Imagined Confessions

Tell me all your half truths, tell me your lies

Tell me the things you don't say 'til you die

Deathbed confessions that don't hold a candle

To all of the things that you know I can't handle 

My thoughts are as big as the open sky

But tonight my stars will be in your eyes

The Night Shift

Three AM wishes
For warmth radiating
From the bed's other side
Realizing how valuable
The presence of your body
Is to my psyche
The fragility of my being
Drawing from the strength of yours
In deep, dreamless sleep
The exchange of love, even
In wordless and ordinary
The exchange of love, even
With your back turned to me
When I'm there, I complain
When I'm here, I miss it

Driftwood Memory

Pictures in my mind, breezing through the albums of the memories, fading in and out from reality to a time and place where I can no longer be. I find myself so enraptured with how this all happened, the trauma and drama that threw me, catapulted me, back into your world, that forced my mouth, once sewed shut, open, to spill out the detailed and natural promises of a young, battered, burn-victim of love. I remember so clearly, all of it, all of it, that gaudy pink sweater, the way that I could not, would not tear my eyes away from your face, so comforting to me, a piece of driftwood to hold onto in a cataclysmic ocean of hopelessness and fear. You saved me from it all, my dear. That first "I love you," barked out like an order, relieved at the hesitant answer, the fantastic dreams of forevers. I tested your limits back there where we once were, making sure you intended, really intended, to stay. And somehow you're still staying, somehow these pictures aren't fading, somehow the piece of driftwood grew into a boat, and you just carry me along as the blue rises and falls.

Pills: A Crazed Little Rant

Pills, pills, pills, trying to soothe my soul. Running around in the cavernous maze of my mind, trying to disperse dopamine to starving neurotransmitters. I have refugees living in my skull, living on badly baked dread and crumbs of hopeless rage. I choke down these pills every night to make them quiet, to still their twitchy movements, but I'll be damned if I'm choking down anything useful. Screw you big pharma. Give me some sunshine, real sunshine. I'm ranting now but it doesn't matter to me. Nothing really does anymore.

Drowning In These Little Moments

The light from a single bedroom lamp was distorted into sunshiny gloriousness. One kiss in the kitchen became my vow. Every little thing was blown up and into the wind. I am drowning in these little moments, drowning in my love for you, and I don't want to learn to swim. You are my ocean, blue-grey-green, twisted around me and pulling me towards nothing, pulling me towards an unknown, showing me how to get lost. I am lost in you. 

You Never Left Me

Two years ago, I thought I had it all. All I had, really, was a handful of lies. All I had was a house of cards, just waiting to fall apart. Two years ago, I wore a different ring. Today I still feel the weight of it.

You ruined me. Forever. You stomped all over my heart in your parade, shouting those "fuck offs" with confidence, killing me slowly, and I'm still not alive. Not like I used to be. The light in my eyes is still dimmer and quietly disappearing, even with the fire of real-life love lit within me. Nothing can quench the thirst you caused. I am hopeless, helpless, still under your thumb, while you forget, slowly forget, about all of your offenses. But I remember. My heart remembers.

I am swallowed, still, by your ocean, lost, still, in your maze. I don't trust a human soul. I don't want the way I used to want, with waves, with storms, a want that was unstoppable. I don't chase the way I used to chase. Everything within me is different, tainted. No matter how beautiful my life is, I still see ugliness in the mirror. No matter how safe my home is, I still shake with fear at night.

I may have left you, but you never left me.

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.