they said to remember the mornings.
remember the strangely elegant delirum
of waking up, stretching, your eyes on
the ceiling, just remember the rebirth,
being baptized in the last morning sunlight
and the promise of a bright new day.
remember the feeling of a hot plastic cup
on to your chapped, yet still cherry-red lips
as you take in the image of glittering snow
reflecting off of the rising sun as you walk.
think of purity, think of clarity, think of hope
and think of everything you would melt away.
and nobody ever told me that mornings mean
nothing when your soul turns to ice,
and obscures everything you knew in autumn,
all of the red on the trees and the atmosphere
in the beginning, I thought it was black,
a mournful color for the deep loss of self
that I had during that floundering year.
but the more time I spent in the spaces
of those who could no longer see light
somehow I found a aversion
to the shade, as if admitting the dark
and giving it ink would strike us.
sometimes they showed it as lavender,
a nostalgic wash over an eroded reality.
red was depth, just a single drop of blood
struck with a blade of ice-pale silver
and blue was how they spoke of recovery,
a clinical nightmare of tile and gowns.
their colors were beautiful, even I can admit
that I wanted to live in their world.
when you wake up in the morning,
you will wash down your medication with
hand squeezed orange juice,
fresh cranberry from concentrate,
steaming earl grey tea, iced cold brew coffee,
pick your eighth hour poison, whoever you are,
because make no mistake, you remain
the same person you were before.
you will still wake up, pour a glass of
the same damn thing, every single morning.
when you wake up in the morning,
you will look at the promise of a bottle,
and wonder to yourself, silently, hopefully,
if that could be all it takes to get rid of the pain.
you'll remember what your best friends told you,
if you wanted to be numb, if you didn't want to feel,
you will never be clean.
you'll scrub yourself pink, raw to the bone
a lather of memories you never seem to escape.
and when you think you've washed them down the drain
they come right back up as you sleep.
you will want to escape.
you'll try to grab your soul while you still can,
crawl out of your tainted, filthy skin and into something new
something perfect, without the marks and scars
of everything he did to you.
but you will never be clean,
you will never escape,
and you will definetly never forget.
we were built on the trembling foundation
of mutual sorrow and midnight whispers,
sustaining ourselves on a reservoir of tears.
you were always on the edge of the rooftop,
and I was there to catch you before you fell,
but did you ever stop for a moment,
and think about the honest dysfunction
of the blueprint itself?
our architect was nothing but chemical,
our brains filled up with eraser shavings,
draft upon draft in the prenatal stages,
and we still weren't right when we came out.
it was onward and upward, faster than us:
proceed with the building plans,
let us tear ourselves down when the time comes.
but somehow I was able to rise above,
my first memory of you was when you taught me first aid
years of wounds, you said, had made you learn how to fix things.
you taught me bandages, quick fixes, how to constrict my life and my pain
with a tourniquet of lies and half-empty glasses of bleach.
but we were there, we always were with outpours of love
and you were all take and no give, we could never fill you up:
never enough support, legs too weak to stand on and one day, you fell.
my dearest marina, where have you gone?
nobody remembers when you arrived,
and we will never be aware of the reason for your departure.
all we know is that one moment you were everywhere,
with pictures of pastel beauty and sugar-bleeding wrists all over your wall:
speak to the world, they said.
let your words pierce the hearts of millions,
let your text strike the page and transcend every line,
let your work be the studies of disciples everywhere,
become wisdom incarnate, a somehow trusted authority
bare your soul, they said.
let them see all of the things you hold deep and true,
let them use you as a sounding board for impossible dreams,
let them keep you paralyzed as their world falls apart,
become a misery machine, a hapless overseer pinned to the sidelines.
reach out to the lost, they said
let the hotlines and the movements do the work,
let the counselors do the material direction,
let the professionals stay in their lane,
carefree, innocent
young and beautiful
bubbly like
the champagne we drink
colorful like
the rainbows we reach
isolated, lonely
hollow and desolate
outcast like
the devil himself
shattered like
a broken glass
golden gate, eiffel tower
tall and dangerous
tempting like
a magic poison
We haunt these lifeless empty spaces,
Like smoke would haunt pyres
Of flames long extinct
And linger.
Now that our destructive passions are diminishing,
To wane away and become phantoms
We surrender to predestined recession
To the woeful depths
Where we are quieted endlessly so.
We dispel like exhausted ghosts
Our actuality is disbelieved,
So weak are we now
We haunt in only the bygone memories.
Beside me stood an old veteran,
Hunched over his stick he still stood
In suit and poppy now free of the uniform,
Belts and buckles,
Clasps and laces,
All.
But the weight of his medals,
His distinction,
Still shone gold and silver
In the white autumn sun.
The creases upon his face show an age,
Since the one of war departed
And spanned further than the stretch of trenches he once ran,
Still he sings “bind me to my scars.”
Come service end
He moves to the monument,
Fall the fiery flame
Of troubled passion dying
And shakily wither away
Below gritty ashes lying.
To where I'm next bound
I do not know,
Silent and unsound
And resting still so
Beneath the knowledge of possibility,
Slipping and sinking into phantom form,
Disappearing so very slowly,
Rest me now as in life no more.
I saw your face,
I was going to say "Hi"
But I shied away.
I don't know why.
You seemed troubled to me,
As though your mouth was stitched shut,
A place that I had once been,
A place where I struggled to get out,
I recall that you were troubled.
Then one day
You had disappeared,
To where or why I did not know
And it's too late to say that I cared.
You were gone but
I kept searching for your face,
In the crowds of uniformed people,