the space between

my soul whispers to yours,

"i knew you once."

the space between us in a crowded subway

yields across the platform to a tentative touch

consumed by a tiny kiss on a plastic metro seat

the space between us in an unguarded gaze
collapses caught in a blue-green prism
bending it sweetly into mirrored tenderness

the space where you coerce my lips

brand my ass

lace my breasts with your mouth

undress me

unthink me

unfeel me

penetrate me

until i scream mercy

and then take me deeper

dropping into the space between

the space where I become

...

i am empty

because you hold me delicately

careful not to spill me on the floor

rawness flickers unformed and unsorted

you are so new to me

and so old

i’m empty

because i am

and i am

my fullness

my ripeness

my loveliness

cascades into nothingness

that you catch in your mouth

and hold for me

filling me back up with myself

love recycled

Ode to Little Lion

My dearest Laurel, you are the best part of me
And when I’ve misplaced myself
You smilingly unfurl your hands
Rendering that piece of me that you keep like a spare key

I keep a piece of you too
Concealed in my heart
But I can't bear to give it back
You are precious

Loving my shadow defenseless
When she tries to steal my spark
Fiercely keeping her at bay
With a flower in an open hand

And when I stumble unsure
You playfully catch me up
Holding me tenderly by a silken thread
Plucked from your luminous halo

When I'm trapped in my hallucinogenic hedge maze
Unable to recall my purpose here
Your sunlit voice whispers through my mind
Leading me back with soft sibilants

When my heart shatters, fiery fissures spiraling down
Grief retching through me
The mirror of my sorrow in your eyes
Incites me to smile

When the voice inside my head begins crucifying
I shut my ears listening intently
Until I find that flash of you
Which echos only love

When I’m scattered like flames, skipping in different directions
Threatening to burn everything and nothing
Coaxing me back to the hearth
You hush me into stillness

And when my fire dies and I float shiveringly alone
Your love is a net cast freely
Gently ensnaring
Carefully towing me toward the shore

Together we silently gather driftwood along the strand
And when the kindling is laid
Taking my hand, you smile your secret smile
And set my heart ablaze

There’s a Darkness

Shedding my armor at your door
I followed you willingly, lovingly

Into a space where truth like knives
Rawly caresses the skin

There’s a darkness in the stream
Light falls through

While you cradle me
Whispering to my needs

Sacred things, unnamed things
Until my whole body weeps

Ubiquitous waves of surrender
Drowning me

My breath wrapped in yours
To sustain the moment

...

Awakening
I sense your absence

And wonder if perhaps you didn’t take me here
Because somebody took you here once

And abandoned you
In your own frightening desires

But now I’m in this place
I can’t go back

My armor rubs wrong
Against the new softness you’ve carved into me

There’s a darkness in the stream
Light falls through

Vulnerabilities illuminated
The tiny beads burn down my face


...

Mine

I squatted here... and after hours that feel like days that feel like centuries
This is my home

You may visit here
Just don’t try to move back in

I had it redecorated
When your stoicism left me cold


I want to play in this space
Exploring and opening myself

Fingertips tenuously wandering
Lingering in the arches and curves

Hugging my darkness close
While your light halos me

Yours

...

I bow supplicate at your doorway
Your hands wrapped around my hips

Hypnotize me with your words
Obsess me you say

There’s a darkness in the stream
Light falls through

Wooing the blackness, swaying the madness
Penetrating all that is me

A delicate lullaby
Hangs soundless in the air


...

Stepping backwards
Only diminishes the space between us


Turning to feel our next prey
We find ourselves browsing one another

There’s a darkness in the stream
Light falls through

Curious smiles dropping to reveal all
Time collapses in a moment of deep recognition

The intensity is so loud
You tenderly wrap your hands around my ears

...

Come back into the room with me
I don’t want to be a monster

i want to bask in my nakedness
my softness
my warmth
my sparkle

with you
with me

yours
mine

us

Hush

I wanted to be your and you wanted to be my
A moment held tightly between us

So we suspended a high wire
Tied with a gordian knot

Minds razzle-dazzled by the spotlight
Obscuring the dark hush of words willfully mislaid

Ignoring frays between the lines
Truths plummet unnoticed

Don’t look down

We pretended you can build love on lies
A tightrope walker without a net

Unraveling
Love trips on her own lines

Falling hushed by voiceless obscenities
She screams through the empty spaces

...

I saw her yesterday, undiminished despite the tender bruises
Cross-legged on the stage restitching my heart

Eyes cutting defiant before a silent ovation
Love bowed

Don’t look back

Torn

That night
You thought you took something from me
But it was just my body and seventy-five marka

I tore you too
I took a piece of your soul
And you won’t forget

Strangely, when I pulled it from my pocket
And looked at it
I understood that it was dying

And those who stood behind their doors
Silent
I stole bits of their souls too
And they won’t forget

But I want to tell you all
It’s okay
You can forget
I'm forgetting...slowly

I know what it’s like to scream
And nobody hears you
To know they’re there
But they can’t listen

Too many windows not to contain one human being
Was it fear that kept you voiceless
Did you somehow think i deserved that fate
Or could you just not feel at all

War is insidious
The way it bends the future
Creating armies of women and children
Torn

What is it like to go through life without compassion
Because you’ve lost too much
Seen too much
Felt too much

Oddly you don’t feel things
Like your forehead and limbs
Banging against the pavement
When it’s happening

You only even realize it’s happened
When you see the cuts on your face
And bruised arms
In the mirror

And you crawl to the bathroom
Because you can’t walk

People go mad and can’t come out the other side...

I know what it’s like to weep
And nobody hears you
To know they’re there
But it tears them apart to listen

...I came out the other side

Everyday I put you down
And I let you go
Because the alternative
Is apathy

You didn’t take anything from me
It was your own soul you violated
And those of the people who stood mute

Perhaps I merely borrowed your soul fragments
To cleanse them and love them
Until you can feel again

In the end
There were several victims that night in Sarajevo
But none of them were me

Hypothermia of the Mind

Depression is a drug that creeps
Softly strangling the senses
A hypnotic poison
Rocking the mind to sleep

In this drowsy space
Dreams once vivid & fierce
Drift aimlessly like supernovae remnants...

Depression is a stillborn child
A sob stifled
Diluting the shrieking pain
That once caressed the borderland of pleasure

A hypoxic dead zone
Words float half-dead
Choked on an umbilical cord into silence...

Depression is a butter knife
Tenderly jawing through the brain
Viciously dull
Jagging reality

Slipping towards somnolence
Paralyzed by its bite
I struggle to feel
And fail

Hypothermia of the mind

Pieces

I tried to delete you
But every now and then
I see fragments of you
As if someone pressed ctrl z

I try to push delete again but instead find myself kneeling
Gently cradling those pieces like broken shells
Imagining what the whole looked like
Before the angry sea ground it into colored powder

Looking through the glassy waves
The tide ebbs revealing happy bodies entangled on the sand
Exalted I open my eyes, only to find
Pieces

Sifting your shards through my fingers
Fascinated by the tiny cuts and blood
Pink swirls
Spiraling through the calm warm tidal pool

Determinedly I dive through the shallowness
Slicing and rifling through the sand, feeling for something with substance
Elated I surface, gently hugging the large conch with my hands
It's not perfect

The once vibrant color has faded and the hungry waves have bitten tiny holes
Broken, even mended, never looks the same, never feels the same
Tiny fractures and discolorations overshadow the dazzle that once was
Spotlighting shiny imperfections and flaws

But... if I hold him tenderly
And the sunlight hits him in such a way
I am once again taken by his beauty
Beauty redefined

I no longer want to delete the imperfections in my life
They don't exist
Your smiling voice and laughing face remind me of this
The rest is just... pieces

Breathless

I feel constricted
Like a giant albino boa has draped her lovely peach melba skin around mine
Shiny and cold she effortlessly wraps and tightens, commingling with my sweat and fear
Her eyes, catching mine in a lidless gaze, demand surrender
I am

Breathless