Respect Denied Presence Removed

A fine silt has covered my heart
gravity has dealt us hence.

You have chosen your paths,
and I mine.

I don't wish to know you anymore.

I cast you from my sight.

That peripheral irritation too constant to bear.

This is how you manipulate.
Staying just outside of clear eye line
and reaching distance
but still making your presence known all the same.

A small gnat giving way to multiples and divisions of a personality
I thought I knew once.

And I wished you could have been more direct.
Paused, or just lighted long enough on a still point
for me to have snatched you into non-existence.

But that has never been your style.
A world shrouded in dark fantasies
with the perversion of optimism to carry your through
to illogical
and violent endings for those
more privy to be driven mad by your
endless passive agression.

You have become your own self-fulfilling prophecy this time.

And so I will look to you no longer.
Be vexed by your withdrawal and sudden insertions no more.

Be free of it.

Know there is peace in this passing.
Stop strangling the ghost of drowned horses.

I grow tired of these silly adolescent games.
Have no more patience for these feeble attempts
for self gratifying attention seeking behaviors.

You said it yourself.

"I
Am
Instituting
An
Immediate
No
Contact
Policy."

Well the standards double and quadruple.

As usual.

So I guess I will still have to be the one
that takes to higher grounds, or roads as it were.

I will have to continue to model
adult behaviors
and healthy boundaries
and space
and insulation
and silence
for myself as much as for you.

I don't think I've ever hidden so many lines
in the sand before now-
hairpin detonation wires humming beneath the surface.
But what your push pull sway represents
even on a subconscious level
is dangerous and foolish.

Silly little girl,
I am done to death with you.

No longer wish to have you as a friend
or companion
in ANY
respect
since I cannot expect that respect in kind.

So enjoy this
freedom
this indifference
this shoulder
turned cold with love's mortal coil exhausted.

Know it's out of self and mutual respect
that I banish thee
to memory and nothing more.

And soon even the pang of nostalgia
will bear no heat of burn
for I will have calloused over by then
to your ceaseless needling.

And you
cannot look to me
any longer
for anything other
than laughter
sounding ruckus at your willowy backbone.

Three Locks

"I have six locks on my door all in a row. When I go out, I lock every other one. I figure no matter how long somebody stands there picking the locks, they are always locking three." - Elayne Boosler

These days when I leave my house
I place my heart in a glass bowl on my coffee table.
It is not that I don't like to take it out into the world with me
It is just that when you wear yours like I do
strapped to my chest like a bullet proof vest
you discover quickly it is messy
and easily broken.

And I can think of a thousand other scraps
of bone, tissue, and organs
more valuable to give to those I love
than this pulpy mass
of perforated tissue.

I never stopped learning to play the part of the hero
Stared down an army of girls toting Tommy guns
in stilettos
just to say that I loved them and survived it.
A little wiser for the way the wind
has made a whistle of my chest.

But I've learned that my heart is an organ
built to circulate
and not stay still
and it is always pulling me in oppositional directions.

Learned through trails and errors
about its puppeteer ways
how it pulls me about by marionette veins.
A ventriloquist hidden behind the stage rafters of my ribs
and velvet curtains of my breasts.

In the safety of my locked apartment it waits each day
until I come home
and tell it stories of the million times or more
it might have fallen in love with everything and everyone
it sees.

And I am aware that some day
I will come through that door
and a woman will be waiting for me
a stiff martini in one hand
and my last pack of cigarettes in the other.

She will crush them
telling me I was a fool
to think of poisoning something
so beautiful and carefree.

And since I don't have my heart with me
to set it free
like a carrier pigeon and send her word that I am coming
I will use my tongue instead,
a collection of muscles stronger than my heart
to conjure her into existence.

She will love me fragile fierce
and tender tenacious.
And her entire body will be a poem
that I will never be clever enough to capture.

She will use those her hands to
hold me upright when I am shaky
and feel like my chest wall is a mine shaft
caving into its own darkness.

She will wrap palms full of desire around my waist while we
dance,
laugh too loudly - a sonar signal for me to find my way to her in a crowded bar,
cling to my jaw with her fingerprints when she kisses me,
Grip my body with strength and admiration
to bend my knees to my shoulders while I bring her children
scream mewling into this world.

She will understand the panic pain I feel when my parents
have become collections of ash and memento adorning my temple walls.
She will know how to touch me and make my body a
cathedral built of sound and gooseflesh.
She will worship rivers for their wisdom
always leading to an ocean somewhere
a wild place
bucking and swaying
against everything hard that tries to keep her
landlocked.

She will know the value of the home we have built together
never to stray too far away without being able to find her way back to me.
She will think twice about locked doors
and how multiples of three are sacred truths to me.
So when I come home that day
to three locks loaded like a gun
ready to fire all blanks built of bravado in my face-

And she is waiting for me
I will not be surprised
at the smell of gun powder
singing in her hair
or the lock picks
dangling from her wrists.

I will know then
that hearts are not for keeping
but for giving away
as mine beats a rhythm
sounding the click and slide
of each tumbler bowing
for her entrance.

Missing Pieces

There are moments yes
when I miss you still.
Three weeks have passed now
and I have cried less than I thought I would
but more violently than I had expected
in those quiet times
when I have been able to let my guard down
and release the sadness.

There are tender pieces
which will and have gone missing
since you left.
Pieces only for you.
And I will feel greater someday for another kind of woman,
but this way, I will not love quite the same again the way I did you.

It is an attribute to your singularity.
All your quirks and flaws and virtues
painting layer upon layer
to flesh out a girl
I thought could be the woman of my dreams one day
if only we could have both been patient
or better suited for each other
or different.
But we're not, and actually I am coming to embrace that
as the best thing about this relationship.

I can at least say on my behalf,
I blossomed into myself
through growth and determination.


There is indifference
and frustration
and rejection to carry me through the worst of it.
And they are small but temporary mercies.

There is still care,
still concern, and regard and affection for you here
hidden in the webbing of my bone marrow.

After three and a half years,
there is a lot to disentangle
to allow me to be completely free of you.
I am aware of this.
I still haven't been able to go through all of my things
to find yours to give back to you.

It is not that I don't want to.
I actually want to, give you back all these things
if only so that I don't have to look at them any longer.
Don't have to startle when I find something hidden by the bedside
or tucked away onto my bathroom shelf.

It is more out of the utility to exorcise this place,
my apartment,
of your presence than anything else.
I don't plan on keeping much of anything you ever gave me.
Eventually, I will take inventory in my storage locker
and when I come across all those letters and cards,
I'll probably burn them all.

I can't hold onto this anymore.
It's too much pain.
I hope you understand.
I'll treasure the memories
but the physical weight of your presence
is a yoke I have found too cumbersome to carry
anymore.

Mobile Thoughts

The piglet has started walking all on her own.
Not that you'd care really...
I highly doubt this would register any response from you emotionally other than surprise at it finally happening and yet seeming so fast.

I'm starting to understand now what I think the problem was
in you investing time into relationships with my family.
I think the more you saw it, the more you became acutely aware
how important these people, and remaining close to them was to me.

That they were not people I was willing to just
extricate myself from to suit your dreams and whims alone.
There were other times in my life,
other relationships where I might have entertained that possibility.

With you, at this time,
it has never crossed my mind however.
I wouldn't have followed you that way
a sad puppy dog sniffing at your heel backs
forced to leave all I love behind
so that you could flit from location to location
until you found yourself.

And I find that now,
your reaction to my niece
and my spending time with her
has become all too clear.
It frightened you.
Showed you how I would have done anything
to have made room in my life so easily for her always,
showed the distance in emotional development between us,
showed you the unwavering certainty that I will someday be a mother
and I believe it lit on the fact that you realized you weren't done yet
growing up yourself enough to fully fathom that thought without the recoil of fear.

All the big talk for nothing
Why do you waste so much time lying to yourself?
To please others?
Obviously this - this is not pleasant for anyone.
And I keep coming back to these questions
this aching wound that refuses to heal
without ripping open each time I spend moments
with my friends or family:
Why would you string me along for 6 months?

Why would you come up with excuse after excuse to prolong the inevitable?
Why didn't you just let me end it the week before?
Is this all just a game for control to you?
Is that how you treated this time with me...
pulling your punches at the right time
so you could call the shots constantly?
And when can I get my life back?

Because for me, there is something extremely damaging
in the memories I have spent with you and the piglet
looking up and watching your eyes constrict with fear,
refusing to hold her,
to touch her at all really,
to know her in any other way than a silent
momentary figure there and gone again for weeks on end.

There's the same sense of damage in you
spinning me yarns about why you pulled away from me
physically, emotionally, sexually.
Blaming it on everything imaginable,
yet seemingly alright with letting it just waste
while not being able to let it go.

Why would you do that?
Just plain cowardice?
Is that all this really comes down to?
Or was it rather an honest desire for the opposite?
and yet enough of what you were getting or wanting was laid bare
for you to stay and pick the mines clean.

Did you really think this would have played out the way you wanted?
That if you spent enough time with me, convinced me you loved me enough,
that when you finally voiced these needs in opposition to mine
I would just give in and follow you blindly?
Did you think I would stop trying to be gratified as well?
Is this the only way you know how to function really?

Making sure you are provided for first,
before stopping to think of the bare minimum it might take
to keep the other person around?
Are you only giving after you've finished taking?
My heart wants to say that's not true,
but well...

You never did live up to the needs and wants I asked for
when we got back together with any kind of consistancy.
Instead, you turned me into a broken record of requests,
pleading, demands.
But what? Did you think I was going to shut up?

I wasn't asking you for anything you didn't ask for
in the first place.
You wanted me to have a relationship with your parents, your only family,
I did that. I invested in that, fully.
You never did the same with mine.

You said you wanted me to work on my communication style,
I did that, remained in constant check with me,
learned to voice my needs and wants differently,
learned to handle disputes differently too.
It wasn't always 100% corrected, but over time
the change was massive.

You on the other hand,
never did get the hang of communicating with me.
Always putting up walls and barriers
I would have to either be content to sit outside
or topple down to get you to speak to me.
And you would always have more waiting for me on the other side.

Control my sweet thing,
is an addiction.
Of this I have been abundantly aware.
So before you get cute,
and start convincing yourself that I was trying to control you
in this relationship
think twice about this.

The ability to communicate my needs and wants,
whether you gratified them or not,
but to be consistent in at least expressing them
is what separates me from being a loving partner
and a walking pushover.

In any case,
there's a kind of comfort
that I will no longer have to subject my niece to your
absentee ways.
Thankful that she is so young she will never remember you.
Thankful that she, as a child, something that needs nurturing energy and love and enthusiasm around her as she develops
will not have a mute statue for a second aunt.
Not like I could have ever called you that anyway
you were hardly present enough to hold up to the title.

And I wish
I could have spared myself the lesson as well
Watching you silently sent the message through your behavior
that "the opposite of love isn't hate, it's indifference."
as you are so fond of quoting.
But then again, you'd know a great deal about indifference
wouldn't you?

Shower

Tonight I let the steam of a hot shower its mistress.
Let loose the faucet handles and
bathed all my scars and scrapes and near misses
until they were scrubbed clean and raw.

Water has the remarkable ability to heal you
when you realize that its fluid first held you
neatly in the cupped softness of its palm.

This is no different
and I realize I always come back to water
when I require healing.
When I am sick
or racked with grief
or fragile
I return to the nearly suffocating kiss of water.

And maybe this
is why I enjoyed diving so much
the depths brought treasures and vistas unimaginable
to my land locked eyes
and what I saw there
was worth returning to
over and over
even if I knew I couldn't call it my home forever.

Life is no different
and I am learning quickly
that each time I am able to hold
the surface within my lungs for longer.
Bring it down with me
and show those depths others fear to
tread there was at least one soul out there
that wasn't afraid of what it had to offer,
but did respect its biting majesty made motion.

How I understood that tidal patterns and
changes in the current
might make it more challenging
to enjoy oneself,
but the discoveries that waited
were well worth the trouble.

There's a pearl waiting for me
somewhere out there
and I will sift through every square inch
of ocean until I find her.
And when I do, I will forge it into jewelry.
I will wear it like a beacon around my neck
and savor the absolute aphrodisiac of its flavors.
Knowing full well that water
has ability to heal me
when I realize that its fluid first held me
neatly in the cupped softness of its palm.

Free For All

Last night was electric
the kind of experience where I stretched outside my comfort zone
and coincidentally I found myself there.

Ordinarily in the past I would have sheltered myself.
Guarded up, stuck like a shadow to those I knew only,
not talked to people, not made new connections,
failed to make eye contact or really take in the experience.

Not so last night.
Last night was further proof that I am
and continue to
find myself everywhere I go
and reflect back that unique signature that makes up my soul
to the rest of the world no matter where I am.

I made new connections,
I flirted,
I danced,
and I remained present to everything.

And in that I found a kind of rush
that I can only describe as the joy of living.
Life is about having a collection of experiences
some non-sequitors we do not understand at first
but later, it dawns on us that this was part of a greater whole.

And this life I have
is so worth living fully
that I can't imagine going backwards
and becoming the recluse I was before.

And last night
there were moments where you popped into my head
but they were so fleeting
I didn't find them painful in the slightest.
Only serving as a series of reminders that
you were a person I still thought of
as I am wont to do with any number of people
that have come into my life
and then left it to brave their own trails.

I found an old vial of your perfume in my bag last night
when I was sifting through its contents to give someone my
contact information
and at first I had the inclination to throw it away.
Not so much out of a reflex to cast you out, but to let you go.
But I thought about it, for that brief moment and decided
that it didn't bother me sitting there, not demanding my attention
or desire.

It was just there.
A memory I could encounter and release
without the pain of feeling violated.
So why should I throw it away right in that moment
when it really wasn't bothering anyone?

And it wasn't about keeping it
to keep you with me.
You'll always have the space in my heart you occupied once
We do not excise these loves and dispel them unless they are
truly toxic.
And you weren't toxic so much as you were
an experiment gone haywire.

A chance to stretch my comfort zone
and find myself.
Which I have, and for that I am so grateful.
But in finding ourselves, I believe we are meant to move on.
And moving on is exactly what I am focused with right now.

So I want you to be well,
and I still want the space both of us need to heal properly.
But I do hope that someday, if it has not already happened for you
you can encounter my memory the same way
and just be at peace with it
the way I am with yours.

Whiplash

Last night
someone asked me where you were
I wanted to answer honestly
The thought that ran through my mind first
clear and present
"I don't know."

Instead I paused
and awkwardly answered
"No longer with me."
A simple truth
with complicated intonations.

Everyone says they are sorry...at first.
I am and I'm not.
I wasn't enjoying this any longer.
I was holding onto the memory of your core
when I knew you better.
It was what was allowing me
to keep seeing you through all the changes we both went through.
The outfit could change, more years gracing your face,
but I saw your smile clear and present in each moment and found a way
to marry the past with the present to birth a future in my mind's eye.
Can you fault me for that?

I find this space in time to look back on things clearly obnoxious though
the last six months of rejection after rejection
has left some rather stinging wounds in its wake.
And you keep rubbing salt in them anyway.
I hid you from my view, but you show up in the main feed anyway.
You show up when you talk to my friends.
And nothing you say has really upset me so far
aside from butting into my circle of friends.

Friends you have never really fostered anything beyond
slight acquaintance anyway.
I wonder why you keep holding onto them.
I wonder when you will move on.
I'm aware you could call me a hypocrite for doing the same
but there are some people I have in fact fostered some connections with
independent from you
that for the meantime I am content to keep up.
That connection to them, in reality has nothing to do with you.

But I have trouble understanding why you choose to contact the friends of mine
that you do. There's really nothing there for you anyway, and when you move on physically from this space, so will they, and you won't have much of anything to tie each other together.

Speaking of moving,
I am aware you're looking at grad school on the east coast.
I'm happy for you, I actually don't mourn that one bit.
There was a peace in that news I found settling.
Good, things are as they should be, we are free to
go our own ways.
I want you to go out and find more of yourself
so you have more to give to other people you meet.

But the Francis Sage poem I saw crawl into my main feed today
that was bullshit.
Forgive me being self centered but a break up poem like that
is that not supposed to represent how you feel about this situation?
And you are free to process in any way you choose.
But that, so publicly, and that specific poem.
What a callous slap in the face.

I didn't attach any illusions to you.
I didn't attach expectations that weren't warranted
only hopes I heard you mirror back to me at one point.
And I resent you for breathing that suggestion into existence
through spoken word...my own art form.

Like that wouldn't hurt me?
Are you really that naive?
Have you already forgotten who I am
and who I am meant to be that you would throw that
into my own face?

And the end of that piece
calling the antagonist shit?
Is that a knock against me or you?
I never called you shit.
I've actually never said you aren't capable of getting what you want
or going where you want to.
I just called it like it was.
I just tried to inject some real world reality into these dreams you had
not to stop you from pursuing them, even if that meant without me,
but rather so that you could truly achieve them.

I have never wanted to strip you away from what is truly you
or your own destiny.
You are you, I've been acutely aware of that
from the moment I met you.

And my mistake in this relationship
was one to try to help you see what I saw in you
so that you could embrace the life you wanted
no matter what that held for you.
You could do that on your own all along, and you have.
The second was to buy into sugary sweet promises
of forever, when the first things I wrote to you
were that we had some work to do for/with each other in the now
and then we should move on.

I was mistaken with the original application
saying I wasn't capable of love,
I know that now this is part of what you were meant to teach me.
But you're hanging a lot of weight on a dead horse
if you mean to pass off on me like I trapped you in this.

I never trapped you in this
I asked you to join me if you wanted to
after you lured me in.
And maybe that's all it was to you
a challenge you couldn't back away from
saw something in me remarkable enough to say
yes to for the moment and fall head over heels.
Perhaps that is what I did too in the end.

But I don't appreciate the backlash from you on this.
Especially when I tried to give you my best always, it wasn't
always perfect but it was me.
And you calling me delusional when I tried to break up with you
that, that is the heart of the problem.

Please stop projecting your issues onto me.
I obviously wasn't delusional if I told you I sensed you wanting to go
and wanted to have you go.
You were the one that kept saying you wanted to stay
until the static of your fantasy world
collided with the impossibility of your reality.

You were the one that was upset when I told you I had to rethink this
after you told me the direction you were headed in.
A direction you again, had kept secret from me, only delineating the meager outline
but never fleshing it out fully-
own up to the fact that you did that.

Please don't lay that on me while you listen to bitter spoken word poems.
Please don't expect me not to see that as a glaring "fuck you" to me.
And please don't mock the fact that yes, I need more time.
I am still hurting. I am healing, but I am still hurting.
And I find that after all the support and love and yes sacrifice
I have given to you over the years,
you acting like this is just selfish.

And the lines in there about how you would never come back
betray everything you have said to me thus far.
But they don't betray your actions, that's for damn sure.
I have never known you to be anything but a good sprinter when the chase
got too thick, when the time started running out on you, in an effort to be the first out the door and not the one left standing before an empty finish line.
So if you feel more comfortable being a coward, if that's how you function, I suppose you should continue.

I am only taking my time so the final parting doesn't have to be cliches
borne of high school and melodrama.
I'd like to be grown up about this.
I believe we taught each other that much.
But you ending it over the phone,
then identifying with a poem in which the person says
they would never come back
just epitomizes for me that you would rather run headlong
into fantasy and nostalgia then be real and brave.
Face the music you composed so to speak
and learn it's not all badness on the other side.

I would have liked to imagine that many years down the line
we could have been friendly to each other.
Thrown away the impossibility of love realized between us,
moved on, been adults about this and let it go instead of holding onto the pain forever, found better partners more suited to us,
and still been able to share a friendship.

What I had with you as a lover, and a best friend
meant more to me than would warrant just simply throwing away
because I refused to move on from the pain of the past.
And yes, you've hurt me quite a great deal in the course of this relationship
but not so much for me to see that as something that wouldn't fade away.

I mean...that's not entirely true.
I think on some level I would always see you as a kind of silly wrecking ball
but that's part of your charm, the ability to be a catalyst for others to change.
But I think eventually, so much of me would be fortified and gratified with having moved on from this cat and mouse shit that I would not have feared the effects of your orbit any longer.

I mean why would a jackhammer fear a wrecking ball anyway?
We have different purposes, but we function in kind.
I mean that's what I attribute the length of this experiment to in all honesty anyway.
And if you're trying to communicate some poetic truth backinto my face
after having read my poems recently,
then don't.
Don't hold onto that pain.
Let it go.
That's why I'm writing about it.
That's why I'm performing it.

To speak the condition into existence and then let it go.
So please, be more like the you I actually know,
be kind to yourself and to me.
Let it go, and stop cluttering up the interim
with convoluted poetry that doesn't reflect the truth
only the pain.

Because I have had enough of pain
and I'd like to just remember you in love and friendship
and not acrimony.