i wish i was a soft girl
the ones you find in movies
with tears of honey
and kindness that warms like golden sunshine
dewdrop flowers with ambrosial petals
blooming with unwavering patience and soft lips

instead i am just a girl
with a chest of steel
and i am angry
that i foolishly keep waiting
for someone to lift the curtain
and maybe see me
as a soft girl too

i don't need to find somebody to love,
i already found them . . .

now i just need somebody to love me back.

there's a wisp in the shape of a father
and he stands outside my door each night
sometimes he takes human form
just to pour a glass of wine
i've started to see him
in the palms of your hands
and i am so shattered
when i look up to see it isn't him

welcome to suburbia
where numb is the new norm
stay awhile and realize
it's the quiet and never the storm
oh i'm not complaining
i'm just stuck here waiting . . .

my grandfather didn't speak much
he barely asked any questions
besides a quiet "how are you?"
he sat in his chair with his newspaper
a grimacing statue
the center of orbit in the house

my grandfather gave me icecream
without me asking
a clinking bowl with sweet vanilla
would appear next to me
and no words would be spoken

my father gives me icecream
without me asking
a clinking bowl before he fades back into the shadows
and i think i'm starting to understand
how we learn to love

i hope i will do more
than give someone a bowl of icecream

i smoke
                and i drink

'*** i thought it would help me not to think . . .

but here i am
                         after several shots

thinking all my anxious thoughts.

the poets are up late at night
we love to see the stars
something is hidden in them we believe
and we spend forever looking upward
trying to find what we are missing
trying to find the last puzzle piece
trying to find
something
amid the velvet expanse of the night

a single twinkling cello string
echoes through the night
or perhaps that is just the grasshoppers
with their orchestra of breezes and rattling leaves
the sky surrounds me
and only a thin cotton string
ties my floating body to the earth
my heavy heart a magnet to the warm dirt
the stars hum and reverberate
and my vision of the heavens ebbs and flows
like a roll of film with the pieces cut out
and only the moon remains sharp
as if it is only a hop and a skip from my eyes
as if just maybe
if i stretch my fingers far enough

i could reach out and touch nirvana.

your hand was a star
glowing
and begging me
to hold you
to feel your warmth
and let it seep into my fingertips
let it crawl up my veins
let golden heat flow up my arm
caress my collarbones
let it spill into my eyes
and make them flicker sunshine brown
let it stroke the crown of my head
twist around my hair
and weave in tiny daises
that smell like rain
and your shirt
and alcohol
let it make me dizzy
dizzy enough to grip your hand a bit harder
and start the cycle again

i've got this ache in my chest

says
the
old
man

as his heart lays bleeding on the bench beside him