Wednesday, November 23, 2011

You Came Out to Me

You came out to me last night,
And I saw your closet doors, your battle scars,
Fitted neatly with wings - not flying open with
A bang, or even a whimper, but with the slow
Whooshing of a thousand whispers of the people
Who came out before you, voices of
Solidarity that hadn't yet been given the
Strength to speak loudly enough
For you to hear their encouraging words.
I won't claim responsibility for
The strength it took you to unlock
The iron bars that surrounded
Your castle - after all, the moat
Was dry from lack of use and
Many others had already seen inside those
Gates long before you met me.
But from where we stand, you and I,
We know that coming out is a
Forever process, a perpetual becoming,
And the scars left on your wrists of throwing
wide those heavy doors often have
little time to heal from constant use.
I wish for you the strength to hear
The whispers of the wings that held
Your doors open while we spoke -
The wings that will, one day, with
The help of all the voices we can muster,
Carry those doors away from you,
From us all,
And let us finally meet the world's full embrace
Without our walls.

11/23 1:45 AM

Sunday, October 30, 2011

Writing is writing is writing

Unedited: written 10/29

That moment when you realize
that maybe you stopped writing
because you want everything to stand still,
and it won't. That maybe
events and discussions, things that weren't
planned, hearts that got broken
or things that you said, might never
have existed if you didn't write it down.
And yet... life moves on.
That moment when you realize
that breathing's always easier
when you do not hold your breath.
That the world will always turn
beneath you, even if you don't
open your eyes, or put one
foot before the other.
When you sit and feel and experience
the rest of what you chose to forgot, and
you realize so much out there
is bigger than you could ever be,
and the dots begin connecting.
And your words are still words.
They hold time, they hold distance,
they hold memory, and pain.
They still create worlds, bring
people back from the dead, and while
you might be ashamed
that you'd dropped your pen for
a moment - the world moves on and
all you can do is pick it back up and begin
where you left off.
Because painting the past you tried
to forget could take the rest of your life,
and take away the future you could be weaving
as the world breathes with you now.
If you move on with the world, you'll
find that breathing is easier, writing
is easier, walking is easier. And the dots
connecting the things that are bigger
than ourselves will collect us with them.

Sunday, October 23, 2011

conversation

When heaviness arrives,
we teeter on precipices,
dancing on the tops of words
with meanings the surfaces
of which we can only scratch.
This intricate choreography between
our minds has been my
favorite song, all this time,
and I will continue to dig
into deeper meanings and words
with you
Until these feet can no longer dance
and until the beautiful heaviness
of our souls pulls us into sleep deep,
deep inside the earth,
and all conversations cease and grow
into something larger than ourselves.

10/23

Wednesday, September 7, 2011

Not Sure

We meld together here
beneath your sheets,
my arm draped across you,
twisted in something more
than sleep. My hand searches
out your heartbeat
as I watch the rise and fall
of your chest, the flutter of your
eyelids, that tell me your body
isn't finished thinking, yet
isn't quite awake. We've both
been here before, we discover,
on the dark threshold of
foreboding stairs, and
looking into each other's eyes now
is like looking into those
open doorways, not sure where
next to find our footing
when we step through,
not sure where next to place
my hand, not sure whether
we'll fall apart, or fall together,
or merely fall asleep.

Friday, August 26, 2011

Labyrinthine

Written 6/2

It took me three weeks just to
lift the wire shelves you'd used to hold
your clothes - the shirts and jeans,
workout shorts and lounge pants that overflowed
from your bureau.
I lifted them hesitantly, now empty,
as if I might find some hidden piece of you
lurking on the floor beneath them.
The criss-cross pattern of the bottom shelf
was etched into the carpet, and I followed
its labyrinthine maze with my eyes,
climbing it like a trellis,
reading it like a heiroglyph.
The indentation of the carpet carried
the weight of your clothes, of
pieces of you - the imprint of your existence
pushed into the floor, which slowly
gave beneath you, over time,
to mold itself to your shape.
Soon I will lift and move those empty shelves.
I'll stare at the imprint on the carpet
and soak in the last semblances of you
in my home - of your physical affects here.
But my heart will not spring back like this
carpet - it, too, bears the imprint of
the weight of your existence, but it had
caved in, given in completely to offer itself
a home to your feet when they were tired
to your head when it was weary
For your body when it ached.
Perhaps I can be assuaged
knowing that I, myself, am one of the
living effects of your life here.
The weight of your body on my body,
the changes in me that you manifested.
They are still here, like an imprint,
a handprint, a labyrinthine indentation
that not even time and distance can erase.

Under Your Umbrella

8/27

Quietly and unexpectedly,
you approached me like the silent calm
before a storm, unassuming, with
a brace on your left leg, a slight limp
to your walk disguising the
elaborate choreography of your body.
You caught me in my rainy season,
in the pause between deluges,
and handed me your umbrella to
ward off the oncoming clouds.
But the clouds you brought behind you
had already broken, as I broke over
your silent calm, and your silent calm
poured over me,
the umbrella laying needless at my door
as I took your hand and guided you inside.

For R--, Sleeping Beside Me:

8/25

You kissed me on the threshold of the
bedroom closet of my new apartment;
Taking a break from sorting through ties
and vests and old button-up shirts,
the vestiges of past identities and
the only things I packed that carried
any weight - along with my dog
and my heartache.
We met, open-mouthed, our bodies
about-to-touch, our tongues poised
to drink in each other's language,
in that just-before moment between
the giving and the receiving, the intertwining,
the yes-and-no of our futures,
that liminal space we occupy,
while our eyes dance circles around one another,
my hand taking in the nape of your neck,
and our bodies colliding in the
quiet space of our transitions
and our transcendences.

Wednesday, June 22, 2011

The Space Between

Written 10/18/2010:


You brought me here, to white-washed walls
To the place where the space between
People becomes the space between words
Becomes the space between particles
Becomes the space between water
And the inhale of breath before the
Exhale of speaking becomes the inhale
Of wind before the exhale of leaves
Becomes the breath of God.