Windows

Poets write a lot about people having windows you can see into souls with

Often about how the morning sun glitters through, covering everything good in gold and leaving the bad in darkness

But we are more stained glass than perfectly clear

Refracting light color coating parts of us that we don’t want people to see

How I felt guilty that my friend died and how 3 years later I wished it was me instead of him – he was much kinder than I

I wish he was still around so I could see the man he would have become

How my heart still aches for her to come back but I know she never will

I still dream about her but she’s hundreds of miles away barely remembering my name

How I regret getting sick like this

Suicide still hangs at the back of my mind as an illuminated exit sign, never leaving but not as prominent anymore

How I learned happiness after the man who’s outside was pretty but inside left me a ruin of who I was before

If only he cared to see me now

Souls are dark twisted things shaped by who we were and who we are

The bad parts of us don’t hide in the corners

(Dis)Ability

As a child the first thing on my Christmas list was never a working body

Hell it was never on any wishlist – I never knew any different

But the episodes became more frequent and their curious stares dug holes in my chest

All I could decipher was the disgust and I began noticing this didn’t happen to anyone else

They discarded me for someone who’s body worked better than mine

I did not have the vocabulary to know what was happening to me

Doctors took years to figure out why there was a disconnect between my brain and the muscles attached to my bones

And all I could ask myself was why I was so faulty

The diagnosis came at 14 and disabled wasn’t a self descriptor for another 5 years

Even then I don’t feel comfortable in that identity for I am one of the lucky ones who can walk

But this disease follows me into the grave, medication will subdue symptoms until then

Even then my hands tremble enough to not be able to perform everyday tasks on the bad days

I still don’t always pick a foot up when walking

I am one in 150,000

And sometimes I wish I wasn’t so alone in that number

College Heartbreak

I wish my mother was wrong when she said you never forget your first college love

Honestly I didn’t think I’d have to forget you

After your leaving, you disapeared from every record

Yet what else would I expect – you never wanted to leave a trail anywhere but my neck when you still loved me

People ask me if you survived past that year and I am as clueless as they – the only difference is our bodies were intertwined enough that fingerprints lingered months after drifting away

I don’t use those sheets anymore, I’m afraid they’ll still smell like you

Which would be the only thing you left me other than memories played on repeat trying to figure out how I could have made you stay

I told myself it was just bad timing

But I kept running over that day like a child running their tongue  over the spot a tooth once was

How I could tell by your distance

And the pain in your sea green eyes you were trying so hard to hide from me

You hesitated as if for a moment you were thinking about keeping our love in a locket around your neck

Now hidden in a drawer somewhere collecting dust

I have no idea if you exist on this earth anymore other than in memories

And sometimes that’s worse than mourning someone in the ground

Intimate

The ghost of your lips made a reappearance on my neck last night

With his hands resting on my hips

I thought I had erased you from the wall of my memory

It’s a force of habit, you know

But you were the first after a man who bleached everything I was under the blanket of love

Leaving me a murder scene in broad daylight

In our short forever you gave what you had to revive me

But he feels like the home I thought you were

Maybe you were the step in the right direction

Sometimes when I look at him quick enough I am tricked into thinking he is you

No one warned me you could remember someone who broke your heart so badly like this

After you left I couldn’t bring myself to eat for weeks and now I am afraid he will leave like that too

Because I still run over the memory of you leaving like a tongue over the hole a tooth once existed in

The silence we shared over lunch and how I see your heart breaking in your eyes but I wanted to take you in as you were so I could remember how you were as a fresh faced 20 year old

Because I knew it would not come back around no matter how many times you said we could still be friends

I was a one time adventure for you

Your scent still lingers in my sheets from every night you spent cuddling and snoring simultaneously

I hope that he is what you fooled me into thinking I had found in you

His Smell

I cannot wash the smell of him off my hands and I do not mind

I saw you for the first time yesterday since I became entwined with him

You have no idea how exhilarating it is to be free from you

Not appreciating the sunshine I folded into your pocket on your darkest days to remind you better are to come

I tried to give you more than I had, heart overflowing with forgiveness because I have loved those sicker than you and they hurt me more than your hands knew how to

When I let you into the darkest corners of me, you told me to close them back off because they were “too depressing”

I gave and gave and gave, you just kept taking and taking and taking without ever giving

He is filling the cracks you were too lazy to glance at

My heart flutters against my chest, his light filling it to the brim

Cuddling up on the couch, he needs me more than you ever needed me

By his side I am calm, forgetting the storms further out at sea I weathered to get here

When I saw you I searched your eyes for whatever may be left for me in you

And I could not decipher the heartbreak

His fingerprints are still on my skin claiming his territory

My hands still smell like him

And I do not mind