my dreams remind me of an ocean

I have no right to feel your absence this deeply,
to expect your words at a certain time every day,
to expect them to brighten me.
I never had any claim to you.
I just hoped I did.

I shouldn’t have let my heart speak.
My heart has never said anything
that I didn’t regret eventually.

I miss talking in a way that’s not 
feet on broken glass.

We were waiting in line to go on a water slide when he first told me he wanted to marry me. We’d been in the water for hours, wrinkly like we’d been together for sixty-five years. His eyes were wide as my bikini clung to my skin, like he hadn’t seen me in much less before, when he said those words: “I’m going to marry you someday.”

I wanted to run away so fast that the lifeguard blew his whistle. We were only seventeen. That’s not the kind of thing you can say to a girl who loves you. That’s not the kind of thing that can be put back.

I smiled, but I’m not sure it made its way to my eyes. I didn’t want to go on the slide anymore. My stomach was already flopping around in my abdomen.

As you can see, for my post today, I wrote a little play. I didn’t know how else to post it except in screenshots. If you’re interested, the read more link below will whisk you away to the rest of it. (It’s really short, promise.)

Read More

A cross hangs on the wall, right between the line of blow-up Letter People and a bulletin board full of finger paintings. A man hangs there, blood blowing from his hands, caked into his hair. I’m surprised the same people who banned books in the library asked for this to be hung here. It could be traumatizing for a kindergartner, but we’ve all grown up around bodies like these, and no one bothers to look for too long. It watches us as we play, as we learn to share and count to one hundred. It follows us as we age, as we learn algebra, physics, The Great Gatsby, until we are old enough to hang one for ourselves, until we are the ones showing corpses to kindergartners and saying they are beautiful.

You tell me that you’ve never been in love, not really, and I feel an overwhelming sadness for you that makes me want to take you into my arms and kiss you until you can’t breathe, to bring you to an Italian restaurant  and refuse to let you pay the check, to write you poems and songs and letters. I want to make you fall in love with me, just so you could feel the warmth it brings. But that’s not fair to you. I’m not one you would want to love.

I think how easy it must be, to have never been in love, to not have little snippets of yourself scattered all over, and to not have little ghosts of others inside you. And it must be beautiful, to be waiting patiently to finally be swept off your feet, to fall in love correctly, in perfect form.

But I couldn’t give up the feeling of intertwined hands, the blues and browns and greens of their eyes. They are a part of me now, as I am a part of them, and I know what it’s like to be in love.

Before I can stop myself, I lean forward and kiss you.

why should i be brave
when it only makes me smaller.

why should i offer people
the ventricles in my heart
if they’ll only mar them to pieces.

i can’t take much more of this.

you light me up
like a string of christmas lights
on the winter solstice.

and sometimes when you smile,
i see spots behind my eyes,
like i’ve been staring at the sun.

i can’t help but fear that i’ll hurt you,
that i’ll dim those bulbs in your eyes,
but they’re what i see by.
they’re what keep me
from losing myself in the dark.

and i would do anything
to bask in your rays
for a bit longer.

I never believed in ghosts until I met him, until he showed me the way the pantry door opened by itself, the orbs he insisted I’d missed because I’d chosen the wrong moment to blink.

I suppose I didn’t believe in them, but I humored him, and that’s almost the same thing.

If he thought there was a spirit about, he would call out, asking its name like an old friend. I would kiss him, closing his lips, because I didn’t want to know if they would answer.

Ghosts float around, trying to make an impact on the natural world but always coming up short. They strive to be noticed, to be heard, by someone, anyone. They are shadows of their former selves, not realizing that their state of matter ever changed.

I realized he was so fascinated with ghosts because he was one of them.

We were once the aurora borealis,
Shimmering above the night sky,
Our bodies intermingling, our colors blending.
You were the purples, I was the oranges,
And together, we made fire.

But you took the purples away,
The flames too hot and the tundra too cold,
Too much all at once.
Without you I only burn,
Obliterating everything I touch.
I need someone to slow me to embers.

I thought we were the northern lights,
But I was just a spotlight in the night,
And you were just smoke.

you don’t believe that i have baggage,
because i don’t wheel it behind me,
opening it up and handing out
bits like party favors. 

i hide mine close to my person,
secured with zipper after zipper.

if i let it free, i imagine
it would consume the entire room,
and would never fit back inside,
and you’ll never get it all off your walls,
or off your mind
or out of your hair.

you have your own burdens.
you don’t need mine caked to your skin.

This March, I’ve decided to post a new piece of writing here every day. I’ve been wanting to do something like this for a long time, and I’m excited to be sharing more writing with you lovely people!

My wonderful and talented friends Nadia and Patty are joining me in this endeavor as well, and you should check out their blogs. And if you’re feeling up to the challenge and want to participate, send me an ask and let me know! Let’s be friends!

your signals are mixed,
like vodka and water,
and though it doesn’t
go down easy,
i sip the cocktail
nonetheless.