I don’t think I can
Keep loving you anymore
My light is dying.
…
I don’t think I can
Take the love that you give me
It hurts me too much.
…
I don’t think that you
Even like me anymore
You don’t seem like it.
…
I don’t think I fit
in your spaces anymore
Don’t think I want to.
…
I don’t remember
When you stopped writing me poems
Don’t think I want them.
…
You showed me that you
Do not want me anymore
Now I don’t want you.
…
You told me that you
Want me to leave you alone
I think that I will.
I smell like his t-shirt
I’d give him a good life
We hold it together
with boxes of cheap wine
I drink it like water
He feels like a riptide
He’s shut in the bedroom
It’s never been so quiet
I cry in his bathroom
He knows I’m not alright
But he’s only human
I thought he was sunshine
He looks like a hero
He feels like a landslide
He stopped writing me poems
I hope we’ll be alright
I’m facing his back while
He’s sleeping at midnight
I don’t fit in his spaces
I guess they got too tight
I cooked a banquet for one.
They took a bite
out of everything
then excused themselves from the table.
I offered the leftovers
to someone else
who seemed hungrier.
They took a bite or two
out of everything,
spilled the red wine on the table cloth,
decided they had their fill,
and let the rest get cold.
“What a waste” you said, “Let’s eat.”
and you told me you were starving,
so was I…
Except, all I had was a half eaten meal.
But, so did you.
We set the wine-stained table
and shared our food.
My window was always cracked at night
So that when Peter Pan came for me,
I’d be already waiting,
Thinking every happy thought I had
So that as long as he had enough pixie dust
And he was willing to take my hand
I’d be ready to step out the window
And to believe that I wouldn’t fall..
As long as he would be there and I believed
I’d fly
All the way to Neverland.
The smell of summer and midnight air
Takes me to back then..
To that time when I believed he’d come,
And believed I’d step out that window into the story where I’ve always belonged,
Because, surely,
I don’t belong here.
Night after night
I read my bedtime stories out loud
Hoping he’d hear them, and that somehow
And they’d convince him I’m the girl
Who deserves to fly
Far, far away.
And back then,
Even though the days went by and
He still hadn’t come to fly me away
A part of my heart still had faith that
Even if Neverland wasn’t real and
I’d have to grow up,
I’d be one who’d grow up and prove it:
All the stories are true,
Fairies are real,
Dragons exist –
They’re all just hiding somewhere far,
Far away
From our cynicism, guilt, shame.
But, Peter never came.
And I never proved a thing..
the only thing that proved true in the end was that
Never is an awfully long time.
Vibrant green and dull grey
Brings me back to when
I felt more alive
Sometimes I “wake up”
And remember how it felt to really imagine
And really play
I miss who I was back then
But you don’t see time slipping away
It just goes, and one day you’re sitting
On a leather couch
In the office, and
Suddenly remembering that it’s all past..
One day you “wake up”,
And all it took was watching out the window
The vibrant green and dull grey, and
The smell of rain.
“Not guilty.”
You pled, and I bled.
The jury wouldn’t look
at the knife
you left stuck.
I begged them to see
the hole in my chest
that you clumsily filled with ash
as if it could replace a beating heart.
But they closed their eyes when you asked them,
“How can you believe that wound is real?
It’s impossible to see
what only she can feel.”
The jury rendered a verdict;
“Insanity”, the foreman said,
pointing at me.
It didn’t matter I wasn’t on trial.
You killed me, but still
they found you “not guilty”
only because
I didn’t
die.
The Wrong Poem 