RA - Hello Poetry

RA Feb 2014

There's always this stage, later on
after you have realized that you
actually can live without
this person, though it is a continuing
source of pain. At this point, everything
you were so scared of saying
for those long many months, somehow
has been said. You both know
how much you mean together, how
your conversations will go, what
the subtext clearly says, though not
said clearly. I know you miss
me, just as much as I continuously
miss you. After some point, I will know
you love me just as much as I
will try to show you how much I love
you, though I didn't believe it before and
I couldn't tell you so for old fears.
At this point, the wound of you
not being here will start to scab
over. The very essence of your unbeing
in my presence will dictate that you
cannot heal me, that I must live
with this pain and your vacancy. I will not
tell you I miss you, taking a knife
to my healing holes. Against my will,
I am pulling back. After the thrill
of "I miss you" has worn off, it only
brings pain with every utterance. I miss
you, I miss you I miss you I
miss you, and you are missing so profoundly
the very air around me sings
of your absence, whistling through emptinesses
that echo the ones inside. But sometimes
I would rather not remember
that you are missing.

February 17, 2014
5:25 PM
edited February 23, 2014
I think this might be a spoken-word poem

RA Feb 2014

cracks.

Two people cannot run towards each other blindly
without colliding at some point, maybe breaking
each other just a bit, cracking all the boundaries
we have built for structure and protection in this
confusing world. I understand that you need
a bit of time, to teach yourself to either become
watertight again, or to at least appear so, or maybe
to live with these small vulnerabilities. So hey,
I'm opening my eyes. I'm not running, unseeing, at you
(r core), anymore. Take your time, take some
air, learn the feel of you(r walls) once more. I'm
walking carefully, now, feeling my way around
the painfully invigorating reality I couldn't see
before. When you are ready to see me again, I will walk
to you, and meet you halfway. Until then, I
am just waiting. And that's something I need
to teach myself to do, too. And that's
okay. I know that if I see you again, our eyes will be
clear, and our smiles honest, and our fissures healed, or just maybe
they will have become another essential opening, to let
the other in.

February 16, 2014
4:19 PM
edited February 23, 2014

RA Feb 2014

the visitors

Walk invited
into my house.
Come change my whole
life upsidown.
Leave me a void
when you are gone.
Make me feel that
I don't belong.
Make my late hours
only your own.
Make me wish that
I was a stone.
When you're not here
then I will grieve,
but when you are,
I'll want to leave.

February 14, 2014
11:56 PM
edited February 23, 2014
i don't usually feel this way.

RA Feb 2014

alternative

I don't think you understand
what I mean, when I say
I am a fifth wheel. I don't mean
I am always on the side,
I don't mean
I am completely unnecessary,
I don't mean you don't want me here.
All I mean is that, much like a car,
where the fifth wheel is backup,
I am your insurance
against having less than four.
Essential, but not inherently an essential part
of the basic structure.

February 14, 2014
11:53 PM
edited February 23, 2014

RA Feb 2014

2:AM

I need your arms wrapped tight
around me and your face pressing
into my shoulder and
your smell filling every molecule
of the air around me, permeating
my lungs, because 2 AM
is when my demons come
out, and I know that if you
cannot keep them in, as
you so often do, you will
at the very least fight
valiantly by my side.

February 14, 2014
2:00 AM
edited February 23, 2014

ER BW GL BH SR

RA Feb 2014

Calling

I cannot think of a way to start
writing what I need to say, (t)here
are too many thoughts rushing
around what some might call
a brain, a heart. My mind, my
core, has been replaced by what
some may call an
abyss, a void, but I cannot be
so poetic about what I only see
as emptiness. I suppose
I was always something
of an empty girl, never learning
to be enough for myself, a hollow
shell. You all filled up
that shell, my life, you slowly teach
me to be enough for myself
by showing me that maybe
I am enough for you. You
complete me. Right now the clock ticks
closer to midnight, though, and you
are not here. Call it
abyss, call it void, call
it emptiness, if you so wish. I
call it by its true name, I
call out to the moon in
my desperation, I call
at the walls and the world
and the all-too empty air. I call this feeling
missing you.

February 13, 2014
11:30 PM
edited February 23, 2014

ER BW GL BH SR

RA Feb 2014

"Normal"

Sometimes I want to ask
if we'll ever get back
to normal. If the hospital bed
will disappear from the main
level, if the endless stream of
doctors and nurses and physical therapists and reflexologists and acupuncturists
will ever pass us by, if maybe
a night without the squeaking
of bedsprings and the helpless shaking
and gasping of another seizure being
broadcast throughout the house
will finally come, if just maybe
when I say goodnight, you
will have time to look up
and see me standing there.
But then I remember that
the word "normal"
has never been heard in our house
without the harsh sting of comparison, and
this is our life, now, as
we have changed so many
other times. Who knows
what "normal" is, anyways.
If I ever did, I have forgotten.

If I could choose, I
would not put the portable toilet
with the removable bedpan
in the kitchen. I'm sorry,
the kitchen is small, and
there is barely enough room
for three people, let alone three
and that stench.

February 13, 2014
12:55 AM
edited February 18, 2014