Limbs

It's fascinating, how two souls connect -
Not just in mind, or heart - Feeling, as I often do,
The small arms of my heart reach out and
Caress you, when I look at your face.
You often catch me staring.
The tendrils of my limbs memorizing the
Shape of your body by entwining it.
The sight, the touch, the sound, the taste.
Are you my lover, my escape, the key
To reawakening the zest I used to feel
For those higher notions of Genius,
Beauty, & Truth? Or, are you simply there,
That man before me, walking softly through
My spheres until caught in the web of my
Miseries and my eccentricities - where I paint
You in silver and unfairly imbue you with the
Magical powers to heal my troubled soul?
For now, you are the hand I hold, the chin I scratch,
The eyes I graze, the heart I have.
Let the slow hands of time
and the even slower dreams of sleep
Consider all the rest.

1/31

Our Eyes

I see you peering back from underneath
The folds above my grandfather's - your father's
- eyes. The drooping eyes,
The brown eyes I inherited from you, that drip
Sadly down in the corners, that crinkle when you smiled,
Were eyes that you inherited from him.
And even though he came first,
You still left before him,
And now I see you appearing again,
Born again in those eyes, with their often
Vacant, searching expression, at the crinkly
Laugh of recognition, of love.
The lines in his face are similar to the lines you
Held in yours before you left,
And I'm once again made aware of the thin
Veil between we still living and where you are,
Seeing you peek out from behind his eyes, our eyes
(I can keep your secret), imagining you within,
Holding his hand as we held yours,
Waiting, waiting, waiting,
For all the lights to dim.

1/28

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

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.

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

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.

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.