I was never interested in cartography
Until I met you
Now I long to map the planes of your shoulders,
The breadth of you back,
The mountain range of your spine.
I wish to plot points on your skin
Like a map,
Showing all the places I have yet to explore,
Strung together with veins of red threads
The destinations of my crimes of passion.
You’re so used to my silence,
To my bearing your burdens quietly
It makes you feel better
To know I won’t complain,
That I’ll weather any storm you create
And still stand ready for more.
But today
I was not silent.
Although I never raised my voice
It sounded like thunder to my own ears,
Deafening in its purpose,
In its simplicity:
Enough.
My back is broken,
My wood boards wrenched apart and sails
Tattered and torn
From years of gales and lightning.
High winds of anger
Blown in your breath as you spit hurt like rain
Enough to drown me
But never enough to wash away the words
Already said.
Although rotten inside
From years of salt water tears,
I stand as tall as the mast
Upon which my white-flag rags once hung
An unspoken plea:
Surrender.
Does my strength surprise you?
Your forceful nature made me such,
Hardened like a lonely captain
Commanding a damned vessel
To her inevitable death.
It’s an odd thing –
Being so young and yet feeling like my life is already over
I haven’t had enough experience to be able to say
“I have lived”
But time has already begun to fade,
Days and weeks blur together and I cling to routine
Even as I fight against my own complacency.
Being young and lifeless makes it hard for planting dreams,
Like seeds on concrete they wither in the light of every new day.
Why continue planting when the soil is the same?
I watch those around me grow and drift away
But I feel rooted,
Unintentionally.
I’ve never wanted to stay in one place and yet I find myself unable to move.
I strain against the comfort of normalcy,
The very thought of settling down setting my skin to crawling
Because there’s so much I want to do,
And so little time in which to do it.
Am I 19 or 93?
Sometimes I forget how short my time has been,
Too focused on changing, on growing
That I send my consciousness to the stratosphere
Where it lingers for minutes
Or maybe for centuries.
I’d forgotten what it feels like to fall
Not in desperate frenzies of love
And neither fits of passionate love-making,
I’ve never known the necessity of another person
Still it is foreign to me.
I had grown accustomed to complacency
To the patterns of those I knew –
Had known my whole life –
That to learn someone anew
Was an entirely novel idea.
I wake in the morning
To tangled sheets and sunlight,
Chasing the feeling of her skin
Trying to drench myself in her perfume
The smell of it fading from the pillow
Where the night before she had laid herself
Bare
Long waves framing her beautiful face
And I am dizzy from remembrance
Of her in naked glory.
My knees bruised from hitting the ground
To worship at her feet
Her breasts and supple skin
Alabaster
flushed with rosy passion,
Purple and red love marks I wish for all to see
In undeniable proof that I beheld her once
But like the feeling of a fading dream
She eludes me while all the while
Teasing my imagination with delicious agony.
You wanted me to be your world
Your starry sky and moon
You didn’t realize that it meant
I’d have to orbit you.
You wanted me to be your fire
Your only source of warmth
You didn’t realize that it meant
I’d have to burn for you.
You wanted me to be your heart
Your passion and your drive
You didn’t realize that it meant
I’d have to give up mine.
You wanted me to be your anchor
Your calm within the storm
You didn’t realize that it meant
I’d have to drown for you.
It is spring.
I look outside to see the birds wake with chirping voices,
Calling songs as warm and bright as the hours ahead.
I see the flowers shaking off their slumber,
Stretching in the early dawn to greet the day
Unfurling their leaves and straightening their stamen,
Faces turned upwards towards the sunlight.
It is spring.
I look inside to see the cobwebs that grew within me
blow away like flying kites in the breeze.
I see the darkness shrouded across my mind
Dissipate in the light that pours through my open window,
Revealing the cracked but vibrant wallpaper
That stretches around my very soul
To immerse myself in renewed creativity.
We scramble to pick up pieces in the aftermath
Fragments of love and friendship,
Shattered
Into shards of loneliness and blame
Sharp enough to cut our fingers,
Open blooming arteries,
Or saw through bone.
But we hold our own pieces,
Careful not to wound one another
Even though we gave each other the tools.
For now, that decision is enough to live with
And slowly we will rebuild
Me, my lofty castle walls
And you, your forest full of dreams.
It’s the right thing to do, I tell myself
You owe him this much
Honesty and tact are not my forte
But for him I try anyway.
It’s the right thing to do, I tell myself
You owe yourself this much
Love and courage are not my forte
But for myself I’ll try anyway.
I collect old things,
For there is something about holding items
That have lived far more than I.
Books barely refraining from blowing into dust
To swirl in the air with the dinosaurs
Wood so ingrained with history of conversations
They echo voices in my room
Emotions embedded in figurines of ceramic
Cracks in enamel like topography
Boxes that once house diamonds and pearls
Their impressions left in velvet linings
The jewels themselves reflect ghosts of the past
Faces shining in every facet
Because all of these items are haunted in their own way
Their lives as much a story as their owners
They have, by being, encouraged
Love, friendship, and all forms of passion
To arguments, hatred, and crime
They have stood as silent witnesses
And they take their secrets to their inevitable end.
the Honest Poet