December.

As I walked in the woods in early December, I noticed the leaves damp and rotting on the ground. At first I was saddened. The trees had lost their beauty and color and had to see the remainders laying on the ground. Then I began to think…to compare the woods to my own situation. I considered how the leaves fell and rotted, yet, over the course of a long winter, they helped to nourish the soil to allow new life to come forth.

I entertained the notion that perhaps each failed relationship, each broken promise, each fallen tear was a leaf. The tree had to let each of those things go so they could fall to the ground, out of mind. I pondered upon how each one of those things could eventually, through death and decay, bring forth new and healthy life.

And suddenly it seemed a lot more like spring.

Visit.

I remember the look on his face as he watched me put the car in park and roll down the window. I remember the way he walked towards my car, and the sound of his voice as he said my name.

I love the way you say my name. You put more accent on the first syllable than anyone else does.

After he said my name, I was so lost. I remember saying something to him – I no doubt stumbled over my words – and I’m sure he responded like people usually do.

I have always thought of you as an eloquent person, even if you do use the same words as everyone else.

I remember when he said he had to go, and when I put my car back into drive and pressed the accelerator, leaving him in a cloud of exhaust behind me. I remember running the stop sign at the end of the alley, and waiting to let the tears start until my window was rolled up.

If I was alive during those moments, I didn’t notice.

I could feel my heart beating in my throat, and I could have counted my ragged breaths…but without him, I could not feel myself living.

The room off the kitchen.

I sat in a stiff computer chair in the room off her kitchen, trying to calm down. I first distracted my furious mind by looking around at all of the things that adorned the walls of the unfamiliar room. There were dog bowls and stacks of aluminum cans waiting to be recycled, brooms and shopping bags. A large shelf was hung on the door, and it was home to various medications, cleaning supplies, and insecticides.

The shelf on the door prompted a line of thinking that I found particularly alarming. After mere seconds of studying labels, my mind had formulated dozens of lethal compounds. I wondered if that would finally bring an end to the seemingly endless task of getting past the things that happened to me in the past months.

I realized the danger – the horror – of such thoughts, and I closed my eyes tightly, until all I could see was a field of brightly colored fractals, dancing across my vision. I put my head in my cool hands and tuned my senses instead to the faint ticking that seemed to originate a few inches from my ear. The rhythmic beating grew more and more distant, and then was gone all together.

I could not decide if time or my heart had given up first.

Walking on you.

I came here because I thought that, perhaps, I could find you. Not you, in your real and definite human form – such a thing no longer exists – but by chance some shadow…some reminder of what you used to be.

The bench where we sat that day was empty but for moss and dying leaves, and the cold wind numbed my bare fingers and emotionless face. I sat, and was quite alone.

A single bird sang through the woods, and I was reminded of your singing voice. I hadn’t heard it in months, but I remembered it clearly from all of the times you sang to me, and I to you.

In my immobility and retrospection, I grew more chilled than I had been before. My eyes were too cold to cry, and my mind too frigid to remember you, and my soul too frozen to be able to find you in that once-special place.
I slowly returned to my feet, and walked on, hearing your whisper in the leaves that rustled beneath my feet.

Bells.

You are a thousand silver bells
lined around my heart,
and each time it beats,
it shakes you.
You jingle through me,
serenading each moment.

Contrast.

I could write a letter that I know I’d never send, but that would only aid me while neglecting you and the situation as a whole. If I delivered the letter I wrote, it would rectify the problems entirely, but it would crush both of us…perhaps to the point of an ultimate death. Therefore I will lay aside my pen and paper and avoid the issue completely. We’ll just continue to act like we’re happy, and all the while compose never-to-be-written letters on the blotters of our minds.

-

You are more than my life. Yes, I need you to live…I need you more than air and water and sleep. You permeate my every attempt to stay alive, for you are my reason for surviving. You force me to wake in the morning…to rise from the dreams that could never compare to reality. You are my livelihood…my happiness. To say that you are my life would be to say that you have a definite end. You have no limits, and neither shall our time together.

It’s been a bad day.

The world is burning and crumbling,
We remain cold and still.
I wonder what they’re thinking
That causes them to move
I wonder what they’re drinking
To warm their bodies and souls
And we stand, quite still.
No words are necessary
To sense our concurrent processes of mind
Since our common deviation from them says enough
And we are most certifiably alone…

You can’t see me?

Windowpanes covered with ebony paint

A gypsy shawl tossed over the oil lamp

An airplane obstructing the sun

A stranger’s hands over your eyes as they said “Guess who?” but you can’t.

All the light’s blocked out.

You can’t see me?

Pillows in the belly of a bass drum

A silencing finger on a child’s lips

A deaf veteran who just wants to tell, he’s heard everything anyway

Rain on a tin roof of home, empty but for thick times-gone-past

All things are silent.

You can’t hear me?

A blanket with a hold that lets in the breeze

A balloon the girl released, replaced once Mom set down her funnel cake

A book in a language they don’t teach in grammar school

The boy whose A’s were never hung on the mostly empty fridge

All things forsaken.

You can’t even love me?

Ask Dylan Thomas.

I see a new way to ruin my life once every five minutes. Every turn, every person, every time…I talk to you.

Wondering how much I should ruin just now and which varieties of corruption I should save for a later date.

But ruining one’s life makes for good literature.

Ask Dylan Thomas.

Trash Day.

A tissue, a bottle, two broken pens.

Gum wrappers, leaves, old Altoid tins.

Pieces of string and popsicle sticks,

Broken child’s toys that no one could fix.

Bills left unpaid, tags from new clothes,

Dental floss, cans, and the peak of my woes:

Crumpled with love,

Crumpled with hate,

A picture – of you.