Try to Fix Me

Put some poison in the teacup. Sew my lips shut and contain me in shoeboxes. Show me the time capsules and watch the regrets flow in sweat. Detox me in the sauna of stability and reality from all these intoxicating things I've done. Help me forget the hole in the wall. Help me forget how to breathe. 

I'm trapped in time, always counting down the days. Help me forget how to count. Trap me here, right here, in this sixty seconds. Teach me how to sit still. I never did learn. 

I spend my words like Monopoly money. I don't even care if you're listening, honey. 

Self-Medicating

I ushered in a new love and brought it to my kitchen table. I reasoned with it and nurtured it, and threw the old love out, with pictures set on fire and love letters torn apart. I picked up all the pieces and felt the salve of something solid. I breathed in ash and smoke of burned bridges and did cartwheels through the soccer field. I micro-derma-fucking-brased my soul. I tried it all, sleep and sad poems, TV and toast, pills and post-war memorials, but Lord, I never got the pain to go away. 

A song's chorus

You said you loved me, but I know you lied

You don't choke out the one you wanna make your bride

You don't pummel her soul just to keep up your pride

I think of you often just to justify it

Just to justify all the times I tried

Speaking Sweetly

Speaking sweetly to me with that gap in between 

Your top and bottom teeth

Singing slowly in your sleep

Waves breaking on the long black beach

Holding gently the things that stick to your palms

Holding tightly the things that refuse to stay still

I've always had a harem of demons in the back room

Always had a whiskey-strong will

Never have I ever had a never like this

Never again, never before, never stretched out around us

The numbers turn to nonsense 

In a wonderland of whispers

351 days until I pose for all the pictures

All 351 lined up to be flogged into permanence

No one trained us for this

Turn up the volume and sleep turned into this 

Turn into the veil and quietly burn in the furnace

How I Feel When I Look At You

It took the longest journey to find you here, the longest game of hide-and-seek played between me and my heart. It was all so treacherous, so disappointing. The broken dreams in my wake are many and ugly, speaking of scars I still have to look at and burdens I still carry, and I'm not even sure how I made it through. Something in me must have known I was waiting for you. And if I had to make every horrible mistake, if I had to sit in that pain, if I had to go through that train wreck over and over and over, I would gladly do it all again, just to end up in this moment with you. 

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.