It beats in surrendered corners and
in shreds scattered through the wind and
In ashes that fed the bonfire we lit and
(It was never so bright before)
within us.

An inkling of the cracks,
this is the surface too but
it's just inside, I'm just here, but
it's unknown to you and
you are within me, deeply
as I am outside the world that
is you.

Wait, they don't love you like I love you.

Reach out and extend arms,
inward please, not out,
but no- that's not right-
You can't reach in,
And I can't come out.

2011

"They write of love as if there is nothing else. I smirk in hushed, polite tones. At the eventuality of these things, at the quick collapse, at the necessary process of making it amount to something. At least we've got pretense."

look back,
deja vu and recollections
of having seen this before
and often.

kairosclerosis

kairosclerosis

n. the moment you realize that you’re currently happy—consciously trying to savor the feeling—which prompts your intellect to identify it, pick it apart and put it in context, where it will slowly dissolve until it’s little more than an aftertaste.

 kairosclerosis,
every moment with you
was kairoscelrosis.
 
do you remember that night
that day,
or even that moment,
a fraction of a second
when you told me
that forever couldn't 
describe how long you
wanted to be with me?

maybe, maybe i
constructed that,
i constructed the real,
and not-so-real
the carefully painted greys
that i am now living
and dying simultaneously
as i live out this love
on my own.

how many sorrows should
i pen?
i am curled up into myself
curled up in memories
curled up in nothingness
and i am edging out of your mind
the more i draw myself in,
exhale to make space
in my stomach,
i cannot make way
in my head
i cannot empty it of you


 

The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows

liberosis

n. the desire to care less about things—to loosen your grip on your life, to stop glancing behind you every few steps, afraid that someone will snatch it from you before you reach the end zone—rather to hold your life loosely and playfully, like a volleyball, keeping it in the air, with only quick fleeting interventions, bouncing freely in the hands of trusted friends, always in play.

  nodus tollens
 n. the realization that the plot of your life doesn’t make sense to you anymore—that although you thought you were following the arc of the story, you keep finding yourself immersed in passages you don’t understand, that don’t even seem to belong in the same genre—which requires you to go back and reread the chapters you had originally skimmed to get to the good parts, only to learn that all along you were supposed to choose your own adventure.
 nighthawk
n. a recurring thought that only seems to strike you late at night—an overdue task, a nagging guilt, a looming and shapeless future—that circles high overhead during the day, that pecks at the back of your mind while you try to sleep, that you can successfully ignore for weeks, only to feel its presence hovering outside the window, waiting for you to finish your coffee, passing the time by quietly building a nest.
 adronitis

n. frustration with how long it takes to get to know someone—spending the first few weeks chatting in their psychological entryway, with each subsequent conversation like entering a different anteroom, each a little closer to the center of the house—wishing instead that you could start there and work your way out, exchanging your deepest secrets first, before easing into casualness, until you’ve built up enough mystery over the years to ask them where they’re from, and what they do for a living.

adomania 

 n. the sense that the future is arriving ahead of schedule, that all those years with fantastical names like ‘2013’ are bursting from their hypothetical cages into the arena of the present, furiously bucking the grip of your expectations while you lean and slip in your saddle, one hand reaching for reins, the other waving up high like a schoolkid who finally knows the answer to the question.

tilt shift

n. a phenomenon in which your lived experience seems oddly inconsequential once you put it down on paper, which turns an epic tragicomedy into a sequence of figures on a model train set, assembled in their tiny classrooms and workplaces, wandering along their own cautious and well-trodden paths—peaceable, generic and out of focus.

the bends

n. frustration that you’re not enjoying an experience as much as you should, even something you’ve worked for years to attain, which prompts you to plug in various thought combinations to try for anything more than static emotional blankness, as if your heart had been accidentally demagnetized by a surge of expectations.

I am trying and trying and trying, every day and every second, but letting go is the hardest thing I have ever had to do. I wish it was anger, I wish it was hatred or anything but this feigned indifference that I can't shake off. You were never/are not worth it, and knowing that makes it worse. Sweep it all under the rug, sweep it away until I can ignore that nag in my head, that hole in my heart that was you but now is emptiness. I am trying to fill it, but I am a bad combination of weak and strong, ego and emotion, anger and love- and when I try, it is futile, because everything just gets washed out with the next wave of nostalgia.
There is nothing but a giant cloud of sadness that swallows me and overwhelms me and gnaws away at me. I feel myself falling apart, just falling away, the layers peeling and peeling and peeling, and I am left standing naked under scrutiny, feeling like a roach about to be stepped on, like the entire burden of worthlessness in this world is beginning to crush me and I am making it my own.
I keep talking to a non-existent you, and you never leave because you were never present to begin with. You are everywhere, in my dreams and my thoughts, you are the unspoken, but immensely felt.

Where is the glue to heal my heart?