Rewriting the 27 Club
“Do you know how many artists died with a white lighter on them?”
There’s weight buried here. And now every time my thumb drags across a metal wheel, begging to ignite a flame, I dig it back up. I think of your mouth. Toxic-drip of alcohol fumes. Of the way your fingers kept tugging at my waist. The white plastic, an SOS in the thicket of the night. How you thought you’d save me. The way you were just slightly too disoriented to grab the bad omen from my hand. I feel the way your thumb sat at the crook of my thigh. And how when I hid my hand behind my back your other arm slipped around me to grasp on air. Too short to steal the lighter from my clenched fist. How the second your finger tips closed on the palm of your own hand the empty air between us felt more like water clinging to my throat. Something denser than the smoky way you had been laying heavy in my chest all night. Your hand stealing at empty space. And your eyes stealing at my face. Catching at the mouth. Becoming lost as they crawled their way up to my eyes. My closed fist, a missed opportunity, sending yours to burrow into the small of my back. Kneading its way up my spine. Pressing me into something close to the shape that I was meant to be. And I remember thinking that this was it. Pressure-shift, inevitable. But then you pulled me too close. And in my surprise you tore the lighter from me. Tossed it out the window. One fluid moment. Your albatross, my beacon of hope. My mouth was disappointment-dripping. And you misread that ache. Your face pinched. The back of your hand brushing away any traces of me-disheveled. You slipped me off your lap and stumbled out of the car into the street-lamp glow. And that lighter didn’t steal my life like you thought it might. But it stole your mouth on mine. So when you held it out to me, I threw it back out into the night, thanklessly. I held my tongue between my teeth to keep from screaming. But the cheap plastic didn’t care. Your skin kept drifting farther from mine. But the cheap plastic didn’t care. Maybe when they find me wasted, rotting, that lighter will be there after all. Cheap, white plastic. Plastic-you and flameless-me. Without a care.
Broken “Together”
We used to be happy.
The lets walk around and just see what happens happy.
The I decided to call you for fun happy.
The you make me smile unconsciously happy.
The I’m in love happy.
And then something happened. If you asked me, I couldn’t exactly tell you what it was. Maybe it was me, or him, or just us together, but we never quite felt the same.
We broke the meaning of together. We didn’t quite breakup and there was nothing official originally, but together no longer had a meaning.
We could be in the same room but not speak to each other. Act as if the other person was invisible.
We could be walking in the hall a step away from each other but neither was willing to speed up nor slow down. We acted like strangers when I knew he only took his coffee black and loved the fifth Harry Potter book. And he knew I liked sunrises more than sunsets and couldn’t stand groups of people who take up all the sidewalk.
It was like we were playing an elaborate game of chess where we didn’t want to lose quite yet, but no one was willing to openly pursue victory. No one was willing to show that type of commitment. He didn’t want to lose his queen, and I wasn’t going to give up my king.
I’m not sure what changed the game. But something invisible and indescribable happened. Something that shifted “us”. We were still in the same position that we had been in and we weren’t separated, we just weren’t “us” or “together”. It was more “you and “me” or “him” and “I”.
That’s why, I can’t say we are happy.
“We” isn’t meaningful anymore.
I can maybe say “him” and “I” are happy, but that’s almost worse.
That’s why I have to say that we were.
We used to be happy.
soapy illusions
I lived in a bubble.
and that bubble was popped
by the shards of glass
sticking like teeth out of concrete
to keep the gangs out.
by the ring of tin
as the children who lived within
played on the dirt floors.
By starved faces and emaciated bodies
hidden by dirt and smiles.
by the silver painted faces
younger than me
working by the light
of the traffic.
By the girls
who hands were dirty and callused
instead of clean and soft like my own
because as I worked math problems,
they worked tortilla dough to survive.
I could see
their pain,
but I didn’t do anything to help.
was I better off in that illusive bubble?
Torn
It snapped into two.
Right in front of you.
You didn’t care.
You didn’t hear.
It was silenced..
By the silence
Of your
Endless arguments.
Yet when it weeps
Blood red tears.
Did you ever see
The overflowing fears?
Without a bandage
Without nursing
It is enduring
Endless cursing.
When you said,“No”,
It was a very big “NO”.
I just said a
..A very small,” Oh!” .
When you helped yourself
With my closed up mind..
When you told me every minute
“FIGHT AND FIGHT”.
Against the tides
And against the storm.
I’ve fought every time
And lost... And came home.
Your non- chalantness
At my frequent mood swings
Your unrealistic wishes
On my ‘real’ fragile wings.
Your words were a slap
To my actions all the time.
Piercing through my heart
Your words weren’t sublime.
Tearing the flesh,
And scalding my veins,
Burning my arteries,
Your word always reigns.
This is what breaks me..
And breaks my heart.
When you stare at me,
And shout,“START ”.
This is not ‘Me’
I am not ‘Me’
For I’m being someone
What you thought me to be.
This is what breaks me..
And breaks my heart..
When every night
YOU DEEPEN THE CUT.
The Lost Keys
Grandma, is that you?
I heard your voice.
Why have you gone?
We'll go to Saint Anthony
to find the keys and glasses
in the lost past.
I can't sleep in an empty house.
It is so dark here.
Loneliness drowns out thoughts.
I'm afraid of the noise of silence.
Tara doesn't want to go
squealing with grief.
I'll take the grid,
make the tea,
find the keys
only come back.
Without you I'm lost
in the clutter of life.
You
You tore it apart
You say you're sorry
You say you meant it
but you wish it didn't hurt me.
I think it's true
everything you said
but it still hurts.
it still makes me cry and sob
it still makes me clutch my chest
it still knocks the air out of me
even if it is true.
truth hurts even if we all know it's true.
you still broke my heart
and I wish you wouldn't say you're sorry
when i know you're just going to do it again.
You say you're sorry
You say you mean it
I say I'm sorry
I wish it meant what I want it to mean
I'm sorry I broke your heart
I know you're sorry you broke mine.
Break
Broken pieces
Of my heart
Pulling light out
the dark
Where’s the spark
That we once had
Feels so bad to be this sad
I tried again ...
you know that thing
I said I wouldn’t do
Yea that’s right I came back to you
Now I’m broken
Into pieces
Shattered glass
can’t compare
Full of sadness
and despair
You don’t care
You’re unaware
I wish this pain
was something we could share