Mythological Realities

There will always be a part of me
That loves you
But even though people are fragile we’re not meant
To be broken in to parts
So I mean that in every organ and skin cell
There are still memories of you
Still has wishes of you especially
My fingertips that long for the warmth
I never experienced in regards to distance
But I broke those pieces off anyway
Wrapped them in a cloth
And stored it in a box and put it in the ocean
Trying to forget it

But I could still feel it
The surrounding dampness and
Sea salt soaking in
I could feel it shake at the sight of
Strange sea creatures
And tremble and surrender to the
Songs of tragedy of the whales
Who circled it for weeks trying to understand
It’s own sad frequency 
And inability to communicate properly
What exactly it - I - was feeling

But I stopped feeling it for a while
Sometime after a thunderstorm had crossed
The Atlantic I believed it was swallowed
In it’s of fear of thunder
Or split apart, unable to bear the fist
Of the waves
And I lost feeling of everything

But I didn’t look for it
I didn’t go after it trying to find all the pieces
So the rest of me wouldn’t be just as numb
People aren’t meant to be broken
So when we loose even the worst part of ourselves
Can guess what would happen?
We server parts of an intricate system
That can stop all function, feeling and sense of direction

Still I found it again
Washed up on the skin
Of another woman who
Wasn’t right for me
And I didn’t know it till I found
The pieces of me that carried
The part that loved you
That reminded me that no
I will never find another person like you
But I’m more than just an ego booster
And I don’t belong on a shelf

There will always be apart of me that loves you,
And I’ll bring it to my grave with me
And I used to believe that without you I am incomplete
But I have never been anything less than
Whole

And you will not be the last person
To love me for all that I am

I hold my wrist up to the light
As if it were an egg and
I’m trying to find the life 
Beating inside

It’s not help, they say
To break the shell
Cut the creatures loose
Before they’re really due.

You’re the last sunset
Viewed by the ninety year old woman
In the wheelchair on top of the hill
Where she met her lover picking
The dandelions between the acorns
And holding them up to you, the sunset
Where she wished for the map
That would lead her to the greatest treasure
And she found it underneath the skin
She traced with her fingers for over fifty years
Of the woman,
Who is now sitting in the wheelchair
On top of the hill

There’s cancer trying to live in her lungs
And the doctors only gave her three months
Three years ago so she waits on the hill top
With a dandelion in her hand
Watching her last sunset
Day after day
Like the wonder of the wish
That planted the treasure map
On her skin some fifty years ago

She doesn’t have anything else to live for
Cept her last sunset
Come again and again
Knowing that everything your light touches
Is such a miracle

Your beauty is a force to be reckoned with

It lights my eyes like a flash of wildfire
Leaving me stunned and staring
Keeps the breath inside my lungs
Holds it tight and doesn’t let go
Puts pressure against my windpipe
So even my thoughts can’t breathe

I think that is what it means to be
Drop dead, gorgeous

I have a snowflake on my chest
And she doesn’t even know she’s there
She rises and falls with my breathing
That I try to keep even
So that I don’t destroy the delicate pattern
Of her living

My hands are frozen at my sides
I can’t touch her for she’ll melt
And then drip
Off of my finger
So the only memory I have left of her
Is the cold wet kiss on the tips
That will numb and fade into a memory

I don’t want to be just a memory

I wrote a poem once
I said that my heart was a shooting star
I meant that no matter what
I’d always do whatever I could to make
Her wishes come true
But I realize now that
We’re just falling
That stars crash and burn
Supernova and explode
In the final moments of their existence

But I’m still breathing with you
Riding delicately against my chest
So maybe my heart is just lost
In the woods somewhere
Crash landed the moment I spoke
The wrong words and now
I’m struggling to find the right ones

Because if I say nothing
I’ll be a scar of the land
That no one will ever notice
Tucked away in the depths of the forest
A small twist on the flesh of the Earth
That no one will ever know of
That the single snowflake melting
Against me will never remember

Today I carried all the rocks in my pockets
Down to the lake in my neighborhood
And stood in the middle waiting
To drown 
But I didn’t even
Sink below the surface as
If God wanted to say 
“Fuck you
This is just how life is”
Yesterday I laid on the cold tile
For hours because I needed to feel something
Tomorrow maybe I’ll go see 
A therapist so they’ll give me anything
That will make these feelings go away
But I know I won’t
Because even though I’ll make the call
I stop at the doorway and
Realize that I never chopped
Down the forest growing in my throat
That prevents most words from surfacing
I’ve got a whole jungle inside my body y’all
Dangerous creatures live inside of here
Snarls and howls echo in the bone-yard
Made of my rib cage
Striped cats with manes and teeth
The size of heads 
Leave footprints on the inside of my veins 
While dragons do loops around
My brain, the force of the wind
Created by their wings 
Molding a canyon out
Of my own sanity
And it’s only me stuck inside here
There’s nothing else
Grief plants the seeds that
Won’t stop sprouting
It tells me that I shouldn’t cut
This place down
I shouldn’t hack through all the
Vines and thorns pressing
Against the sack in my chest
Because no one wants to hear
About the sadness that aches your bones
No one wants to know
That you’re on the edge of crisis
But my bones tell me
To speak up
Write this poem
Write it for you
Write it and give it to the therapist
Write it and repeat it when you’re alone
Like you do with your others
Write it because you’ve been told too often
To only speak when you’re spoken too
And then just forgotten
I wonder, sometimes,
Standing on the surface of my lake
If this is how Jesus felt
When he could walk on water
I doubt it but
I still believe that it takes a sort
Of god-like power to be able to
Be yourself
Or walk outside of the door some day
Not everyone will understand that
It’s like a talent for living
For breathing and getting out of bed
If you made it to work on time today
You deserve a medal
Today my mom is in the kitchen
And I want to tell her I’ve hit rock bottom
But only crows fly from my mouth
Shaken from the trees by the sound
Of my breakdown
And instead they send out little lies
And we talk about nothing instead
Yesterday I tried to drown by putting
Rocks in my pocket
But just stood on the water like Jesus
Tomorrow I’ll lay on the floor
And think about calling a therapist
Tomorrow though
I’ll still be here
Maybe
If I can make it through the
Night but I don’t want
To think beyond that right now
I can’t
I just need to make it through today
So I can live tomorrow

Your name is the love letter
I stored in the hollow bible
In the shape of the gun
That’s wanted for the murder
Of my own sanity 

I love you

I love you the way sunrises love the first breath of the mountains in the early mornings, the way photographers love their deep, uncensored affection, the way plants love the rain so they dig deep and spread out to catch every, single drop, the way Carl Sagan loved science so much that he wrote songs about it, the way libraries love books because without they’re just empty buildings waiting for someone to fill them with a new purpose, the way sailors love the sea, the way I love every single one of my scars because you are not perfect but you are so right in every way and you’re the story that I want to speak most of to strangers.

And I need you, the way a link needs a chain, the way Able needed Cain, the way the sky needs stars because without, there would be nothing but darknese, the way the moon needs the sun, the way newborns must be held after they’re born, the way new ideas need to find more voices boxes, the way classrooms need more windows, the way extreme grief needs its reprieve, the way the waves need the beach so they know that no matter how many times they back away it’ll still be there when it’s ready to come back again.

I love you. I love you. I love you.
I need you. I need you I need you.

But no matter how many times I say,

No matter how many times I think of it

No metaphor nor rhyme

Will bring you back 

You’re breaking
You’re an ice cap melting
Into the frozen sea
And the world is ignoring your wounds
Because no one can see the bleeding
But your edges are too rough and rugged
For you to be okay
There are so many others like you in this age
And I want
Nothing more but to scoop you up in my arms
And mold you back against the mountain
So for once you can feel whole again
But,
We can’t go this way
It’s too late for that

Don’t sell yourself short though
I bet you could sink a ship with one good punch
We’ve all been here before
Maybe we didn’t all sink this low
But I know
That everyone has a piece of ice
They carry around in their hearts
A memory of the small glacier that they
Once were
When they fell into the frigid waters
And didn’t know which was up or down
And some of us do drown
Not everyone makes it back alive
Some people melt away into sea 

There’s more to it though
Don’t forget that you can still keep growing
Now you might just be a small glacier
But eventually you can blossom again
Into the ice mountain
That stretches the roof of the sky
And befriends only the sun and stars
It’s the only thing left to do now
Mountains don’t grow that wide in a day
So this takes time
Tell me when you’re finished growing
I want you to be here then
Tell me when you can’t grow wider
And if you stretch anymore the
Earth will just have to grow with you
Tell me of how many sunsets and sunrises
Have kissed you
Show me where
Tell me about conversations you’ve had
With the moon and sun
Tell me about the lives that depend on you now
Tell me about the people that tried
To conquer you and couldn’t even go half way
And then tell me about those that did
And why they helped you grow even taller
So they couldn’t the next time they tried

Tell me 
Tell me
Tell me
You plan to keep growing

Hearts don’t come with bones
But I know it still feels broken
Like I’ve just got a clump
Of shredded tissue in my chest
And I’m wondering how I’m still goin’
When theres nothin pumpin’
The blood around inside me
Will my viens dry up like creeks 
During global warming or is
Everything just standing still
Till it become stagnant
Or is there a reason why my legs
Are still moving like
I’ve got magnets in my bloodstream
And I’m pullin towards hope in an
Uncharted location

Or maybe I’m just drifting without realizing
Like a ship without a rudder that
Moves without reason and is only
Subjected to the desire of the wind and currents
And I’m rushing to find the anchor
So I don’t hit the rocks again
This ship doesn’t have much inside it
There never was a crew to sail them
Only one person and their iron chest
They stored their discolored heart in
And carved out the wood in the middle
Of the wheel to store it
Despite all of it’s bruises
It’s still holding on to this idea
That I’m not shipwrecked
That broken hulls are fixable
And small holes on the deck aren’t important
So long as you don’t fall into them 

But sometimes I think that maybe I am
Shipwrecked and just waiting to hit something
Hard enough to where I won’t get back up again
We’ve all had shipwrecks some of us more than one
But even when we crash we still continue on
With our hearts in iron boxes cut into
The wheels and just a plank of wood beneath us
So we can give our self the illusion that
We know where we’re going
Maybe we just don’t like to give up
And accept that we’re not sailing this ship
But I’d rather not think of it
Because this bruised heart needs something
Else to believe in besides that the end
And giving up are the only definite things in life

I don’t know we’re I’m going
I’m a captain of a small ship that’s
Held together by vines and broken
Pieces of the hull that splintered
From the rocks
But I’ve got my wheel in my hand
It’s like I’ve got magnets in my bloodstream
And I’m pulling towards hope in
And uncharted location
I don’t know when I’ll see it
Or if I’ll recognize it when I do
But I keep telling myself
Bruises fade eventually,
Tissue heals and the bleeding has to stop
So I think whenever the ache
In my chest starts to dissipate
I’ll know I’ve finally made it