Night Deals Made at Crossroads

I’ll tell you first,
this body is not ash.
Not a hollowed hole aching to be filled,
or a machine running on empty
This body is not made to feed the rock-bottom desperate,
The attention-starved,
Yearning for the validation that any pair of lips and thighs
Can provide.
It is worth more
and not made for one with such a weak spine.
I am built for those already full
who can still devour another course.
Bring me your appetite,
I’ll see that you won’t starve in me,
I like a hunger that’s unique.

I house both a temple and a graveyard
Combined
Lay down your offering
And let me see you flatline
Rebirth was never made to be easy,
And you won’t be lazy under this roof,
I practice what I preach.
I’ll make you work to fill the space inside me
The blood within,
The foundation of bones
The heart that lies therein
I can show you the power in choosing fight over flight
I can show you why growth is painful
and the road less travelled by.
I can feel your regret in the iron you wound around,
pressed to skin,
it’s a pain that I know well and respect
Did you forget the combination
to the lock you hung around your neck?

Sit back,
Let me break it with my teeth;
Don’t be scared baby,
I want to see what lies beneath

Sort through the suitcase packed tight with your issues
This is a judgement free zone,
I’ll take you bloody and broken
and too tired to roam,
This body is a home.
Lay your pain at my steps
Let me kiss the base of your neck
and admire the scars that never left,
Wounds leftover from the careless that came before,
I won’t watch you waste away on the other side of my door.
I know behind your ribs you have a soft core,
I’ll show you mine
if you’ll show me yours.

Énouement

(Énouement: The bittersweetness of having arrived in the future and seeing how things turn out, but being unable to tell your past self)

 

You are small and blonde and sweet
Naive
It’s forgivable to be carefree
Children always are
until the first awakening and you haven’t had it yet.
You’ll know what it feels like when you do.
You’ll know what it feels like every time it happens, You’ll sometimes welcome it with joy and awe.
Sometimes, you’ll greet it with tears and alcohol.

You’ve experienced the fear that sinks through skin
But there are deeper fears that live within.
You don’t know the names of them yet,
Small pink lips can’t pronounce the words.
They’re long and the meanings are cruel and hard.
I don’t have it in me to tell you what they are.

You’ll lose your innocence early,
But I won’t say how, it’s going be be a funny story one day.
But it defines the act of losing your virginity at 16,
To the way you fall in love at 28,
And every moment in between.
You’ll realize if you want to have worthwhile relationships with people
You’re going to have to be willing to bleed a little
And I don’t mean bleed like a papercut on the thumb
I mean beyond where you thought you could bleed.
When you bleed for love
You’ll learn it may not be enough
Because sometimes it’s not about what exists in hearts.
The first time you learn this is when the clock really starts.

Lies don’t come easy from your mouth.
But after a few years of trial and error,
You’ll know what they taste like,
And sometimes you’ll fall for them anyway.
There will be a time when you associate feelings with shame.
You’ll never admit that you can play a game
You associate the act with devastation
That human emotion is not meant to be relied upon.
But it won’t stop you from doing it when you’ve run out of cards to play
You’re going to try to become the girl defined as a rule.
You’re not,
But you’ve never been the exception
and that says something to you too.

You’ll have an analytical brain, and a devoted heart
And one will constantly be at war with the other.
You’ll always try and fail to make yourself hard.
Hard to reach.
Hard to see.
Better off alone.
I hope someone stops you before you succeed.

You will always be more selfish than you’re willing to admit,
Not all people will like that you are independent.
It won’t matter much, until it does.
You’ll have to make a choice to stay or run.

You’ll bite back the pain until your tongue is numb,
You don’t trust people with your pain and weakness.
You don’t trust people at all.
You have sweetness and compassion,
Genuine devotion.
You have cunning, and ambition,
Cruelty deeply hidden.
You have a vengeful streak a mile wide,
And enough patience to use those traits
as a balm or a knife.
You’ll learn your honesty is no virtue,
but always a necessity.
You’ve a heart buried in chaos and a mind in reality.
You’ll love it and hate it simultaneously.

I have seen what happens next.
And you’ll do your best.

And I am sorry.

I am so sorry.

Lovefool

(written for Esoterotica’s final show of 2017 “Love Letters”)

 

 

 

“Never say ‘I love you’ often
If you say it too much, it loses weight,
Meaning.
The words ring hollow.
They become unoriginal,
Stale.
People think love gets boring,
no one really likes knowing,
So keep them guessing till it fails.”

 

That’s one of the first things I was told about saying “I love you”.
Said by a friend at school who was dropped by the boyfriend
a week after she dropped the L-word.
I never understood it.
It made is seem like the emotion
was meant to be a game:

“Who said it first?
Who said it last?
Who said it more today than the other,
Who said it best,
and with what?”

I decided then that
that
was purely asinine.
We’re only guaranteed so much time on this Earth
And no matter what you think
It’s not enough time,
and it never will be.

So I invite you to say it.

 

Say it when you wake up next to the person
who knows exactly how you take your coffee,
Knows you are useless before 11 in the morning.
Say it because they woke up at 9 but stayed in bed
because your skin is more comfortable than anything else around the house.
Say it when you know
they aren’t awake enough to fully articulate a sentence,
Recovering from a hangover,
Trying to rationalize existing on 3 hours of sleep.
Say it because you know,
somewhere,
they’ll hear it.

Say it when they are getting ready for work,
Pulling on clothes
Searching frantically for phone
and wallet and keys
Rushing around trying to get their lives together
in order to leave the house,
While you sit calmly and watch them roam around.
You are not in a rush.
You have time to say it before they leave for their day,
They can keep it tucked away,
sitting in their brain
It might come in handy when they realize
they accidentally put on two completely different socks
and feel silly.
They’ll realize that it was probably why you were laughing
and they’ll remember that through laughter you said
“I love you”

 

Say it when you’re on a break,
have 5 minutes of spare time,
Ran out to get lunch before going through
the next 5 hours of your day.
And you know they’ll check their phone eventually.

 

Say it on street corners, waiting for the light to change to cross,
5 or 6 people gathered around you
waiting for the same thing,
brains focused on the cars surging past
or the thing their friend said yesterday
or looking at Facebook.
Say it in front of them
because you are feeling brave.
Don’t get shy in public,
who has time for that kind of shame?

 

Say it in coffee shops and museums.
In the park,
In the middle of a five hour road-trip,
With music playing,
Say it in a dimly-lit bar,
Or at some terrible roadside attraction,
On top of a waterfall
and at the shore of a beach,
In their ear at the family gathering
they’ve been dreading for weeks.
Say it often
and make sure it sticks in their head
and never leaves.

Say it in the middle of sex
Two bodies entwined together,
hands clasped against shoulders
Say it through breathing,
Say it screaming,
Say it with a moan and a hiss,
say it during a kiss.
Say it when they dig their nails in
and you know you’ll have marks in the morning.
Say it when you can feel them cumming,
Say it because they are shaking beneath you,
Sweating against you,
Say it when you are collapsed on top of them,
Languid underneath them.
Say it to the beat of a pounding heart.
Say it because you watched them come apart,
Made them come undone
and you know for them,
that took love.

 

Say it at night.
Let it be the last thing
They hear while their minds are thinking about their today,
Their tomorrow,
The thing they have early in the morning on Wednesday
that they wish they’d rescheduled,
Thinking of the first horror movie that scared them,
The first time they felt humiliation,
The reasons they hate hospitals,
And love the cover of night.
Make sure
the last thing they know that evening
While they’re drifting
Is that they’re worthy of someone’s heart
and they’re worthy of being told so.

 

Say it loudly,
Quietly,
With a smile,
With a gesture,
With a sentence.
Say it when they need it.
Say it when they don’t.
Say it because you want to say it,
Because it’s been sitting on the tip of your tongue and
you can’t think of any reason not to right here,
right now.
Say it for all the reasons I mentioned.
Say it for all the reasons I didn’t.

 

And if you can think of a reason
To not say it,
Say “fuck it” 

And then say it anyway.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dear Mother (A Duet)

Note from the Author: This piece was written for Esoterotica’s Debaucherous Duets in 2017. My first duet with the amazing Shadow Angelina (https://www.facebook.com/shadow.angelina.9), who not only writes fantastically moving poetry, but is also a jaw-dropping photographer. We both bonded over the myth of Persephone and Hades and began to wonder–what if the story written down was not the correct one, but one given in the disbelief that the God of the Dead and the daughter of Demeter could possible find love within each other?

After all, most stories have two sides.

(Italics: Shadow
Bold: Lilith Red
Both: Together)

Dear Mother

I never expected he would be beautiful.

When I first came to him, my arms were filled with lilies,
I smelled of hyacinth and almonds.
He enveloped me with cinnamon and clove and incense smoke.

Do not believe the stories written by men
with dead hearts and passionless eyes
Who needed lies to explain away splendor.
I can tell you why I went,
why I return.
Of home,
and demons,
and rivers
and sapphires interwoven with onyx.
Of how underneath is Elysium.
I can speak for myself.

Blood flows faster than Charon’s ferry on the river Styx
Burning within like Apollo can’t imagine
Turn up the heat
I can turn down purity
Lay down this body,
press seeds to my lips,
leave words of love there for me to chew on later.
I want to remember what it feels like to fall up with you when I descend down to your bed.
I don’t need two coins over the eyes to pay my way.
I will be queen beside his cold throne.
The glow of flesh in his blue-black kingdom
glittering like the diamonds in the walls around me.
Run my fingers along the treasures of the realm, incarcerated in the rock.
I could wander freely among the warped trees heavy with their nocturnal fruit,
Grown from the bravest of souls,
Love left on thorn-pricked gardens that glow their phosphorescence,
Both threaten and caress and sink teeth into flesh.
Six months is a small price to pay, but
Darkness isn’t empty
Not when he’s with me

The way my eyes have adjusted to see
Goes far beyond the physical.
I can describe to you the shape of a soul.

Flame burns blue here–
Deep like the oceans where his brother is a tyrant
Like the sky where his kin live in hypocrisy
Mother, there is truth below
I had once assumed that Terra was the epitome of beauty
But mortal eyes do not know the glory thriving beneath.

His voice was satin.
Raking my nails through his hair and across his skin
Happy to give myself over to the dark within.
I am more comfortable in his bed than I ever was my own
To me, he tasted like the home I sought
I wasn’t a soul to be bought
But an offering, freely given with ecstasy

Three-headed Cerebrus never once snapped at me.
Perhaps he could sense that I, too, yearned to protect the master in his realm
To hide him from judging eyes, wagging tongues
Stay by his side with the pride that he deserved and been denied since damnation.

Mother, I am still here but I have also become someone else now
Will you know my smile and my embrace after this season is over?

He awakened a soul that didn’t know it was wild until I lay underneath,
Praying to every god in existence that it would never end.
The pride when the eyes stopped searching for the daughter–
I became a woman within the looks he cast to me.
I became a monster, beautiful and fierce and unrepentant
I became a Phoenix, my life in ashes…
Never has being dragged to hell felt so close to ascending to heaven.
Never has being kissed felt like dying, I wanted to die all over again
and be resurrected.

Our intensity is its own seduction
I wanted the induction into his court, tell me this body is more than sport.
It is art. It is transcendence.
It is mortal and immortal. Grown from dirt and blood as much as it is from ephemeral magic.
And we indulge in it.
Over. And over.

I begged him to walk with me
Smiling, pleading,
Let me take your hands and keep them in mine
I don’t mind the chill in the skin
Tell me lover of your long life
The short straw you drew that landed you here
Tell me of your jealousy, your anger
The emotions so ugly you shudder with their presence.
Let me smooth the sorrow away with my fingers,
Let me show you that loneliness isn’t eternal
And your soul holds more light than that of your brothers–
Let me show you that you are so much more than someone’s winter.

His clothes were made of loneliness–
So I stripped him naked before a mirror
Showed him how glorious he was
And we tore every bit of that loneliness to tatters
By breathing unsteady into one anothers necks
With eye contact
With yes
Yes.
My body ripe as the fruit above, bursting
And utterly capable of bringing the god of death to his holy knees on velvet ground
They said he was ravenous
Would eat us all alive
Eat. Me. Alive.
He has.

( B r e a t h e )

It happens slowly.
Intentionally.
I am fresh turned earth in his hands,
He is the darkest sun
I never knew what it was to feel so warm
And alive
And vibrant.
Until his shadowy kisses swept my skin
Tasted my spirit
His acceptance at every discovery
No desire to change me…
What is this?
And the ferryman whispered,
“…Love.”

Keep them.
Keep your Ares, your Poseidon and Zeus
Your vengeful, jealous, petty gods
Bloated on lies and devotion
Offerings and stolen moments.
Your war-torn, your selfish gods so high upon a mountain
They are lazy, inconstant children
In the face of this sublime demon
And his full bleeding heart.

I crave an existence tempered with gentleness and whispers in darkness
A cavern of secrets
I’ve the will to coax them from one who has never spoken them to another’s ears.
My heart cradled in my throat
Where I keep his song, so long unsung.
I have written my name, sanguine, my heart’s promise
And who needs the moon when I have our passion to guide me?
I weave my fingers into his hair–I am the flowers he is denied
I am the light against the pitch black of our sky.

The game played by we sacred failures
We lost but hopeful,
Ready, needy and aching–
Destroy me with your confessions.
I will stay fallen
My hands stained with berries and wine
Blood on my mouth from kissing the souls he welcomes to Erebus
I am proud to be Queen of Hell.

He sheds his immortality,
Approaches me as a supplicant
The words surrender and worship emblazoned on his wrists–
I accept.
And when he fills his hands with my hips and thighs
When he makes the holiest of feasts of my shoulder, my breasts, my cunt
When he speaks his prayers into my mouth and the back of my neck
When he offers up everything he is to the magnificence of this body–
I am the chalice
And the burning candle.
I am the most precious authentic.
I am pomegranate gems and dark chocolate dripping on his tongue.
I am his living altar.

I invite him to worship at me nightly.
I am not ashamed.
I am not hiding.

Split me open like ripe fruit.
Drink me down like fine wine.
The succulent meal after which he must lick his fingers
of the taste of me that he worships
As though I became the god in this story.
Starved for touch–denied of warmth
I’ve never been so wanted in my life.

Mother, I was not supposed to love him.
But I do.
I do.
And I have become a home for his heart
I will care for those souls that pass through just as well as he
I will choose him–he will never feel abandoned again.
He is mine.
In our kingdom we are divine.
We are imperfect.
We are love.

I’ve found it so easy to let go-
it has been worth the breathtaking descent.

The retelling of this story is always a lie.
One more piece of our history penned by mortal men.
Spinning this tale with deceit behind their teeth.
Who seek to curry favor with the gods above,
In favor of forsaking the ones below.
Because for the life of them
They can not comprehend-
They can not understand the repercussions of their flagrant dishonesty;
But when they die, they come before me and my king
And we are not happy.

Rivers and Roads

I was drowning when we met.

You might not have known it, behind my lowered eyes and quiet tongue, but I found myself swept in a current much stronger than me, and heading towards rocks
You were there
Just in time with a life-vest,
tossing me a line of iron when I felt I was too far out to sea to be saved.
You caught me up
With strong voices and gentle arms
And ready to breathe new oxygen into me
Pumping a heart back to life
when it had long since forgotten how to really beat
And helping me purge the salt of shame and fear I’d been swallowing
You rescued me
And laid me on the lonely stretch of sand on which I build my cage
I never was a strong swimmer,
Fighter,
Lover,
Writer.
I met you.
I was killing myself living in the past
and you offered me a future when I did not believe
I was worthy of such a thing.
I met you.
I left that shore to follow you into woods,
and never looked back.

I learned from you.
All of it, breathless in my seat
I was afraid to blink and breathe for fear
that I might miss a beat of the lessons you were teaching
Even though you might not have known you were teaching them at all.
watching your moves,
listening to your stories and letting them fill my brain and my body and my heart,
Feeling the aches when the emotional vulnerability laid bare was so much more than I had ever seen displayed.
I remember how much I marveled at your strength.

You taught me the miracle in words
How to attack with them the way you would with teeth–teeth clasped in a lovers shoulder. Teeth at the jugular of the one who broke your heart.
How to cry with them–finding a way to bare your heart
and trusting others to know the ache living inside.
How to make love with them.
How to reach out and touch a heart, a soul, a hand.
I’d never been comfortable with my words,
They were things I bit back, swallowed and choked on
Things I scratched down on paper with shaking hands
When you clasped them in yours and said
Stop.
Breathe.
Step back.
And always,
keep going.

You taught me about power.
A thing I thought so far beyond my reach
That it would be silly for me to lift my hand towards it
Convinced I would
crumble like old paper
But through you, I found strength.
I learned how to rule my pleasure
And how to embrace my pain
To look upon those who would shame me
With cold contempt
And bring them to their knees
How to straighten my spine and wrap it in steel
How to take back what was rightfully mine.
You told me no one could drive me from my home,
And showed me that no one can hold dominion over this soul.

You taught me what it was to love.
Real love–not built on bloodshed, not tinged with jealousy and sick with spite
not love built on tears shed at 3 a.m.,
not with a constant stab of pain to tarnish the feeling and turn it into the monster that lives under the bed.
Not a kiss that tastes of regret
I found love among you,
unexpected and swift, feeling it grow within me,
consuming and changing.
And gave me the courage to dive into those waters head first
I learned that love isn’t a race to a finish line, a competition meant to always have one victor and one unfortunate heart bleeding out on the ground.
But the appreciation of someone’s skin against yours in the dark as you drift to sleep,
the steady rise and fall of a chest
and the pounding of a heart after sex.
Being held through tragedy and fear,
Reassurance even when neither of you ask for it
Dinner at inconvenient nighttime hours
And laughter
So much laughter.
I know now, that love is understanding the phrase “It was worth it”, no matter how it ends.

I leave this city, with a heart full of gratitude
For you
For your acceptance from the beginning, when I wore my uncertainty with flower print dresses and cardigans and opaque tights, because I was too afraid to wear anything else.
For the stories you have shared with me,
the ones that have broken you to pieces
and the ones that have put you back together again
The times I have cried for you
Laughed with you
Been moved by you
Been inspired by you
For the times I have felt you in my heart long after the night has ended.
For saving me from the dark place I had made my home
You gave me a pack with which to roam–A place to lay my heavy heart and fragile bones.
I may strike out now on my own,
but I will never stop carrying you with me, honoring all you have taught me,
and loving the memories you have given me.

You are it.
You are my candle wax and knife
Winged boots and ambition
You are my one thousand
tiny,
beautiful deaths.
You are my beast
You are my balm,
You are the limericks and haiku and my favorite maple-candy slowly melting on the tongue
You are my songbird
You are my wandering angel
You are my sister howl echoing in the night
You are my jasmine vine and my shadow of strength
You are my New Orleans.

I came to you with a brain littered with a thousand reasons to go.
Thank you for giving me a reason to remain.

 

 

 

(This piece was written for my final Esoterotica show on July 26th, after 5 years with this group, and it remains one of the most heart-wrenching goodbyes I have ever given. I have shared with them my life in its barest form, and found love within them. I have a soul and a spine, and I owe it to them.)

by-the-book hysteria

 ​
You think I’m keeping it together 
But
I’m struggling
The words tumbling from my mouth sound wrong, muddled
The mind like a river dragging a log
The pain makes them feel loaded like a gun
Sitting on my tongue 
Ready to fire but the gun is stuck
   “I’m sorry”
It stings, burns 
Pricks the corner of my eyes
I feel the creak of the bed we shared in my bones
I told you I was bad at apologies, and “I miss you” seems harsh and I regret the way I say it 
It doesn’t fall sweetly from my lips the way our whispers did a month ago 
I say I miss you and it’s the hardest, 
The heaviest sound,
like a thousand pounds of earth dropped into my throat
And I can’t say your name
I tried but it sticks and it stabs, 
It aches
It bleeds
Bittersweet
like wine that was left uncorked too long, my lips tingle like I’m about to be sick
Please, say something 
I can’t speak anymore
And your eyes are studying the white-knuckled grip on myself
So hard it makes my soul sink to the floor
I hate your silence
Your vicious silence
Please say something 
I love you
I love you
Please say something
I love you 
love you 
Say something 
I

identity crisis

I am Love
I am light in a darkened heart, healing of the strings infected by too much tugging, the dimples you didn’t know you had on your face.
I am something sunny and free and I don’t care that my smile isn’t straight when I smile for you, I don’t care about last night’s eye-shadow smeared over one half of my face or hair that’s curled in maybe one place. I don’t care about past mistakes. I am the flower, grown from a seed, petals curled out over a dress that is never something you would wear unless you were happy.
I am an honest grin, singing within, the comfort of a hand on skin, the laughter from lungs. Loud and shameless and echoing,
echoing,
echoing in ears and eyes
I am soft sighs, soft voice at midnight
Early mornings without a rush. I am the blush.

I am Lust
I am the ripping of lace, the smell of the leather, the silk wet with sweat,
I am a game you don’t beat, but baby we can make that bet
I am bitten lips, bitten necks
Destroyed hairstyles, a hiked up dress
I am the prey and the hunter rolled into one, the animalistic nature and more than one-and-done, I am the pride at a moan, the scream in a throat, the glorious mess that follows our coupling, the perfect red light against a torso, the bruises on thighs
I am the rabbit hole
Go down
Down
down
I am not fun, and I am not easy.
And I am never sleeping.

I am Pain
I am the crack of lightning of a door slamming, the loudest silence ringing, the anger sitting in the stomach, the bile and shaking
I am the physical heart breaking, labored breathing
The rush of fear that you may actually be dying this time
Who can survive this feeling?
I am the crying until the tear ducts are dry, the words trapped between mind and body, the broken wing of a blackbird, the eyes closing
Opening
Closing
Please let me be dreaming
The pleading
“Oh god, don’t let this be happening.”
I am the first drink, and ones that keep following.

I am Numbness.
I am the nightly click of the lonely lock
The solo dinner, the Netflix-binging and canceled plans.
I am the drink that you take every night, the empty cigarette boxes, the unemptied ashtray,
The melatonin taken nightly, the quiet bath, the dodged calls from friends and family
I am the avoided restaurant, the resignation of a Valentines Day, the box in the closet that you can’t look at yet. You can never look at it yet. I am the forced smile, the ache in the body, the busy, the hours filled with anything, everything, the desperate occupation of the mind, please. Anything.
I am the hateful quiet as the brain keeps on thinking
Thinking
Thinking
I am the agonizing attempt to cut out feeling,
because who wants to feel like their heart never stops breaking?

finding love in all of the corners

​

 

I found love here
I found love in family photos of my young parents apartment at Tulane, the bright feathers of the pet parakeet I never got to meet
I found love in photos of memories I could never hope to keep as an adult
I found love on the other side of the street at 12
Spied black hair and pale skin
First real brush with infatuation
Starring shameless jailbait seeking validation for my inability to ever feel young
And feeling so much younger across from him and finding that I liked it
I found love that I didn’t realize was going to be a trend I’d have to spend the next 10 years fighting against.
I found love hidden in my mother’s bookshelf long before Lolita came along
I found love in my own form of sex education courtesy of being grounded  for lying

I found love in trying
I found love in street names in side-walks, crumbling infrastructures, in tangles of jasmine and magnolias and Spanish moss that I pretended was hair
I found love in witchcraft tours and a small black cat.
I found love in the boyfriends I kept hidden that were a phone call away and often never more than that
I found love in the divorce, found love in my stepfather, in a household divided.
I found love in my youngest brother in his unicorn costume and wanting to cry because he was so beautiful and I did not deserve a chance to be a sister again.

I found love in growing
And sadness
And loathing
I found love in losing everything
Family ties never before tested by distance
With every inch of my home at the mercy of more water than I knew existed.
I found love in the bag of clothes my aunt sent us when she found out we had lost ours
I found love in the one person who didn’t ask what I lost in the storm
I found love in my father’s voice on the phone
“You’re coming home.”
I found love in my mother’s smile understanding that I needed to go
Because do you know what it means to miss New Orleans?
I found love in St. Louis Cathedral, in listening to a prayer that meant nothing and everything to me
In candles and choir music
I found love in bars on my 21st birthday with my stepfather buying my drinks and walking with me by the river like nothing had changed even though everything had.

I found love here
And strength
I found love in finally being fed the fuck up and unwilling to waste anymore time
I found love in forsaking the old and picking up the new
A new life without an old flame
I found love in the terror of what was truly picking up the pieces of my heart and starting over

I found love in stage-fright and first drafts
Love in running wild at night with the sun at my back
I found love in a Melody I had never heard sung before and never wanted to stop hearing
Found love in a firm handshake
Love under the red lights on Halloween
Serpentine dancing
With hips between my thighs
“How many times can you do it in one night?”
I found love in kisses sharp like a knife
In knots tied just right
In the sharp stings of leather and sweetness of silk and lace
I found love in that place between night and day
It isn’t tomorrow yet until I’ve slept
And I found love in avoiding the world outside of the bed
I found love outside of my own head

I found love in loud nights and quiet mornings and loud mornings
No one is awake at 8 a.m. the way New Orleans is on Mardi Gras
I found love in my grandfathers laughter at his first carnivale
Love in my brother comfortable behind the bar, how despite his shyness, how he had come so far

I found love here
I found love in new voices
In drunken confessions screamed over someone’s karaoke
Love in the graveyard at 1 in the morning
I found love in the line of a jaw
In the curve of lips and hips
And the sips of drinks at any bar we could get to
Found love in shared absinthe
Found love in thin walls and trying to keep it down, people are trying to sleep.
I found love in lessons that could only be learned the hard way

I found love here,
filling the beats between the lines
I found love in illusions and trapdoors
In props and people hidden under the floor,
In tears shed for the same deaths every night, in the ghosts echo calling for war and the terror of realizing that “Let be” was goodbye, every time
Now cracks a noble heart
And underneath it all, I really am coming apart.
I found love at 3 a.m. singing an aggressive version of Piano Man with seven people who’s sides I had not left for 3 months.
I found love in the art of learning a person deeply in that time and still being wrong

I found love here
I found love on Wednesday nights
I found love in the devil’s details, the end of a lie, in erasing a man, in exhales of smoke and sighs. I found love buried in the warmth of Mortimer in the dead of “winter”
I found love in the first red leather dress, penning my pain on paper, too many amaretto sours and the desire to do more than simply touch and see, living beyond being half a human being.
I found love in coming home. Home to the arms of goddesses, werewolves and beasts.
I found love in all they’ve taught me.

I found love here.
Right here,
living in the spaces in between word, thought, and deed.

 

 

you’re probably an axe-murderer (but don’t worry, i am too)

“How are you?”
I hate those three words
Because you don’t mean them when you ask.
It is a gateway, a bridge to something more
when it’s coming from your mouth.
Meant for an honest answer I have never said out loud
It is a dagger to my chest
It is the burning of a book
It is the emptiness
Of an unanswered howl
In the night
It is a trick of light and sound
Like the pain behind a hiss
Like your kiss on trembling lips
like your heart
And we both know that doesn’t exist.

“How are you?”
Confused,
That’s nothing new.
From youth
I grew
Because of you
Into desperate Juliet trying to steal the poison from Romeo ‘s lips
And I’m the woman fading back into Nabokov’s nymphet
Clever and careless,
And stealing mothers red lipstick
I’ve always been and will be
The impulsive girl who sits on her hands to keep
From slitting her wrists
but you and I both know
I’ve never needed a weapon to
Kill myself with.

“How are you?”
Is the terrible sound that keeps me awake at. 5 a.m.
I have nightmares of you asking
To serve as an alarm where
Your kiss once had that job;
To introduce me to addiction
You first gave me the liquor from your lips and the smoke from your mouth before telling me
To steal my own whiskey and cigarettes
To fend for myself
As long as you allowed
And hasn’t that always been your way?
Give me a taste to hook me like the fish
And then cut the line with the hook still in my lip?
And leave me wandering aimlessly adrift wondering all the time, is it my fault you jumped ship?
Can you blame me for asking?
Can you tell me without sighing?
Do you remember what truth tastes like on your tongue?
Telling me you’re not a liar
by nature was a lie if you
Ever told one
Every time you touched me
Kissed me
Fucked me
Filled me
you were killing me
And still had the audacity
To label it “Healing”
Darling, when will I learn
That on your surgery table
I will always be dying?

“How are you?”
I lie and say I miss you
I lie because I want you
I lie and say I’m tired of fighting
I lie and say I’m done crying
I lie and say I want you
Because I want you to not suspect of what I aim to do
I want you so I can hurt you first
So I can slither my way into your home
So I can poison my lipstick and hide daggers in my dress
Because while capable of living and of loving
I want to hurt you
And I want you to not see it coming

“How are you?”
“Why are you asking me?”
Because I can’t tell,
Your eyes are hard and your jaw curves differently
Your thoughts aren’t clearly written across your face like they used to be
And I serve with a smile behind an invisible leash
But underneath?
we see each other’s real faces
I see the disinterest in your eyes overtaking love
Two sets of lips spilling out lies
And you see my sanity decaying
our facades are disintegrating
And we’re looking more like Dorian Gray’s painting
Houdini himself couldn’t bring you back home to me
And I can’t go back to being simply sweet and naive
So is it any surprise that our goodbye was less a break-up and more an act of disappearing?

It’s been 2 years.
You don’t say “How are you?” When you sit down
And It makes you look rude
And no one here knows us from those other searching night owls in this city
But do they watch?
And can they see that
Even after an hour
you still refuse to speak?
That you’re staring me down to wait to see if I will crack?
But I’m older now
And I followed different tracks
Into different woods
The monster within lives for the experience I used to lack
And, lover, this is a game that two can play at.

a river in egypt

Did you know that I missed you the minute we declared we were done?
Didn’t make a difference in the end. We knew we’d run
From the other
To separate corners to tend to our wounds
With the taking of new lovers
But if I hold my head high
And stare straight ahead
Do I look colder?
Or older
Like I’m better at control
If I sip my drink slower,
Do I look stronger than I did?

“I miss you so much”
I’ve typed it out a thousand times
And watched my finger hover over the send button
Like I’m afraid to touch it
And I am
Because this is the first time I can’t tell you that I miss you and what else is there to say?
“Hey
I cried today
about our parting for the first time since we parted ways”
“Hey,
I sat in my car for an hour and lamented to empty air
About how I would never wake up pressed against your side
About how we were doomed from the very first smile”
It isn’t as simple as saying “my heart is sore”
I’m still thinking about how much we did
Now that we don’t do it any more.

So lets say I delete your texts
And I don’t check my voicemail for your voice
Nor think on your late-night calls that I never ignored
If I can do A through C
And if no one looks too closely at me
I can probably get through this.

If I just don’t think about the last night and the last kiss we shared
If I don’t remember your hands in my hair and gripping my hips
If I don’t remember your fingers tracing my lips
Or all the stops and starts of your heart in the aftermath
If I don’t remember the way we treated sex like it was an art
To be mastered
Then I won’t feel like I’m constantly coming apart

If I don’t think about setting fires with you at the end of the world until 3 a.m.
Or how I fell so hard without a care,
and the way you told me that night that the smoke smell clung to my hair
or the first time you complimented the perfume I’d wear
And the way you laughed when I rolled around in your bed
Rubbing smoke-and-perfume-scented skin against your sheets
So you’d remember me
Because one gray morning you confessed that you slid to my side of the bed when I left.

If I don’t think of the press of a body to mine in the dark when it was ridiculously cold and the heater was off
Or what if I forgot how absurdly terrible you were with romance?
Tell me
Did you know we were doomed when I told you “I can’t dance”?
Or was it when you noticed the interest in my glance?

17 years difference didn’t make a difference until we decided it did
So where did the difference slip in?
Or perhaps it was this: the first time I saw you, on stage with sheets of paper clutched in your hands and erratic energy under your skin
Or the first time you saw me, red-lipped and wrapped in black
Pale and speechless with eyes downcast
And your name already on my tongue
Can’t I just go back?
there was
A month
A week
A life
Time
Hell I know there was a day
before I knew you even existed.
Before that, was I not okay?
But not today
Today I remember the words “This is for the best” like a knife through my chest
while this isn’t the first time we’ve gone through this mess
I’m capable of dealing with it even less
But I think
if I repeat this like a broken record
I could put all that college psych 101 to the test
And tomorrow
“It’s for the best.”

If not,
Acting 101 taught me
That I can probably just fake the rest.