finger fountains

she can't think straight and the words refuse

to flow through her fingertips that she once thought

were never-ending fountains of thoughts, but now

she can't seem to get even a trickle to even moisten

the blank paper in front of her and her brain feels like it is

screaming to let things out, but she just doesn't have the words

for some strange reason and she doesn't like it, doesn't like

not being able to write and she longs to unblock the fountains

in her fingers and pour words from her mind into the world via

a white, blank piece of paper.

her invisible footprints

she was looking up at the sun that was just slipping away

behind the mountains and she wanted to follow it, she wanted

to chase it and see where it hid so she could hide there too

where nobody could find her,

not that anyone would care, but she was

bound by her mistakes to the earth so she couldn't go

run away with the sun and dance with the moon, she couldn't

hide behind the mountains where nobody would find her.

 

and the worst part wasn't that she was stuck in the middle

of somewhere that she wanted to leave, the worst part was that

nobody seemed to notice her straining against everything she had ever

done, said, written, read

and nobody seemed to care that she just wanted to run away and hide

behind the mountains she would look at late into the night, wondering

if she could only slip behind them how her life would be different, if she

could only tip top out of her room and down the dirt road and disappear

late one summer night and join the stars and the moon up in the sky

because that is all she has wanted to do these last few weeks;

disappear.

 

sometimes it even feels like she has, feels like nobody

even notices that she is struggling to make ends meet and that she

is trying to run away, that she is trying to make herself disappear

because she knows that they look at her without seeing her, they look right

through her like she is invisible and it breaks her heart everytime

and the people she used to call her friends

now act like she is nothing to them and she ends up in the front

of the classroom listening to them talk while she works all alone

on the lab that they just completed together because she can't change

lab partners this late in the year and its not like anyone would take her anyway.

 

so she lays in the long grass and cuddles with her old teddy bear

as she thinks of how she could just slip away in the night, leaving nothing

behind that would tell where she went because she is only a shadow

anyway and stopped leaving footprints a long time ago.

a shy boy with his ukulele

there are so many things i haven't done, so many

things that i haven't said, so many

secrets that i haven't shouted from mountains

like a love-sick fool.

 

i used to want to travel the world, i

wanted to see lovers kissing in France and a shy boy playing

his ukulele in England and girls dancing in Italy and, most of all,

i wanted to see you.

 

i wanted to tell you that i loved you, i wanted

to kiss you under the stars and smoke on an abandoned

street corner next to that shy boy playing his ukulele, i wanted

to hold you in my arms and be held in yours, i wanted

to make you smile through your tears, but now

i can't because i am slowly slipping away and you are too blind to

see, too caught up in your own world to see that mine is falling

apart.

 

there were so many things i wanted to do, so many things

i wanted to say, but now time is running out and i don't have enough left

to let you know everything that goes through my mind when i see you

and i know that you have her, i just hope that she can keep you sane

when i'm gone, i hope that

she can hold you and make you smile through your tears, i hope

she will kiss you in France, she will smoke on street corners in England, she will

make you smile through your tears.

 

i hope that she can make everything okay when i'm gone,

because you don't know this; but i'm dying darling

and i will never be able to get better, there is this monster

inside of me that is slowly, quickly, tearing me apart

and i can't fight it much longer so i'm using the last of my strength

to write you this poem and i hope that you can read

this illegible handwriting because my hand is shaking

and i'm tired and i'm dying.

 

so when i'm gone, please go to France and kiss someone under the stars

and smoke with that same someone on street corners in England by that

shy boy with his ukulele and learn how to smile through your tears, please

live the life that i never had because i know you want to travel

the world, like i once did, and please don't stay behind for me.

 

leave me some yellow roses,

for friendship,

on my gravestone and then go and travel the world and bring me back

some postcards.

tremble

i used to be able to fly, soar

up into the sky and be free,

 

but then i fell.

 

hard.

 

now i'm to afraid to take that jump that's really more of a

small, little step over a semi large crack in the pavement

filled with a pool of water from the tears i rained down

on it as i shivered, trembled with fear

because once i fell i became afraid of falling again.

 

and it's cold and i'm shaking, but i can't tell

if it's from fear or from the cold that's piercing my bones, shattering

them like they did when i fell and i wonder if maybe

i'm just remembering what it was like on that day

when i was soaring high and i hit a small, barely noticeable

bump in the air drafts and i plummeted

down

down

down,

screaming all of the way but nobody could hear me

as i fell, nobody was there to catch me and so i

shattered.

 

i broke into a million tiny pieces and it took

a whole year of sterile hospital rooms and expensive bills

to fix me again, but then i found out that it was useless, it was all nothing,

when i stood looking down at that small crack in the pavement

and i found myself unable to make that jump that was more like

a semi large step, but was so close to flying

that i trembled.

finally together

wearing a faded, well worn hat, that i stole from you this morning

and a flannel shirt that i bought last year and for some reason

i feel strangly beautiful for the first time in forever.

 

and when i walked downstairs you smiled, you saw

your hat still on my head and my smile and it was like i was 6

again and we were close again and there was no pain, no tension

between us, like the past was the present

and you loved me again

[not like you don't now, but sometimes it feels as though...

well you know.]

 

for the first time in a long time i felt connected to you again, i felt

like falling into your arms and giving you a great bear hug

while we make cheese burgers together out on the deck, shivering

because it is cold and the wind is whipping around us, but the grill

is keeping us at least semi warm

and i want it to be summer and i want it to be forever

because this moment in time is one i have long for, have wished for

late at night after we would fight and i would cry myself to sleep.

 

for the first time in a long time i was close to my daddy again

and i don't ever want it to end.

what makes a writer

i was told that writers are all brave, and the ones

that aren't face their fear with an awe inspiring

courage that i don't have, so i guess

that means that i'm not a real writer because

i'm not brave, i don't have awe inspiring courage.

 

yet, i can make words bend around me in ways

that some people just can't and i can

weave a story using only a pen and paper, i use

my thoughts as a many colored thread and my pen

is the needle, the paper is my canvase.

 

i paint mind pictures and i like to think that sometimes

i make questions, that i

create a thought in someone's mind that grows

into something that they can't ignore, something that

becomes more than just a thought.

 

i make dreams come alive, i make the chaos

of the inside of my mind real and i

tell the truth as i see it, not as

people have told me to see it because i don't conform

to that kind of thinking.

 

i'm not brave, i don't have awe inspiring courage

and you tell me that means i'm not really a writer, but

i think that there might just be more to it than that

because i may be afraid, i may not be confident

but i can sit down and twist words around me like thread,

weaving them into poems and stories.

to become something

he told her that she was nothing

because she said that she didn't want to be what

society called a 'something'.

he gripped her arm and turned her face towards him

and he said that if she wasn't something, then she

would always be nothing and that next morning

she woke up with bruises where his fingers

had been and a determination to become

something,

for him.

so she began to starve and cut and repeat until

she was skinny and beautiful and he could

look at her with pride in his eyes, look at

his eldest daughter and stop hiding the fact that she does

[in fact] exist.