Takotsubo
I have yet to see a broken bone
by means of infection
break another
When hands hold
When legs lock
When arms embrace
Why then has my heart feared
for as long as it has beat broken
that it’s tears and holes
might walk across our chests
jump through heaving breaths
and make yours its home?
Will you hold me responsible?
When our lips touch
If blood rushes
If I let you heal me
And in the process
Your heart breaks too?
Sink or swim, son
It was in a lake of broken glass
That I first learned how to swim
My daddy said “Sink or swim, son”
“Your hands will take you where your heart wants to go”
As he threw me in the deep end
But my hands were new
Not a cut, not a callus
They didn’t yet know
How to follow my heart
In fear I tried to stay still
But bodies always move
And in each small motion
Each shard would make a cut
And so my daddy said
With his hands around his mouth
“It’s cut or be cut, son”
“Neither you nor the glass may choose not to move”
“Only you may choose how to move”
I looked at my hands
They held their own blood
Why would he want this for me?
What did he know?
And I saw the crimson beads pulsate
And my fingers felt it too
I tried to stretch my arm out
But it was my heart that moved
And so my hands paddled
Once for every time my heart beat
Painful strokes at first
Cuts on my palms, my face, my chest
And as I gained speed
The glass began to give way
With time
My strokes learned grace
The sharp glass was made blunt
My cuts became scars
My scars faded, though they never left
And as I passed him
I heard my daddy say
“Now don’t ever stop, son”
“Leave us all in your wake”
Pocketful of Blue
If I were to decide
To hike across a dense forest
With a particular destination in mind
And found at some point in my hike
That the color of the earth under my boots
Was as blue as the sky over the trees
I would grab a fistful of that blue
I would put it in my pocket
And I would understand it was time to turn back
And return
A Fall Frozen in Time
Your laughter stopped the autumn in its tracks
Brown leaves, suspended between yesterday and today
I’ll never know if time itself stopped
Or if it was now only you and me running with it
After you I swam in the still vapor on my coffee
I smoked the rays of a motionless neon sun
You vanquished an endless fear in me
In you, forever, solitude
I should’ve understood then
When we lived outside the past and the present
The future I hoped for
Was unlike the one you planned for
Pain then was a new thing
The songs talked about someone else
Pain now is a good friend
The songs I now sing myself
Although my strength is now spent
Although pain boasts its victory every new day
Time and I still running together
Your laughter now frozen with the Fall
Asphalt, my Mirror
Who would’ve known the asphalt would play my mirror?
That in its cracks I would recognize my own scars?
That on its surface I would find the corseness of my tired skin?
I stand over it and I admire it
From a whole “me” away
I can barely help lying face down on it
Intimately looking it in the eyes
Imagining the reflection and I are one and the same
We are not the same
Tomorrow the road crews will patch it
They will heal the cracks on the asphalt
At least for a while
Vivisection for Full Organ Donation
They unrolled the grass over me
They buried me without digging a hole
A shallow grave
Not deep at all
And from there, the world grew over me
From my pain, they grew carnations
They perfume the wind and the spring
From my anxieties they erected cities
Still buzzling to the time my heartbeat set
From my every fear they fed a fountain
It bestows courage upon those who drink from it
From my loneliness they built a fireplace
People gather around it to see eachother’s faces and keep warm
At my feet they rooted the oak trees
They are older now than I ever got to be
A whole world
From a flawed foundation
From an unworthy father
The Child who Died Prematurely and Yet Still Had to Live
There was light in the world I was born into
It poured into my eyes but also it poured out from my heart
In it I built dreams that held fast in my waking world
With it I strung those dreams over my bed
Like stars they would flicker in the distance
Yet they were right where my hands could reach them
I would watch them dance above me
Resting my hands behind my head
Lying on grass I couldn’t know was overgrown
Because it couldn’t be
They liked to kiss my forehead
I thought that was what rain was
The oceans and lakes drew away wherever I meant to walk
They welled around me when they knew I’d better enjoy to swim
Mountains flocked ‘round what I deemed should be protected
They made themselves scarce where I felt the wind should soar unbroken
And the wind itself would soar at my pleasure
It would fetch me the sweetest scents from all around my world
It went to sleep next to me and became stillness
When stillness was what I would have
I could not fathom the darkness
My world had no room for shade
It didn’t fit you see
How could it?
My world was small in its vastness
Light ran ahead
When I reached a new place
It was waiting there for me
The water and the mountains and the wind
Were already there
And from beyond the limitless finitudes of my own world
She emerged to bestow something upon me
She placed it in my hand
She said it was called “Love”
And I cherished it
Because it would not sink in my oceans
Because it would climb over my mountains
Because it would not bow to my winds
Her actions were not of my design
Her waters, mountains and winds did not answer to my whims
They answered to hers
And she fashioned her whims after my own
I gave my light to her
Of my own volition
Because she didn’t have any
She could not build her own dreams
She didn’t know how
So she just held it in her hand
And I held her Love in mine
She never did understand my light
Her palms reddened when she held it too long
And she sought to escape it at times
So she expanded the borders of my unending world
And planted an orchard in the emerging space
She sat me down next to her
Under an apple tree
And she rested my head on her lap
Ran her fingers through my hair
I closed my eyes
Although my wind slept
My cheeks grew cool
I clutched her love in my fist
I could not understand
The tree had birthed a shadow
And it grew across my world
The light ran ahead still
It seemed out of breath
A feeling nested in my bare chest
That I would soon reach new places
Before my light did
She left my world in search for a better one
To realize her own dreams
She took my light with her
Left her shadows behind
I never saw my light again
There was so much I wanted to do with it
My dreams withered on their vine
My lakes and oceans died of thirst
My mountains sank into the planes
My wind slept without reprieve
In her orchard I lay awake
Under the decaying apple tree
I am only little
A boy still
My hand yet clutching her love
Dimmer every day
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