I had a conversation with God.
I saw Her essence in the cold night sky.
She listened as I apologized
for forgetting who I was for so long.
She sent an embrace on the moonlight
that I was smiling into, eyes closed,
and I whispered Her name to the stars.
What have I done?
swinging at the end of a thick rope,
clinging to the frayed end of my self-worth
while I do nothing at all about it.
What have I become?
this vessel void of who I used to know I was,
just an empty space where happiness belongs
and now I’ve gone too far.
Who am I now?
My desperation tastes like drowning in the sea.
I step back and watch, distinct from my body,
and I know it’s time to learn to swim again.
Smooth scales touch my hands
like stones lain in the warm sun
where my snake friends nap.
I cried so hard I thought I’d die
for just a taste of something sweet
promised in his eyes.
The ache for what I hadn’t had
filled close to bursting
such pressure in my skin
leaked out in yearning
from beneath lashes
to end in salt upon my lips.
It tastes like the last piece of chocolate
inside my mouth,
and I’m bored with wasting time
pretending to savor dull things.
I should hide my shine for you.
Appease your forever-melancholy
by scraping the diamonds from inside my own eyes.
You would gladly watch me rip the grateful words out, my tongue dead in my fist
except that I am new now,
and you – too bitter to pass my lips –
are free to fly away.
I can taste your strange dynamic on my tongue.
Bitter,
and it sours my stomach.
I don’t know what the flavor is between the two of you while I’m away,
but I want it out of my mouth.
Spit.
Mix your poison far away from me.
The antidote is in my eyes and hands and lips,
and there is not one reason I should be sick for you.
I am free.
I’m sure you had a logical reason
for quietly leaving me behind,
a justifiable synopsis
that made drifting away effortless.
I was confused and hurt,
like a wild animal almost tame
but not quite.
You were my balloon outside the carnival gate,
all those years ago.
So,
what if I breathe in
then out
and drop the string I held too long for you?
There is pleasure in that,
in being weightless for a while.
Dearest,
We live in different worlds,
you in a brain
and I in a heart.
So,
this is how I say
Goodbye.
“It was for the best.”
I told myself
when I doubted again what I had done
to protect my heart.
I have become a master stone mason.
There must be pride in that.
Right?
“It was for the best.”
I know it wasn’t.
Isn’t.  –  Won’t ever be,
but where do I find the chisel
strong enough
to ruin it all?
Offer my ears riches,
they’ve been blind in darkness too long.
Deliver more to me than dry, bare bones.
Utter something raw and true.
Make it sting.
Say something real.
Speak something worthy.
Leave me certain of your intentions.
I am too strong to pine for definitives a moment longer
But
Make words that are more than empty shells of what could be,
and I will risk my soul to bathe in the light with you.
Write something painfully sexy on my body
with your tongue.
I adore that part of you
which models such stunning sounds
from heavily blank air.
Mold a piece of my heart
into something of use to you
with hands that leave me no language of my own
except a vocabulary belonging to dark and carnal things –
the kind of beast I want to be
when I’m finally free.
Maine Moon 