This Is What I Look Like Today

Sometimes I think that if I was the only girl around you'd have no trouble in choosing me.

I guess I forget that the beauty in being chosen is that, to the person who chose you, you're the only one that matters. Regardless how many girls are around.

**

Excuse me for wanting more from this
Than a secret kiss
And dial tones.

**

I imagine you like the cloud of melancholy from every cliche cartoon. The ones that hover overhead or slightly to the side, constantly contributing to the woebegone atmosphere of the victim. I always thought that if the cloud would just go away and stop raining and reminding them of their discontent that they could get over it, move on, happy up.

But they always lingered. They always hovered just close enough; and that was the point. Out of sight out of mind. Perhaps. But even having stuffed you in the cardboard box I emptied yesterday, along with the residue of dust and fragments of lint carried by a season occupying space, even having wedged you in the corner under my dresser beside the stack of notebooks from junior high I can't bare to part with because some day I'll take the time to read the evolution of my literary tactics, even in the dark garnished in mistrust and seclusion you manage to materialize as a cloud. Even out of sight you find a way to my mind. Even, dehydrating in the dust, you find a way to vaporize and congeal into the little black rain cloud hovering over my honey tree.

I suppose it's my own fault. I doubt you sit across town in your car with binoculars trained on my window with the shade drawn and lamplight spilling out thinking to yourself memories to telegraph to me like Casper through the electrical lines. I doubt you're consciously the cause of this.

But this is the trouble, the trouble I've hit with celebrities and all of the "for sure" "romances" I've hitherto encountered: I've internalized you. I've taken all I know, all you shared, all the moments between us, all my overly optimistic hopes, and constructed an understanding of you in my heart. Enough so that you live there. You breathe there. You occupy space there and leave candy wrappers and dirty laundry there. You've moved in. I moved you in. I unpacked your dufflebag of video games and the boxes with the picture frames and posters and the bracelet you thought you lost. I helped you set up camp and then sheltered you in with a lean-to that eventually became a hope house because I didn't have the funding to build above the ground. And perhaps I sheepishly thought you'd stick around long enough for this to become something, for me to have causation to purchase the lumber and construct a castle where you could wander the airy halls and sing all the songs I know only well enough to recognize.

And in reality you are in your car, driving to some date with someone else, or leaving work or buying a pizza. You have no mind for me, you take no thought for me. And that's why it's not awkward for you. To you our relationship is what you apply to it, and as you apply nothing more than the occasional eye contact and half-hearted smile, there is nothing between us. Nothing to get in the way of your plans and ambitions, nothing to hinder your pursuit of everyone else of the female gender.

And that's the case, outside.

But I internalized you. I've taken you to heart.

So I'm shadowed by a cloud.

And it's been raining a lot today.

He tipped his hat and smiled. I faltered and gripped my fan more tightly, stationed to my space as though struck by an arrow: moving in either direction would only rip the sudden wound. I watched him pass and felt my breath even.

If only for the moment. 

I'm not what you think I am, the idea came to mind faster than I could acknowledge it. He'd accented his archery with that smile men do, that face that leads the faint of heart to believe perhaps he'll come calling, perhaps he'll take my hand.

The face that heartache comes to know is just the face of man.

I am not some flower fit for picking, though I carry myself in that way. I am not timid and scared and cowering in hopelessness, my feeble heart thumping softly on the cushion in my grasp, waiting a knight to tear through the door and restore me to my heavenly glory of life and beauty and then like thousands of purified angels receive the trump that I am of worth and astounding.

I would not object to man being that way. I would not object to surety and action. It is not a self conscious mind that lends me to seek a heart to keep and to carry, a soul to capture and with which grow old; it is a confidence that with the depth I am capable of loving, one too will come around desiring the same.

But men are not knights, not from the beginning. Men must tip their hats and pass, dropping that look like breadcrumbs they expect me to follow on a mad self-conscious chase for romance. I watch his figure disappear and fling my fan open. I am not afraid, I am not concerned. I am open and waiting for the knight to knock in the door. 

I am expectant of one who does not merely feign confidence as so many gentlemen do. I await the one who awaits a fellow heart with the surety I do.

After The Storm

My mind is a tempest today.
A whirlwind of confusion forces fog
Against the rigging of my boat,
And in the clouded stupor
I am left with the constructs of my mind;
All the meager things I never dwell on in life
That climb out of darkness to twist the imagination
And insist I see them for what they are.
Shrouded in grey-scale I'm left to acknowledge
My horrors and concerns,
My nauseousness and grief,
And the possibility that I am wrong.

I am rocked across the sea,
Salt pricking my skin
As water lashes across my face.
I am trapped with my thoughts,
The jagged rhythm of the ship
And the clanging of pulleys
Prevent my eyes from focusing on the abstract idea
Of you.

From this angle you look like you prefer her,
And I am reverted to a sub-par state of being
I occupied most excusably in high school.
As the waves crash I see you
Ringleader of this game
You created against my heart
To tear down the fallen until they rise no more.
With my hair tangled about my face
From the roaring winds of angst
You become synonymous with him,
Him, him, and him.
You don the hat they all exchanged,
In possession of the knowledge which
Will tear me down
And break my bones.
I am pathetic and lowly
And none,
Above all you,
Would ever choose my hand.

The current drops and I am thrown
To the deck,
My knee bent near my chest,
Sprawled in a chalk outline-
A murder you committed.
Face-down I remember all you've been;
How ignorant and childish I am
To assume malicious action on your part.
You know as much as I do,
You're unsure as much as I am,
But comfort will not hold as the ship
Is rocked again, the fog clenching
Tighter, a reminder of my imagination
And subconscious tendency to pen outcomes
Before beginnings arise.
I've labeled you important,
I've crafted you as special;
The tempest and fog refuse to shed light
On which end of my mind
Is right.

As the tempest swells
I run and wake the master,
For in days past he
Rebuked such wind and
Calmed such seas and
Cast a humble eye on the weak.
I can no longer weather alone
This torrential torment of the mind,
The way my heart is failing
And falling to a
Despair-ridden deck.
I focus beyond the deluge
Of my mind, farther into
Perfection than my fears of drowning
Death,
And await his calming steady hand.

And as he aids me yet again,
He asks
Why are ye so fearful?
How is it that ye have no faith?
Have patience that the storm will pass.
I know thine pain,
But more so
Thine path.
Believe ye not this storm will last.

Heart To Ground

I can't figure out what to say.
I can't even decide how to say it,
But this jumble in my head
And in my veins
Is testament enough that words...
Words need to be spoken.

I'm too weak to do it.

I don't want to dig holes.
I don't want to find myself
Miles from where I want to be,
Miles from the surface,
Underground
Where the worms live in motion
And the soil's damp and cold.
Where they could bury me
And leave me none the wiser
But all the more better off.

It's a crime against my sanity
To love as much
As often
As I do.
I'd seldom encounter issues
If I didn't strap my heart to my sleeve
And tread where others go.

My heart sheds affection
Fragmentally
When I am bumped
In a metaphorical sense.
My heart, exposed to the
Toxicity of air and interaction
By its presence on my sleeve
Is weakened by its openness
To the relatable world.
And like a soft rock
Continuously bumped against one sharper,
It flakes away,
Bits of my heart scattering to
Whomever was responsible,
Or whomever is standing still.

I call it curse
Because I can't escape,
And with the likes of you it's worse.
My heart doesn't fit in my own chest,
It pines of the day I find it a place
To burrow itself for keeps,
To build walls of soft tissue
And lava lamps of blood;
To cocoon itself under clavicles
And beat for years to come.

I am not other girls.
Ignore the teenage meaning
Of other girls breaking hearts
And acting floozies.
I'm not other girls
Because you don't have to win my heart.
You already have most of it
From bumping past as often
As you have.
You don't have to win my heart.
Just let me know you want it.
Give me a sign you'll take it,
Keep it,
And lend me yours in exchange.