Never tell you

I will never tell you how much I died that day.

You will never understand the gravity of the blow, or the way I collapse in on myself at the end of the day. You will never see how large the drops on the pillowcase are, or all the pictures on the floor or all the times I placed it back on my finger.
You will never get to see me every damn morning gather all the strength I let fall on the ground the night before and pad myself together to look whole. You will never understand what you’ve done and you did and what you continue to do. Your very pride blinds you.
You will never get to see the moments that I can feel again. Or the moments when I don’t give in. Or the days when I can be happy without being sad.

You are a traitor and a thief in all the ways that you deny.

Because of you promises can never be made again. They are meaningless and useless and destroy me from within. Because of you I do not believe in love. I have no reason to believe otherwise. Because of you I no longer trust myself or anyone else or the intentions, however beautiful, they may have. Because of you I find myself going insane trying to figure out every single move.
I will never tell you how hard I cry. I will never tell you how much love I have inside that will forever be yours. I will never tell you that a love like ours will always be unfinished because you chose to give into your pride, and your stubbornness and your insecurity. I will never tell you what it felt like to everyday wake up beside someone who slowly overtime saw you as a thing and not as a person. I will never tell you all the lies of “I’m ok” and “maybe we should part” was really a desperate plea for you to tell me that I was worth fighting for. That when I opened up the door, I never thought you were already packing.
I will never tell you these things because you must already know.

That those vows were meant for life, and for my life. Your reasons are faulty and shallow and hollow and old and tired and lame. Grow up. This isn’t a game. Reach out. All those times I begged you to seek help and all those times I wanted to be your soul’s listener. But you denied and retreated and shut down and defeated my every gesture of love, of desperation, of hope, of truce.
I will never tell you all the things I should because you don’t want to hear them right now. Because you know if you do, that it will be too late and I will have learned to live somehow without you.

A Few Good Years

You carry such heaviness in your stride. The pride that chains your heart has turned it cold and hard. Such waste, such want. Believing you can have better you burn your bridges and fill your moats. Gather the last of your battle defences and scan the horizon. For today you are but a mere shadow. A waste of a man who once stood great and tall. Today you are bones, brittle and sore, a woman who no longer knows her face. The path leads you into giant caverns, swallowed whole in their depths. Here is where you lay to rest. Here is where you shall not see the sun rise. And you will meditate and memorize every curve of rock, every desolate thought and crack that surrounds.  There will be many days of falling rain. There will be many sleepless nights and you will become lost in the tunnels of your soul. But one day, you will see the strokes of sunlight scorching the mountainside. You will land your feet on lush grass and allow yourself to heal again. The scars will start to close in on themselves; the chains, now rusted and cracked, simply turn to dust. Once again, colours will appear, blushing through the leaves and petals and into your heart. All those problems, all those nightmares that gripped your throat will be gone forever. In a few days, not all will seem to be lost. In a few months, you too will rise to greet the sun. And in a few good years , you will live as you were always meant to live.

Tomorrow

 

Tomorrow I will be beautiful; I will not hear the voices in my head or envy the glamorous pictures of others or judge the failures I’ve made. Tomorrow I will be beautiful and strong; I will remember that I have survived and i deserve great happiness and that my scars are lovely. Tomorrow I will be beautiful and strong and at peace; I will not remember the what ifs or the might have been’s or the never was. Today I feel like the world cages me but tomorrow I will break that world in my hands and start to believe I am beautiful.

write what hurts the most

“Write hard and clear about what hurts. Don’t avoid it. It has all the energy. Don’t worry, no one died of it. You might cry or laugh, but not die”       – Ernest Hemingway

Nights are the only thing that brings my soul comfort. The loneliness and stillness that sits in such thick darkness. I had lost my heart when she left. I have lost my gravity now that he will soon be gone. I cannot feel the ties that hold me to this earth. I am scared to write what I feel. It will be real then, concrete in words, for them to see. Will they think me weak because of my tears; will they think me pathetic because I yearn for love; will they pass over me because I am broken? I am at peace amidst the smoking aftermath of war. Yet, I am still kneeling on the floor. All these unanswered questions, all the dreams once made tenderly and carefully now burnt by my own hands and theirs. Look at how masterfully things have fallen apart. Look at the way the mirror depicts how empty I am inside. For you see flesh, and blood and smiles and laughter. Look closer. I am hollowed and afraid. Shamed and disgraced. Abandoned and misplaced. It hurts to have such great faith, such great ambition in something and to then wake up with it no longer there. How can you ask me to be strong?! How can you say it will bring much better things? As though faith is so easily restored. As if, now that I am at the bottom of the cavern, I can simply fly up. The ash and darkness have made me tremble even when you are not looking. Life was not like this in my dreams, I did not grow up to believe in something so broken and alone. You want me to write about what hurts. It hurts to wipe my slate clean. To divide memories into different boxes, some to never be seen again. It hurts to know where to step next. To fall again and again,  each time with hope, that scars can heal over and never be seen. It hurts to have to believe in myself without someone next to me. It hurts staying late up at night without someone to whisper to. It hurts that all this time, I should have known that half way can sometimes be too much for someone. I am terrified, split between the old world and new. I am undone at the innermost part of my soul and yet can feel the wounds start to mend. I am stronger than I was yesterday. And yet still would rather not be strong at all.

Resolution to be

Happy New Year.

I hope it will be. The last few years have been a mixture of grief, sadness, misunderstandings, loneliness, and confusion. And I could really use a good year.

My new years resolution is simple: Be happy for you. But the more I think about it the more I wonder just how easy this will be. To be honest, I’m scared right under my blankets. I’m terrified to make decisions that will alter my life, yet I cannot waste anymore time waiting for someone else to make it for me. I had hope I would find contentment and resolve, instead I feel like different weights are on opposite shoulders. I’m terrified to make a mistake or more so that those I love will point at me and shake their finger and be disappointed in me. Perhaps though that’s something I need to accept to be happy: you cannot always please everyone with everything you do. I realize that although my decisions may make me happy and healthy, not everyone will agree. I only hope that those who truly love and care for me, in the end, will rejoice in my happiness with me. I’m scared to look back and say “I should’ve known better” and yet again, isn’t this something we all do until our very last moments? As my dear friend said “So what? You make a mistake and you go  ‘oops’ and then you move on”. I know deep down what I need to do, but it’s going to be difficult and hard and I know there will be nights when I am full of what ifs and should have’s. But I also believe there will be many more days of laughter, freedom, self confidence and happiness. In order to have something you never did, you must do something you’ve never done. So wait for me universe! God, grant me the wisdom and the strength! My loved ones, hold my hand or lend a shoulder or share a laugh when I need it the most! I’m no longer allowing my wings to be tied back. I’ve died in the fire and I am rising up.

Fallen words

 

(Fridge poem my friend Jonathan & I wrote)

Her electric scream
my angry dream
       If you could make
                our feelings break
throw me up in his grace
                           capture and empty the sculptured waste
                  for us, use every open stroke
          gloriously balanced by cigarette smoke
this mess absurd, concrete hard
deep and raw as the wildest shard
      use drunk joy do sculpt or write
        Compose no song on canvass white
Why draw out more fiery red
painting smears black rigid dead
  Picture pain when angels old
sex is death as passion bold
         see water suffer as colour dry
               glass will form about young and try

Imagine I never to be free
Ask…it was always to see

Play me a song

It’s amazing how a simple thing can hold so many memories. Dancing on my daddy’s feet as a little girl; making up a girl band with my kid sister singing to the Beach boys; playing a song on repeat because it makes me sob; turning the bass up and leaning against the speakers to feel your chest thump. I think we forget what a beautiful ritual it is to pull a record out of it’s sleeve, running fingertips over the edges, flipping it onto the player and gently, hesitantly releasing the needle over the spinning ebony. And….memories.

Perhaps we forget the small things more as we get older. What really makes us happy. What makes your soul vibrate by just lying on the floor. One of my most vivid memories was a summer night a few years back. I was hosting a party, and friends were mingling, in the hot tub, in the yard, eating, laughing, drinking. But for whatever reason I had found myself in the smaller living room with two close friends lying on the carpet under christmas lights listening to the cd playing. We ended up laying there for the entire album, not saying a single thing as people step in and out of the room. It was as if the rest of the world slowed into a twilight coloured blur and we just existed in this serene, vulnerable state. Music says what I can’t, what I’m afraid to, what I want to say.

I never had someone request a song for me — so do me a favour and play me a song and let it soak both of us in

9:00

I can’t make these wars end, oh but how I would try
I would make the bullets fall like flowers
And old age would be how they’d die

I can’t make wealthy those poor hands
But they would harvest gold
If it only grew in their land

I would lay down the barriers and cross
Bare foot and honest and open and lost
I would gather that child in my arms
Breathe in the pain, Breathe back a life without harm
I am a warrior of one
Amid a world come undone
But I would lay down my small life who those who shone

And I can’t make you love me,
I can’t make you love me, but God, how I would try

I forgive who?

Is love forgiving? Or forgiving Love?

Sometimes it feels you make me stand on my hands

with my legs dangling above

Sometimes it’s the looks that you don’t give

when I’m just dying to see them

Love doesn’t always fill the empty spaces

Or light up all the dark places

It doesn’t always remember your name

Sometimes it’s angry, and frustrated and rude

It’s sometimes just a shell of something you knew

Love is desolate and then alive and open and then the Great Divide

And then it’s something new and old and borrowed and blue

And there’ll be weddings and anniversaries and birthdays with you

Then you and I will split apart

You at the head and I at the heart

We’ll shuffle the pieces laid out on a table

Then staple them, or glue them or sew them

In the heat we’ll circle like tigers

trying to figure out which side offers safety

In June we’ll love like bunnies do

Covered in grass blankets with dew

Love is not always forgiving it’s too hard to forget

So we place the regrets in a box with a lock

And try hard not to look

Not to pace in front

Forget what’s not

Remember what is

Love is restless

Insomnia: The Waiting

I don’t sleep like you.

I don’t wake up in the morning ready for the new day.

I don’t feel refreshed or energized.

I don’t sleep like you.

I sleep perhaps four hours at any time, only to be rudely awakened by sirens, or a whirling fan, or my cat’s stinky breath. Or sometimes, I just wake up for no reason at all. On occasion I can simply roll over or adjust myself and fall back to sleep. But tonight, like the majority of nights I’m wide awake. I suffer from insomnia. Maybe not severely, I’m not going to start a fight club any time soon, but I’m definitely awake. I find things to do, clean up quietly, watch tv, write emails, search the web; sometimes I sit and stare out the window. And I began to wonder why. Why is it so hard to sleep through the night? Even if I get up at 8am and don’t take a nap, I’m still wide awake. I think it’s because I fear tomorrow. I don’t like it. I don’t like knowing I have to deal with things I don’t want to; remember failures or start again from the ground up. I know that not every tomorrow brings those things. Sometimes it’s waiting for a friend to arrive, or a concert to go to or another event worth happiness. But overall, I worry. I worry and sit and pace and pause and stare out that window wondering what will happen next. I’m absolutely riveted to the silence. It’s as though I’m waiting for easy street to appear, for things to line up, for some good graces to befall. Life isn’t easy for most of us. For others, there are only small bumps. I know the path I chose. I’m aware of the choices I’ve made, the sacrifices, the mistakes, the headaches. I also know that some devastating things happen out of my control. Those, I’ll never be able to control. And I guess that’s why I worry. I’m stuck between not caring what the world thinks, or my friends and family thinks and leading with my heart and then again, putting that aside and assuming the responsibilities, letting others go first, knowing where my “place” is, conforming to what I feel I should be. I hate the waiting. I fear what will happen when it becomes daylight because for now, it’s solitude and peaceful and it’s all mine. I feel like I can achieve things, like I can get out there and do it! And then Tuesday morning comes, or Saturday morning, or Monday morning…and I am left paralyzed, terrified of the magnitude of the world and how short I have to live and how much I want to be and do and suddenly, suddenly this is all too much. It’s too much to ask for. It’s too much to try and live. i suppose I feel a little like Atlas with the world on his shoulders. Perhaps I put it there myself you say; I knew you would say something like that. And perhaps I did, but don’t we all? And the rest, the rest is out of our hands, out of our control. It’s the loss of control that haunts me.

I don’t sleep like you.

But I bet you worry like me.