room no. 147.

jade green curtains
hands battered and torn.
pink reminders on my
porcelain sink.

a sweet girl capable
of horrible things.

waltz.

dance with me, i said
and i will tell you all my secrets
under the street light
where we stood before the fight.

but then we were back in that hotel room
the one like all the others
anonymous and formulaic. you didn't want to dance
you told me, and i said
i didn't feel like it much anymore either.

absurdities.

the center is everywhere,
Nietzsche said.
bent is the path of eternity.
you jutted off
in a way i never expected.

i followed you
on that journey
away from the center,
even though you are still
in the middle of all of this.

and now the sky is falling
can you hear it?

turbulence.

slate gray tarmac
yellow criss-crossing lines
like a maze before my eyes.
stale, recycled air in a cabin
too sterile and symmetrical.
thirty-two people
that i do not know
who do not know me
or my history
or my story.
i could be anyone,
this is my chance.

[un]protected. part 2. revised.

you extended your hand to me
and i hesitated
my nervousness about touch
making commitment real.
to unbrick the wall
brick after brick
often only mortar
scraped in tiny centimeters
by bloodied fingers.
and then, even then
you extended your hand to me.
can i hold your hand? you asked
the last thing i thought
would ever come from your mouth.
i relented, and trusted
innocently
and in those few minutes
you took it all away
my hand in yours
in that silence.

andromeda.

stars are all moving
relative to the sun, they could be
distant relatives of mine
i think.

but because they are so far away
it will take thousands of years
thousands of lifetimes
for me to see you move.

and maybe
in a thousand lifetimes from now
you and i will meet, Andromeda
and i will free you from your chains.

somewhere i will build a castle
for you and i
and we will live there in solitude,
over a drawn bridge, a cerulean moat
defying the sky.

well water.

i would stand
on the brown, flowered vinyl chair
to reach the sink.
the white cup, plastic and ribbed,
with a yellow band around the top
within reach of my small fingers.
the communal cup runneth over
with water from the well.

without promise.

in another lifetime
we might have been birds, and
this may have all been different.

you would
tell me stories of flight
show me how to fly
but i would swallow seeds
two by two

choking.

superhero cape (n).:
1. the cloak worn by a fictional character with extraordinary powers;
2. the covering which hides all weaknesses from being seen by others,
and can cause invisibility;
3. a protective fabric, that when tied around the neck,
becomes impenetrable to harm.

[un]protected.

it's all the same but not
and i wish i could stop grinding my teeth
stop the blood letting from my fingers.

brick by tiny brick
i let my hair down
hoping that you would finally see me
how difficult this really is.

for you
i stopped hiding
i rolled up my sleeves
and took off the superhero cape.

i left it somewhere i can't remember.

and all i want is to have it back.

glass house.

i lived in a glass house
one in which everything was visible
yet, all our secrets were hidden
beneath heaps of lies.

there was no place
to hide secrets of my own
unless i buried them
in the dirt in the yard.

but then i could not see [them] myself.