Angel Baby

 Today I find myself missing you. 

The bad, the ugly, the scary, 

Missing the sound of your tiny not so big heartbeat.

Missing your small body that was going to grow so big.

Today, I find the tears are more on the surface 

I find myself still hating how my body failed you.

Your life was small but I can still feel your soul imprints in my heart. 

We talk about the future and how maybe one more try.

I’m not sure I can, I am scared, I’m terrified. 

The boys want a little girl or another little boy.

The what-ifs bounce around my brain, and I am thinking of you again.

I can’t lose another one.

I can’t fall down that abyss, that black hole one more time.

I don’t know if I’m strong enough, I was barely strong enough to lose you and replace you with another.

Today, I am thinking of you and my heart is heavy and hurting.

Today, I’m going through your memory all alone.

Philiophobia

 Your light so dim

I find myself probing and tugging on the tether our souls. Your heartbeat is slow and labored. Your soul feels faint...fading. My soul is pulling, treading water to keep us both afloat.

My body and being refuse to let you drown, 

I cling to your soul remembering the memories that were happy, sad, maddening, and gut wrenching. Our bond grows soft but I refuse to watch your demise....your supernova. 

I wrap you in a fierce embrace, tendrils holding you close. Your breath with mine. Slowly. 

I won’t let go. I can’t let go, even if it kills me

I can’t do that kind of hurt again.

Arcane

 The moon always so full of himself, but when was that ever a bad thing.

Waxing and waning , disappearing for his own selfish reasons, looking to impress no one but himself

or so it seems. 

Moon makes nostalgic company.

Night conversations, where he confides of the grief he feels. He mourns the glory of Sun.

Only stealing bits of rays to experience a kiss, a touch of her light, her fire.

And i tell him of you. How you make my soul feel alive, sharing in each others light.

Supernatural

 working with shadows is messy business

it's slippery

my hands and clothes always come out damp and sticky.

rubber gloves and hazmat suits don't help much, unless you don't

mind a super-glued skin that smells like rotten eggs and chocolate milk.

Without an Umbrella

 He loves moonlight and shooting stars

and thunderstorms

and football games

and so many other things that have life, fire, and soul.

Soul Catchers

 We touched souls

but not in true love kind of way.

A " Oh there you are, I have been looking for you!" kind of way.

Intimate but not by touch or sight.

Our souls gently tugged on the webbing of connections. 

A slight pull sinful, sensual, liberating, and freeing. 

Our beings intertwining in a complex waltz across the stars.

Something foreign and friendly all at the same time. 

Our lives didn't quite fit together in a jigsaw kind of way

but, our souls knew how to dance, our souls knew how to sing

our souls knew how to debate and exchange. Our

souls used to write love songs and rebel manifestos. Our souls communicated

not through human language but through poetry, deep feelings, metaphors, classic books,

rock 'n' roll, recipe cards, and karma sutras. They didn't have to spend a lifetime translating

each others souls.

Contortionist

Souls that tangle and twist are the most beautiful

the ones that are tortured and artistic in their own ways.

Outsiders, rebels, the broken and down trodden, the loners

starving artists, eccentrics, the little bit crazies. 

Most vibrant, complex, connected canvas of soul.

Rebels and Rainbows

 Her soul was a wild one

finding magic in late nights and sunrises.

finding reflection after a night of binge drinking, shots and shots 

of peppery-fire tequila.

folding worries into paper airplanes and cast off love notes.

finding purpose in black morning coffee and chocolate sprinkle cupcakes.

She had the best stories, but girls who drink whiskey and strawberry

margaritas always do.

Primrose

 Let us live as flowers

unafraid of wild

springing up everywhere 

through cracks and open fields

drenched in thunderstorms and sunshine.

Orphic

 Painted leaves blowing as tiny queen stars 

twinkling with every brush of a breeze swelling in waves

first small and barely lapping the branches.

Rippling down to the base of swollen trunks,

sapling bends as a mast of a ship

slowly.

Clear turquoise sky, solid, hurts your eyes while looking too long.

flat, matte.

An arcrylic colored sky, painted across a night time canvas

Smell of rain touched mud, wet grass, musty wood

gasoline, dry pine smoke.

Robin my only companion, tending to a hidden nest 

beneath the balcony rafters. Back and forth, side to side

gathering twigs and sticks.

Buzzing of honeybees pollinating yellow wildflowers.

Primal, insect lovemaking, rubbing bodies between pollen-laced petals.

disappearing playmates into the tall grass.

A little, finding enjoyment in the random scattering

of rocks and pebbles.

Now grimy hands savoring the many textures of wild.

Yellow sun, hot and sweaty, intoxicating thrumming

Ba-boom, ba-boom of the steady heartbeat

laboring under the blistering rays.

Angels of Chaos

 They stole things no one would miss,

small things first

like time, copper pennies, and sleep

Heavenly disguised angels 

but, their wings gave them away

oily, black, and sleek

Chaos makes their tea and cereal the same way

every evening

milk always first

Form of payment for services rendered 

euros, dollars, stirling silver, broken hearts, red lego bricks

and mismatched socks.

Ghost Stories

Ghosts leave imprints of people on places. Places soak up the tendrils of the dead, hoping to sponge up the last particles of life.
Rust and rot char away at broken windows
infested wood frames
and twisted metal of shells of homes.
Ghosts transcend dimensions to cling to the unfinished memories
memories of a life half lived.

Unanswered letters blow in the dead hanging breeze, never to be opened,
apologies left unsaid, half truths, and honey soaked flattery fading into the pages,
disappearing like the dust of the desert.

I refuse to live among the ghosts, I refuse to live a cursed life. I won't trap myself like an animal. Losing my humanity, laying wake to insanity. Becoming something raw, primal and savage. Ghosts are petty fed on revenge and jealousy of the living.

I want to live in the sun, i want to shout to the tops of branches, i will be known today!

when my time grows short, i won't gasp for images of the past, my life will have been full.
Surrounded by my children and grand-children.
Grey haired and content. I refuse to fade into a ghost.

I will live a life loved. Full.
My ghosts will fade, i will no longer be prisoner.

Thousand Pieces

A part of me died that day, a part of my soul shattered into a thousand pieces.

4 words. 4 words was all it took.

"There is no heartbeat."

Those words hung in the air thick and sticky.

I feel the screaming before i hear it. every fiber in my body screams. 

No, no no no no no no no

I remember everything.

I was losing you so little, so much potential and i couldn't stop it.

My body was failing you. 

I remember them pulling pieces of you out so i wouldn't have to do it at home.

I remember the nurses all crying

I remember my lungs feeling the verge of collapse as i forgot how to breathe. My soul was shattering and no amount of duct tape could keep it together. 

2 days ago i saw your little heartbeat, i saw you wiggle and move. Turning from a tadpole embryo to something more human. You were gone days later and i hated myself.

That morning i woke up full of hope and excitement. I was pregnant but by the afternoon i wasn't. 

I remember slipping into the car and not wanting to go home. Home was safe hours ago, but home was where all hope went. 

A part of me died that day, my soul shattered into a thousand pieces and i am still hunting down those pieces. slowly healing, slowly learning to love myself again.

 slowly realizing it is okay to love my miscarried baby and my rainbow. some days the horrors of that day still break into my dreams. Terrified to think about even trying again, my rainbow's pregnancy was just as rough as your miscarriage. i constant trigger. I am terrified to get pregnant again, but also terrified that i won't ever be again. Luckily i don't have to think that far ahead. just do the next right thing a day at a time. Healing is freeing and sad at the same time. but i am happy to be moving forward not backward.

Better Company

The pages crisp, white, newly-printed. Pressed
safely side by side.
Silent companions.
Colored covers with obscure titles and coy pen names.

I prefer the company of older voices.
Those of Thomas Moore, Jane Austen, Bram Stoker.
Echos of the past that resonate some fractal for of fate.
Lives lived and lives forgotten.

Late nights, early mornings.
Fingers bruised with the tattoos of graphite and colored highlighter.
Writing my own words hidden in the faded pages
Mingling age old insight with those of a woman finding her way back to her own skin.

My favorites are dog-eared, diet coke stained, scribblings
scrunched in the margins. Dusted and smelling of ink, old, pool chlorine

I prefer the company of books. Less hurtful more complicated.

Just rough plots and sharp edges.

Greener Pastures.

She was a thunderstorm, always drenched in a cloak of thunder.
He had the heart of guitar strings, always marching to his own beat.
She hid in the shadows of her own sunshine.
He longed for her to abandon her shadows and run away with him.
Run away to the fields that rolled for miles. Not a cloud in sight and no where to hide.
Just the clothes on their back and the passion in their heart.
A quiet place where he would build her a place to call her own.
A patch of ground for a garden so that her clouds could rain down on them,
a warm wood stove to boil the cold rain out of her veins,
a chair in the corner so that she could hid from her fears.
She hid in the shadows of her own insecurity.
She longed to abandon her shadows and run away with him, she was scared and unsure.
 Her clouds loomed over her with so much pressure and darkness, that she almost forgot what sunshine felt like. And the sun forgot the look of her face.
But she loved him and he loved her, although they had never met.
So she ran, ran away from the thunderstorm and raced to meet him.

She was a different kind of bitter, the kind that is sad.
A fearless sad that turned her favorite color from grey to blue.
The kind of blue that fades to grey with looming thunder.
She was drowning but no one saw her struggle,
just the bubbles.

Monsters don't live under the bed,
they sleep inside your head.

Maniac

Nightmares are back, so are the flashbacks. I am afraid to tell you,
afraid to tell you that the early afternoons are hard to breathe and hard to keep it all together. You like to think I am better and for awhile I thought so too, most days I am fine.
Panic just seems to creep up on me and when I wake up I don't remember where I am.
Sometimes the images and scents come back and the places he touched hurt and throb where the scars will remain, they hurt for no damn reason. It is as if my mind is briefly reliving the event over and over again.
Sometimes the only thing that helps is covering my ears and saying the same thing over and over again. Other days I sit in the laundry room and let the sound of tumble dry and extra spin drown out the rising hysteria. The nightmares don't wake me up screaming anymore, lately I wake up cold and tired and my head feels the same as it did the night he pushed me to the floor and my head it bumped the bed. The kind of nightmares that startle me awake more than anything, the ones where I wake up and the panic floods me. The nightmares aren't even the worst part it's the not knowing when reality starts and my past remains in the past.
I can't sleep with my hair down in long tresses anymore, it gets tangled and I can feel his fingers pulling hair away from my scalp. I always where it up these days. I scratch my arms again, when the hysteria threatens to destroy me and the pain brings realty back into perspective.
It's was better for awhile and now it's back.

Cutting Corners

I want to stand on the edge
the space between the point of no return
and comfort zone.
I want to stand on the edge of the world
a place where the horizon is blurred
and clouds scrap the ground.
The edge os the sky
where rolling thunder treads across
no man's land and
the wind dances amongst the moon.
I want to stand on the edge.

Over my Head

His chilled fingers press ardent roots of recall into my past memories.

Azure eyes gaze back into mine. Mirroring a twisted smile with a crying whimper.

Lucca, my stepfather, was scary when I took and used his time, even if it was his idea. A slapping sting turns my face from translucent and sickly to a flaming red.

The Ghana vase’s reflection is ceramic ice and reveals the truth of my abuse. Bruises across my collarbone, back, and arms, scratches and gashes from a starved dog he kept at the back of the house, cigarette burns between my shoulder blades and on the inside of my thighs, my bones protrude at odd angles from fractures and lack of nutrition.

I can’t eat, this is my choice, it would still be my choice even if my jaw hadn’t taken the beating for me the night before and the week before that. But, that’s not what I call it, neither reward nor punishment.

The vase shows the teeth of keys, lots of keys locking windows, doors, and chains. I used to hear sounds of a car, and the garble of employees discussing the office. I heard them, but they failed to lift t heir eyes to my screams or my crying when I was little.

They were always too absorbed in their own lives of money, relationships, and work to help a neighbor or save a child.

I wanted to fight back but parting is sorrowful and useless, I don’t want to fight what I can’t avoid.

I won’t know how much trouble I am in until he starts weeping blood, weeping it cold and frozen down his cheeks, the day he regrets how he took my childhood away, but never being able to stop

Even now…