While you whirl around mirrors

Your carousel has me for gears.

Same place and time,

but a chaos of differences

between yours and mine

Where is my jungle to be king of

Where are my people to lead

to victories we will sing of

These landscapes of urges outwear me

These invisible standards

made to be simple ensnare me

The heart cleft open and raw

Shuttles between emptiness

Fearing sooner to freeze than thaw

Science

gave me my first foothoold

in a world that didn’t make sense to me

Art

played out in my mind

when all I could stomach was the sensory

Society

gave me my first panic attack

when looking at rows of houses and knew they all had

Stories

gave me a way to go back in time

without being left out as a woman

Playing a game of hypothetic conversation

she asked me

wouldn’t you want to go back into the past?

Games would be better, 

without the nternet.

I thought of a swingset.

She was thinking of rail road ties,

found in the moonlight of a wet hill.

She was thinking of the lack 

of beeps and and screens.

It starts with a feeling

It wants to be forgotten

It wants to be nothing

But a feeling will do

It is now 9:20 PM

That is the last time I thought of you

I walked out of a ghost story

and went on with my life

only to one day walk through a door

and find I never left.

I saw the door

that would have led to our house

dark and empty as we would make our own

skeletons pretending to be flesh

Idiot wind pretending to be ideas.

I thought you knew everything

I though you knew where to find the magic

But I don’t think there ever was any magic

Only a spell, cast over you and me

And only I woke up

To the ghost of you

And the worst part is that you’re still alive

I wish you were dead

So that I could be the ghost

But instead we’re left with your murderer

And I want to hate the ghost who murdered my best friend

But he has your smile

And your memories

of me

I thought you knew where to find the magic

But life is so dissapointingly real

If you are looking for anything outside yourself

I thought I let you down by not following you

But if I followed where you went

I would be a ghost, too,

There would be no one to carry this sorrow

and it would just disappear

And maybe that’s what real peace is

Ignorance.

It’s such a shame

And my condition is that I want to save the world

because I couldn’t save you

My friends told me I deserved better

But I don’t have a point of view without you

I don’t know what I feel, or what I want

I thought you knew where to find the magic

But I don’t think there is any

I thought only you could make me feel beautiful

But I don’t know what that is anymore

It feels like I was walking through a land of broken glass

and you were the last pair of shoes in the world

When I am old

I will remember it

The way there was time

for a man to sniff a melon

in the supermarket

Just four hours before the hurricane.

I might also remember the feeling

of what I thought the feeling would be

to live in this place,

with this time.

I will remember a certain clumsiness

and too rough handling of myself

or not remember at all

why my eyes are so wrinkled.

Perhaps I will think it was from smiling,

not dragging tired hands under tired eyes

as it was.

Remembering, as I will

this time,

will I also think?

Will I think of how

I traded my blessing

for a bowl of soup?

I am afraid that when I am old

all I will remember is you.

Outside the building

You watched her paint her nails gold

barefoot, as I longed.

Sidewalk, no headphones

Volume turned all the way up

A nice girl walking

Alternate ending…

(She only looks nice)

Found some nickels on grandpa’s rocking chair

And put them back on his eyes

Now he’s a smoking gun

too much smoke in his lungs

And grandma’s mind is on the run.

Thinks she’s a little girl in Las Vegas

Doesn’t know she’s in a stasis.

The dead will meet grandpa downstairs

While grandma’s mind is a the county fair.

She’s a little girl in Vegas

Wants to wear her pretty laces.