crabtree and compost

my head is so empty; my thoughts bound and twisted. i am currently unable to detoxify my darkest parts: torture.
this lack of inspiration is eating me up, it's making it so hard to fall right. i'll break my ankles when i reach the pavement if i don't align my body the way it deserves.

work. sleep. work. sleep. drugs. sleep. alcohol. work. sleep. worry.

all i'm askin' for is some tiny honesty, i need some explanations to justify this sinking ship. i am going under, this hollowness like quicksand, rising to my rib cage. and in another four, i will not muster the strength to rise up above you as i do now. you've gotta say, "it was all just an accident." and i will fly along, i'll become the phoenix i once was, alone. years will pass and i will be safe and settled, until you make your grand entrance, with all the streamers and doves trailing behind you, but next time, that time, i will not allow you to control this court. i am now the queen of my own catastrophe. singular and steady.

my cruelty will not stand for much longer, so take me away from him while you still can. and if you cannot, then allow me to rot alone. alone, in peace.

10.17.08 - if you love, that should be enough

i am overwhelmed with desire, this ancient infatuation. i am above you, hovering like a sparrow, my song broken and strained. your presence below me (look at your eyes in the dim autumn light) captures and confounds me. i wish i could hold this position forever; my knees digging into the floor beneath me, my arms high above my head, every limb screaming "RELEASE ME."

though you failed to mention what could have saved our lies, i am not angry. guilt is foreign, however i regret her pain. i understand. whatever this may destroy, i hope you watch it burn slow and and bright, thinking, "the glow will make us whole again."

your questions are like the soft and subtle sway of blades in the wind. (the cut, the fever.) but here i am, asking to be chained down by you and all you depend on. bury me in your difficulties, i will bear the weight, wearing your flaws high like a crown. there is glory in all admittance.

now look at us, fumbling for the right words; you reply: "without you here, it would have been impossible."

flattered, i am not. where is the honesty i deserve? how do i differentiate between your code of conduct and what you proclaim as your bare bones? how i pray that you're secretly saying what i am thinking:

"always you."

your breath on my skin like sunlight, your hands like the necks of cranes: easy and understanding. aware. calculated. but this lie that you have built beneath us is deadly.

how do you plan your sieges? this war we fight, the front lines heavy and covered with every missed moment; the ghosts of what circumstance would not allow. we are two generals, angry and broken, desperately trying to fill the trenches that our hearts have created (all the holes and voids we can't seem to cover completely.)

time to recalculate, reformat: i no longer can bear the burden of this wonder. pick up or put down: a toy at your disposal. be fair, though there is rarely fairness in truth. you are a wolf in a lover's clothes.

"when we kissed, it

didn't feel poisonous.

and when you cried,

i dried off your blue

eyes. he smiles at me

as he is falling asleep,

saying, "we gotta live

the best we know how

to."

10.8.08 - He Fades With The Day

it's just me who I'm trying to save.
I'm not doing much of anything, i don't miss you, and i don't love you anymore. i left you years ago, and I'm much happier this way. last night i crawled into my car and my chest heaved and sank with the tears i was working to produce, but my eyes were as dry and clear as the sky above me. and I'm not trying to be secretive, i can't cry over you anymore. do you know how good it feels to send you off to sea?
I've sat in this same seat before, in the back of the classroom, and every time i come back it gets better and better. i am high off my own despondence and detachment. i can do so many things when i wipe my heart clean.
i just carried my entire weight in luggage, and my fingers and shoulders ache and are busting open, reminding me of the years i carried you because you yourself couldn't bear the pounds of your problems. i feel superhuman and daring for all that i did for you, and settled for all that i did not.
i have an hour left in this terminal until i can get home to the place where my friends say i don't belong. well, i agree, their selfishness is right. however, like i stayed with him, i will stay here. it is my godforsaken fucking duty. i'm sorry, but i can't come back and save you too.
i want to be able to tell you I'd fight, I'd say that I'd use the brass knuckles you kept in your glove box to smash the teeth of any girl who stood in my way. but if i looked at you now, and i told you how I'd struggle and squirm for you, I'd be lying, and i have never lied to you.

i own today.

10.12.08 Little Dark Parts

my life / my lips / my decisions / my indiscretions.

i turned my head to her and asked, "why do they all come back?" i can't answer that today, and probably not tomorrow, but my arms will open wider and wider every time they reappear, and he is a repeat offender. (don't let him be.) --i am just looking for something to love me the way he does-- there is comfort in his deviant obsession with me. he is not beautiful, and he don't mean a thing to me.

-----

the one who i'm always running from comes back periodically, but we like to leave too much to stay. me and him: four years of closing doors quietly behind us / four years of quitting and beginning again / four years of silence / four years of sparks / four years of three hour drives - reduced to one. this close, four years apart, i refuse to go to him. if he can find me before i fly away, i'll wait. i am a baby bird.
in his parent's house (whichever one.) in the front seat of his car (whichever one.) in the crowd of that venue (whichever one.) where he whispered, "did you miss me?" and i replied, "i know what you did." that was years ago, and i have forgiven him for his youthful folly, and i am sorry for mine.
every time he climbs in bed with me, we realize it is too hard to fall asleep alone from so far away and i leave him (as he leaves me) to settle for something a little closer.
i know why he stays with her
i know how comfortable she is
i know he doesn't love her anymore
i know she still loves him
i know he lets her
i know why he lets her.
he likes to play a game called you-can't-figure-me-out-and-i-got-secrets. i always let him win, but i will read him, highlight my favorite parts, re-read him, and true to my nature, give him to himself--the best gift he'll ever receive.

10.13.08 - How Dare You Dare Me?

THIS is how much i want to stay. i promise, this amount is right, it's enough to even everything up and bottom us out.
this is our night; all of us are hummingbirds tonight and our song is about as heavy as our combined weight. hey, i'm sorry, tonight's been wonderful and so have you. it seems i can't apologize enough for the way i behave sometimes.
if you'd open your throat a little wider, i'm always willing to hear what comes out. those little chirps make a lot of things make sense on the regular. i wish you'd been here tonight to see how we all split and divided into separate parts, i think you would have liked to see us shrink down to the size of wood chips.
i'm getting a little happier, i promise, just have a little bit more of that drink and you'll start to believe me. i can make promises to you until my vocal chords shrivel, but that doesn't always mean i'll pull my own weight through. but i think if you asked me hard enough, i'd do it right.
there's a tree upstate i'd like you to see. it's taller than most people, all people. i'd like to see you up at the top in your tree branch nest, and i'd like to hear what you think:
"those smokestacks remind me
of home, like you remind me of
home."
i'm horribly flattered and ashamed by the curves you've uncovered on the both of us, but i'll accept whatever you wanna give me. and i'm alone, but that's been sounding better every day. maybe it was just me i wanted to hold onto all this time and not any of you, not any part of you. maybe all the different parts of you would be to unbearable to carry, but i think i'd like to hold them if i could.
under this weather, i don't feel so bad after some movement. and i wouldn't feel so bad if you didn't wanna go upstate with me, i'd understand if you wanted to walk it slow and alone;
you are an ocean after all.
i'm more like the mouth of a big river, (i am always emptying myself out) that you studied in your geography class, saying, "i'd like to go there someday." i think you've been trying to get there, and maybe one day you will, you'll get to see what you've been missing. you know i have a lot of questions.

me and you are to be continued.

"i'm gonna do my best swan dive into shark-infested waters, i'm gonna pull out my tampon and start splashing around. 'cause i don't care if they eat me alive, i've got better things to do than survive. i've got the memory of your warm skin in my hands, and i've got a vision of blue sky and warm land."


going back to the place where i'll never belong.

remember?

"it seems like it's been so long since we kissed through the darkness, until it was dawn. and up with it came our pain and fear that we'd already lost each other; we both knew that the end was near. maybe i just set aside the fact that you were broken-hearted in my own special selfish way. and if i hadn't set aside the fact that you were broken-hearted, hell knows where your heart would be today, maybe with me, maybe with me."


you told me, "i was drinking you goodbye, my heart floats in the bay." well, so does mine these days. & there's no telling what i'll do if i don't return to you, isn't that something you can understand? you used to sing these songs to me, back in those days, where we talked about infirmaries and the tails behind our backs. whatever happened to that silly dream you had? i wanna make it real, i'd love to rub your back.

i still love you, and i'm not sorry.

it's cold, and i'm so happy. thought i had a clean break, but i'm home again, and i'm happy to be here. my backyard looks like a used palate, and my hands are freezing, even in my coat pockets where you tell me to shove them. i have half the brain to jump ship and swim back up the atlantic, but you'd be my bouy. i hope so, at least.

coast - to - coast.

i'm a little bit taller, i'm a little bit fatter, i'm a little bit smarter, i'm wiser now. three years is a long time, and my hands look older, my laugh lines more refined. my taste, sporadic. my eyes, grounded. my knees, nervous. my heart, flighty; but it descends for you.

Journal #18. October's insensitivity.

do you remember me? do you think you could still find that mole on my lower back with your eyes closed? could you, please? it's this time of year, it's this month, and look where i am, look at my face. i'm smiling. any other month than this, i wouldn't mind at all. i'd be pleased. i've been pleased, so happy and so clean, without you there. but here i am, back in my parent's house by myself, and it's october again. the smell of the leaves and the dying grass; listen! you can't sneak up on me anymore without that earth crunching beneath your feet. maybe that's a bad thing this time around. after all, i can't ask anything from you.
hey, you remember those songs from a couple months back? they've been on repeat and i don't know why. maybe things will get better again, but i wish you'd been quicker, or i had, or i hadn't locked myself in my own skull and refused to come out. well, we were just little kids back then, and when you tried to put that ring on my finger, it slipped right off, and i left you in the dust, didn't i? i'm sorry, it won't happen again, my knuckles are wider now, but i can't expect you to believe that. well, you can't expect me to believe in you anymore either, so i guess we're even. my hands are up, i give up. look, my gun's on the table and it's not smoking.
well, if you're still afraid of me, i understand. your friends are too, they made up their minds, but really, so did mine. they both tell us the same things these days.

"dont. look at yourself, look at what he did, your eyes are too pretty to salivate."
"look how she lied, she'll lie again, and she'll crush you with everything she owns."

well, scrub me down with bleach if that's what it takes, i won't mind. how do i prove it? do i have to dye my hair, do i have to get contacts, do we have to erase all the love between us? well, that'll never work. we've been trying for years, you couldn't even stand it the last time we touched. but i was clouded by my expectation of the future. no, not in that way, don't you dare. i didn't listen to what you were trying to say, my ears were all closed off and once again, i didn't realize your clever tricks until i was long gone and lagging. remember what you said to me? "I'll wait for you, as the cold rain falls." look at that. now i'm digging myself deeper and i'm lapping up that dirt like i owe my body every pound. but hey, i love sinking when it's with you, baby.