silkshines

I drove through a ghost town when I was seventeen; population six, empty windows like hollowed haunting eyes leering as I passed. I remember that often when I’m with you. I think twice and turn my back before I undress. You’ve seen, held, everything I have, but it’s still mine if I say so. There’s something so human, so flawed, about my need to please. I smile and nod and don’t say anything when you tell me your stories more than once. Do you think those six people really existed? Were they there, sitting around a dinner table, watching through those empty windows? My grandmother told me she believed in prophets Touched my cheeks and said she saw the dreams in my eyes Maybe that’s why I see this coming. You’ll think twice, eventually, and turn your back. You’ll do it before I do, I have endurance if nothing else, and things will end with the hollow stillness of a ghost town. You don’t hear it happening yet, the warning alarm, so I sink back, and stare at the too-empty

Something impossible speaks with the voice of an ancient. He stands in his tower - smoke wreathed and scowling - shining lights and pulling strings, speaking words that fill me with fear. But I will stand in his way, to keep him from her. Something impossible speaks with the voice of a woman. Though she echoes through spaces too vast and broken for me, when I see her she looks like a woman, and feels like a woman, and loves like a woman. And I’m just a man- so maybe there’s nothing I can do. I’m just something so possible and full of cliches. But I’d be lying if I said I never saw something impossible in her eyes, flashing bright in the firelight. And I’m a liar to everyone but her. So when I find her, standing at the edge; my lover, my savior, something impossible, watching the blood-red sunset, I ask her if she’s the carrion or the crow. And she holds me close and tells me that everyone leaves their mark, and takes their tithe. And at the end

I walk into the fire and I see you there. Wheels on pavement like squealing desperation, like the sweat on my palms, like the breath from her lungs-- I can’t stop now. It’s human to care, to comfort, to rage and scream and struggle and to do it alone. That, too, is human. But I walk into the fire and I see you there. Her voice echoes in my head, a personal haunting, a ghost-- my family, a ticking time bomb with no numbers I can see. I can’t stop. Not again. When I search through the trees that she scribbles on the walls I wonder if she’s here, if she’ll die how she lived-- lost in her own fear. And I’m afraid, too. But I keep walking into the fire, And you’re always there.

I'd sink my teeth in if I could but I keep myself starving. When nothing's what you're used to having something just doesn't feel right. And she's something, alright. She might be poison for all I know, but she might just be sweet. Well, the hunger pangs hit like family. They hit like a hard day's work and the back of a hand. And sure, it hurts, but it hurts familiar. And maybe it's complicated, how I'd live for her but never love. But a starving dog dies of a full belly quicker than if he'd had nothing at all.

It nearly escaped just then, and again, and again. Each day I tell myself- this won't last forever, I should just pack up and go before the hurt gets too bad to live through again. And again. But the word keeps coming to my lips when you smile at me like that, or say all the right things. And it almost escapes, again and again. There will come a day, I hope, God, I hope, when I can free it without fear gripping my chest, when I can go an hour without worrying that I care too much to lose you now. Well, worrying hasn't broke me yet, and love did once, so I'm taking my chances and taking my time, and maybe nothing'll go wrong. 'Til then I smile at you, and bite my tongue, holding back a word, at least, if I can't hold back anything else, again, and again.

Dear Darling, I'm terrified. And it's raining. Start over. Dear darling, I'm terrified. But you know that. Why am I saying it again? Start over. We both know family means loyalty and honesty, blind faith, and love-- scratch that one. Family means do what we must, when we must. Or there will be consequences. Am I remembering that right? Yes. I'd love to-- Start over. We won't call it love, not yet and maybe not ever, but I have had to deal with the consequences of needing you with me. I told you you're nothing like her, but then again, I'm nothing like me. I promise to not compare you to her, as often as I compare myself to the man I once was. Wait, start over.

You’re not hard to find; A traveling home with long strides, somewhere near the beach, or maybe roving mountain trails. I’ve watched you pass, half a dozen times; scuffed knees, broken windows, a nice conversation before I went back to bed. I don’t have a knack for timing, but everything comes around eventually. It could be this life, or the next, but it was nice to hear from you again. You’re not hard to find, but the lock is rusted shut. Sometimes you spend years just trying to forget that a house is meant to hold people close. So you take your broken windows, grit your teeth, and keep on moving. I’m not hard to find, sometimes hard to see. But when I get too close to you, peek in those shattered windows and try the handle, I might simply slip through, quick as a ghost. I’ll learn to live inside you before you know I’m there.

It's always when I'm half asleep that I remember a house that only exists in my head. When I was ten I thought I saw a ghost at your door, silhouetted in sun glare and pollen haze, and you said you believed me. The house is still there, a roller-skate away from my childhood bedroom, but sometimes I think things only exist when I can hold them in my hands. Losing you was a decision made slowly, deliberately, through active neglect and forgetfulness. I guess I never realized that losing people means losing places, too. My personal mythology is written in apple trees and porch steps; an almost-believable oral history in house plants and home movies. Remember that time I painted your nails? Remember playing card games on the tile floors? Can I write a poem about you without you ever knowing? Different people grow different ways, but I was never a plant with a single pot, and I never knew that going home wouldn't be easy when half my home was yours. I remember everything

Sometimes I write poems in the dark, where the light Can’t see my thoughts to judge their worth. I often feel like an appointment you’ve forgotten the date of; Could be next month, last week. You could have simply forgotten to call at all. I sit in this labyrinth of my own mind, spending hours Analyzing a word never said - explicitly - But was it implied? Did I infer? Was your meaning intended? Does any hole in the ground intend to be a grave? If I step into it, if I Lie down and squeeze the dirt in my fists -- A passerby might see me a corpse. But I’d rather be a worm. Sometimes I write poems in the dark - by the fleeting light of a computer screen So that I can read it back later. I missed an appointment with the worms next week, but, “Like all worldly things - I will in time wear, and be used up. We are always lost, late, or soon.”