be a sacrifice enough to win me love. do you see me? do you come to me to clasp my hand? act quick, anchor me before i fall forward and let it tear me wide open, rendering me more myself than i have ever been: infinite.

#poetry