Getting back to normal

Things I could do to be Shelby again:

-Start writing that next great American novel

-Eat at diners

-Busk in Denver

-Go to dive bars on the weekends

-Dance to folk music with Paige 

-Do random cartwheels 

-Take long drives

-Take long walks

-Drink more cappuccinos

-Get more tattoos

-Invest in more artwork for the apartment

-Go to art galleries

-Go to farmers markets

-Go to the Brass Armadillo

-Go to Two Rivers

-Sing in the kitchen

-Keep dyeing my hair a new color every five minutes
-Read Beat poetry
-Eat fast food in the parking lot

Unicorns and my Boyfriend

Never had I ever had no doubts, not a single one to speak of. Not before it was you that I saw with every blare of that alarm clock, the annoyance of being jarred awake now smoothed into bliss by your eyes in the morning, by you saying "Hello" like we're meeting all over again.

I never knew this happiness existed.

It's almost mythical, almost unbelievable, justthisclose from being as unreal as a unicorn. I never knew it was possible, never knew it was feasible, to feel so alive, to keep so warm, to be so safe. I miss you the moment you walk out the door, and rush to you like a kid the second you return, and never get tired of a single mundane moment, and never get over that look that you're giving me. You protect me from the weather, from the constant wildfire, from the blaze in myself, from the embers in you. You protect me with your yeses and your nos and your never agains, with the phone calls you refuse to take and your simple resolve to keep us alive. 

I don't deserve a single ounce of it, but I'll never stop fighting to keep it here. Never. 

Don't Think Of Me

Think of me between Kerouac's pages. Think of me on the corner of Colfax and Broadway. Think of me in every Village Inn you enter.

But don't think of me when your hands hover over the camera.

Don't think of me in the canyons, or when you stick your thumb out in the dust of the highway. Don't think of me when your sun is rising as mine sets on the other side. Don't think of me as you wander, chainless, freeing us mere mortals around you with your oxygen. Don't think of me as you run to the shakiest ground, as you find the silent stars. Don't think of me.

Don't you dare think of me.
You have bigger fish to fry.

Where I once was in your story, that's where I will stay. Always elusive, buried in a book, stuck in a rut, with a ring in my nose and a song for you choking in my throat.

Think of me when you visit those days. Hold tight. And then,

let go.

You Can Try, But...

You can sit through hours of misery, or leave him alone to ponder his crimes. You can scream in his face until you're satisfied, or fidget quietly through the silence of a hundred long car rides. You can search his things for the evidence, or protect yourself from knowing any more than you already do. You can write him a thousand love notes, and reach for him in the dark, and celebrate all of his victories, and seal your lips at the sight of his faults. You can shake sense into him, hammer sense into him, slap sense into him, talk sense into him. You can talk all day and every tired moment of the night. You can talk while he's listening. You can talk while he's drunk. You can talk in a voice you no longer recognize. You can get tired of talking. You can work on yourself. You can wear on him. You can write down the rules. You can change the rules to guidelines. You can watch the guidelines fade into distant memory. You can cry, you can cry, you can cry until he can't stand the sight of you. You can both cry together, but it won't make a difference. You can move in. You can move back out. You can change your hair, your face, your standards. You can drag him to church. You can drag him to therapy. You can beat yourself numb, try until you bleed, break your bones just to make it work. You can lay it all on the line. 

You can walk away. You can close the door behind you. You can grieve and mourn and lose yourself again.

Do everything you can, everything he needs, everything in your power.

But make no mistake my dear - he will never change. 

Losing It

I'm losing it slowly, my grip on reality, thank you, oh chemicals, for making this so difficult. You've gotta love it, that high-low point, that confusion at the top, that distraction at the bottom, always biting at the diamond like an ass at a carrot, always so stupid and unable to bear all these shiny little runners in my periphery, always just ahead and to the side of me, never in my reach no matter who is holding me. Everything's so pretty when you can't afford it, and everything's so perfect when it isn't yours, and dissatisfaction used to suit me just fine, but grown ups can't wander the way that they try. I'm falling on pavement, over and over, a ragdoll dropped from the thirty third story, the sight of me gory, no guts and no glory, just stuffing and emptiness and some kind of agony, this medicated numb just might be the death of me.

Nothing Makes Sense: a rant

I woke up in a fishbowl, I woke up in the wind, I woke up in a cage next to the only one I wanted. I fell deep into lithium dreams, I fell into the waters of my mind, I swam and swam until I had no more strength, and then I woke up in a fishbowl. 

I can't explain the way it works, the smoke cloud blurring my vision every moment, the time ticking by in unreality, eternity and infinity flowing like carbon monoxide, poisoning me at my deepest, I just can't breathe like this anymore. There's no one to understand me, no one to walk through this with me, the forest dark and lonely, the metaphors tired and cheesy, the English language incompetent to describe, impotent in its vocabulary, and I just can't try to a explain this anymore.

I'm ranting and I don't care.

It feels like I'm thirsty but there is no water. I'm thirsty for reality but I just can't touch it. My feet hover constantly, two inches above ground, and how I long to feel something solid under me, but all I feel is air. 

Something is amiss and I can't fix it. Something is broken and neither can you. Everything is nothing when we're swimming in oxygen. Nothing makes sense when you live in my skull or love in my rib-cage. Nothing.

Nothing. 

The Fire Won't Burn Me Now

The fire in the coat closet of my mind has become too wild to contain. Hungry for more than moth balls and faux fur, it laps at the walls and singes their white into a toasted-marshmallow shade, filling up my skull with the burning of matter, eating up instincts and disfiguring the paths my thoughts walk, charring flowers and incinerating gardens, greedily spreading itself out like a rising inferno-tide, hurling things across rooms with the full force of its desire. I have meditated in the middle of this metaphor before, swallowed alive by the insane flames of my neurons, falling in ashes back to the ground, floating, cremated and free, but here, this time, it hurts, but it never scatters me; it chokes, but refuses to take me completely, to make me disappear.

The Other Side of Wreckage

The wolf on my finger is fading, and the pain is turning to grey along with it. The hatred I harbor, I try to put to death, but my heart never sleeps and my mind grips too tight to

just

let

go.

He was a fire, a beautiful act of arson that incinerated all the good in my being and burned the bridge along with me. But after the carnage, there's room for new things to grow. The ecosystem of the spirit slowly wakes from the ashes and rises from the charred floor. Shouldn't I just be grateful that he gave me the chance to begin again? 

I am grateful, but the scars still run red. I work to forgive the matches and the gasoline, but pointing fingers is easier than saying "Go in peace." 

I found love on the other side of the wreckage, and in my deepest burns, I still hope he finds love, too. 

The Last Word on the Matter, a spoken word poem

The worst days of my life were spent in that apartment, locked up in a prison trying to run away from it, worshipping the ground you walked on, but you were hollow, giving me those icy looks so hard to swallow, refusing to touch me even when I scooted toward you, losing out on moments I just wanted you to share too. The baby was kicking, but I felt so lonely, every night I was just wishing you'd roll over here and hold me, but your brain was broken, the baby wasn't even yours, you felt like a child going through a divorce, not ready for the ring that I tried to throw you into, and the venom in my words wasn't really meant to hurt you. You ran to the bars and the women just to escape, your girl was at home but you told her to just wait, things will be better when the baby gets here, and things were better, but I never got over the fear. The silence you cradled, into the TV you stared, I handed you a plate but your appetite was never there. You were doing me wrong, behind my turned back, and when the truth came out, I lost the sanity I didn't have. No matter how you said you'd make it up as the years passed, you never did stop acting like I was a pain in your ass. I never forgave you anyway, and I should have tried harder, but in the end I wanted clarity for me and for my daughter. Maybe breaking promises is never really okay, but I still feel justified in walking away. It feels like I'm dreaming 'cause he loves the way I need, and I hope you find fulfillment out there wandering the streets. 

Two Days, or, One Simple Sentence to Explain How In Love I Am

My feeling that he was everything I needed encapsulated in one body was completely confirmed by a series of forty-eight hours in a row that I tragically spent without him. 

Our Second Date Was At a Hardware Store

On our second date of sorts, we wandered the hardware store and talked about countertops. We agreed that we liked the black granite. At the sight of the price tag, of course, he said, "So we probably won't be getting this for our FIRST home, but you know...someday."

And he meant it.

What affect could I possibly have, what spell did I unknowingly cast, that he would be possessed to say these things so soon? He kissed me in the lumber aisle and bounced my daughter on his hip through power tools, with every movement rearranging my thoughts, with every word renovating the interior of my mind. What did I do to deserve this remodeling? It came at a high price, but his words sanded away my anxiety, and built my trust in humanity from the ground up. An expensive feng shui of the head was occurring as we wandered up and down, and I listened.

"We're GOING to have a bath tub like this," he said.

"How do you feel about crown molding?" he asked.

Our second date. He was completely serious.

And in the middle of this imaginary home he was building with his lips, in the center of our total insanity, I finally, FINALLY felt safe.

Buried

I can't do this anymore, this feeling of the wrong place, fitting myself into a coffin and crawling underground. I'm tapping at the lid, frantically ringing the bell, but no one in this whole damn town has a shovel. My home is in the blue sky, underneath the fishbowl, feeling like a speck of dust so far away from anything, but so close to the infinite, wrapped around providence, staking everything I have on getting out from underneath the earth where they put my bones. Crushed by confusion and the madness that ensues when you lose love and find it again within a two week period, rattling my cage bars and wishing I could see stars, nobody can hear my voice, it just won't carry far enough.

Always Turning to Salt

I use the word nostalgia as though it were a conjunction, threaded throughout every poem, every line dripping in it, if not subtly, repeated like it's cheap to say it, the word itself and the idea too, completely overtaking everything I write or do. And I live in a room with it, imaginary, sitting in the cheap Motel 8 of my mind, the boarding-house of memories, the birthplace of many and all regrets, and I lay in my bed and smoke despair, wondering how I got from here to there. I watch the telly, the history channel, it speaks to me soothingly and reminds me how I got here. The year is 2010 and I'm wandering the halls of a psychiatric ward that came highly recommended. It's 2006 and the summer is so warm, the streets of Paris are so dirty, my best friend just moved to Tennessee. It's 2013 and I'm holding my newborn daughter in my arms as she needs and needs and I give and give, wanting nothing more than for her to stay needy and small. The scenes blur through on the television, hazy through the static of forgetfulness and lost detail, and there is an earthquake in Nostalgia every day. This living in the past, Lord it's just not sustainable, my walls are crumbling and the TV reception keeps getting fuzzier. I'm lost as to how to stop using that N word, lost as to how to stop missing those miseries, embellishing and sugar coating a past in which I never really lived, always looking backwards, turning to salt over and over, always living in this room. The door locks from the outside, and I never thought to ask who had the key.

Her

A slice of soul is missing here, a piece of darkness, like black glass against the sand, like night-times unshakeable but lost, like a past left behind but remembered. A thing that I love is separate from me, a spirit-child, a drunk friend, left to gasp for air at the New Mexico border, struggling to breathe on the SoCal shores, and I can't bring her back without going to get her.

I have been missing her, her of the smoke clouds, she of the random road trips, lady of the backpack, belonging everywhere and grabbing at everything, the pen in her hand a torch to light the way. She lies dying in a garage in Durango, in a shady hotel in the Gas Lamp District, those places where I felt so close to her, dying to do it all over again, but I don't know how to pick up the pen, and I don't know how to let her in.

I've been writing about not writing for a year. I am withering now, and I need her.

Random Car Ride Poem

What is life? This existentialist null-shit, I can't handle the voices all getting quiet in my head. You're sharing your soul with me, daily exposing, ripping tissue paper open like a Christmas morning monster, and I am rubbed raw by the newness in texture, the fabric of something I asked for in sincerity but didn't understand. These jeans are too tight. 60 degrees in February. My thoughts ramble on like a flow I can't control, nothing is everything and the mundane becomes my light, and there lies my fear, when the chaos subsides, I want the storm to come back and swallow me again, so that I don't have to look in the mirror.