my eyedeal life

lover of women with swords

[priceprime]

After a long cold and wet day your toes and fingers pinken with fresh circulation, finally warm in the soft rain of the hot shower. The space is squeaky clean but disorganized smatterings of rich color pop in the corner of your eye- a variety of lotions and potions and other shower accoutrements. They gleam like gems in a dragons hoard. The scent of the shampoo is delightful and familiar, it is a signal to your body that you are safe. But it strikes you differently too, new in some indistinguishable way. Like experiencing it for the first time again somehow. It is a soft scent, something like roses and the earth. The dirt and tension of the day flow away easily, tender under the formidable demulcyfying powers of the soap and hot water. All the discomforts of the day are resolved, everything is set right at last. You are clean again.

[eyedle]

You're the embroidered lunch bags and golden stars that attract attention like mine. You were always better, more, than me. And I was always the one out of the circle and off the sidewalk. It was okay because in the cracks of the cement grew those flowers from when we made daisy chains on the kickball fields. The ground was wet from tears and blood, tripping over adolescence and the quickly blossoming insecurity. Chasing growth around the playground only lasted so long, until I was being chased and you were too busy holding hands with it.

I saw you grow up, hand in hand with my greatest fear, into a body perfect for someone like you. Someone beautiful like you. You grew your hair, coloring it like the sky and the birds flew among it, trailing clouds and affirmation. I grew my hair like a rope, and the desperation kept me from tying it to you. It covered my face and contorted my nose besides you. We were so far and I couldn't pull hard enough to twist my spine to face the other way.

I once wrote a story about us. When I was older and I felt fear for being so. I wrote about how I was finally going to be enough. Enough to deserve a ribbon and a bow instead of a rope. And for once, you would watch me. I'd look up and walk with the bones and muscles and curves that being older should've brought me. The story never ended, I never finish stories where I can't help but want to strangle the main character for her innocence.

Why is naivety my holder when I've tried choking it like a lover?

I followed your footsteps and yet the manacles have snapped around my wrists and pulled me back to the start. I am stepping into the tracks you've made, to be desirable like you, to be loved like you. When you sent a letter from your place at the end of the road, you promised it wasn't me but the letter contained two fingers, crossed in disbelief (are they crossed still?).

Adulthood hasn't changed. The clovers always have three leaves and the sidewalk holds the same. And I am still that friend. The one who memorized the things you loved about me to keep them alive. Because if you could have loved me like I loved you, shouldn't the world too?

[priceprime]

Forget me not,

My forget me not,

As I tried to be;

As cold and blue

As the true love of you.

Remember still and hallow

And forgive that no flowers grow

From my ungentle bones.

Forget me not,

My forget me not

In purifying last repose, though

It could not change my soul.

[priceprime]

She ends but

Never ceases.

Dies and does not

stay dead.

But I am the one,

I am the one

Who must hold her too closely

As she is too still snd too silent.

On the long walk through hell

And to the river styx.

I am the one

Who must lid her glassy eyes

Trace each edge of porcelain split.

Who must wash the blood

From her hair

And the corner of her lips.

I am the one

Who must annoint

Her stubborn brow

And her perfect heart.

Inlay her crown

With all she will forget.

I am the one who must lay her to rise.

I am the one who must mourn.

I am the one who must love her

Over and over again.

[priceprime]

I love the way

Humanity loves.

I know

I know, I know

I know

I know

But it hurts anyway.

[priceprime]

It's an addiction I can't shake.

The rumbling thunder of men

Talking the economy, the universe, the self.

Quoting Shakespeare and Socrates.

Tables I am welcome at as long as I am quiet,

As long as I am a friendly listening ear.

They are not so wise as they like to think

And yet I can't stop hunting their words

Cannot stop begging for approval.

I see the surprise in their eyes

When I open my mouth

And something profound falls out.

I can see it fade the next moment

When they decide it is an anomaly,

Because what else could it be

But a broken clock on it's twice daily anniversary.

I need it so badly

Even as it corrodes me.

But I am not my mother's little boy.

I am not her extraordinary daughter.

I need it so badly

And I'm too inhuman to have it.

[eyedle]

In hot summers on scorching culdesac concrete

we'd watch a girl near juvie jump for the tallest trees

in hopes of breaking her arm and getting her parent's love.

We'd play cops and robbers

not scared of falling and scraping our knees.

Skinned elbows were a trophy.

Casts were an accomplishment.

Kids held back with only plasters

and our parents' weekend dinner plans.

Yearly seafood boils with all the neighbors,

stealing a crawfish to put one on a least,

parade it around as a pet.

My parents boiled their own pot without sausage,

my grandmother ate corn.

We followed behind the white kid

with the best snacks in his pantry,

down the banks to untie his leash.

Set him out to the lake,

watch him sink beneath the murky surface,

to resurface years later.

And now, I wish I didn't know

that crawfish werent native

to the man-made lake

with a crocodile and good memories

in the backyard of my childhood home.

[eyedle]

I can’t hold it all anymore because I miss it all too much

and where can I find the room to let it out?

I’m in a supply closet full of cleaning supplies

and there isn’t a box of kleenex.

Supply closet but no tissues.

I suppose you need them and then you realize you didn’t stock any.

I suppose I didn’t know how I’d miss them, and now I can’t help but overflow with

I miss you

I miss you

I miss you

and I can’t find the tissues to clean me up,

nor you,

not in this supply closet to small

for how much I keep on

missing you.

[eyedle]

It’s so simple

to become a

so sweet as a

strawberry girl.

Maybe too sweet,

but take a bite

before rot takes hold,

of a sugary

saccharine

saved for you,

my

strawberry sweetheart

[priceprime]

Am I still bearable? Have you changed your mind? Have we gotten to the part of me that is contemptible yet?

No.

I cannot regret my honesty.

I would rather you hate all of me

than love only the good parts.

[eyedle]

“New me”

The worst part is,

I haven’t changed at all.

I am, and always have been

the same

old girl

with old interest

old taste

old likes

and loves.

You just never knew me.

[eyedle]

I think I am always thinking of ways

to think of you

to write for you

to live for you.

I see you in the wildflowers by the bubbling creek.

I thought of sending the moment to you

before I even noticed it

I imagined I pack it up

wrap up the water, the flowers,

the mossy rocks, the pink sunset.

I pack it in a small box

to save on postage

and set it to sail on the wind

tied together with twine.

I watch it drift down the stream

and I think water flows south

I hope your home is down there

and you get the package,

just for you.

I hope you find it,

in a pile of hundreds by the mailbox

of all the beautiful moments

I thought to think of you first.

[eyedle]

RAHHHHHH i better wake up in a better mood. i better not be genuinely upset at people. i need this to be an issue of rest. i cannot be confrontational.

[priceprime]

Most art is untitled

It strikes you, unsuspecting

In the midst of your bustling.

When, exasperated,

you look up at the sky

And the blue of it slaps you

Across your slack jaw.

When, browbeaten, your eyes fall

And the checkered sunlight sways

Across asphalt gray, dizzying

with the look and the feeling

like just before passing out.

When you lay aching on the ground

After enduring the consequences of your actions

And a circle of strangers gathers

Chanting ancient incantations

"Are you alright? Are you alright? Are you alright?"

When you are on the twelfth hour driving

It is three am and your eyes sting,

You look briefly to the passenger seat

Where a morning bird sleeps

It is three am and your heart stings

At how you would do anything for love.

When you are empty and aimless

Loitering ten stories up, staring and waiting

For the cosmos to come back, to be unhidden

And instead, adrift, your eyes catch

A slow dance a couple roofs away;

Lovers in a sea of nothing.

In the moments of living that demand your pause

Something bigger than us all calls

And the soul responds by stilling.

Moments given names, for which

there is no translation.

Leaving us to call them untitled.

[priceprime]

I saw a single rain drop falling

It caught the light

And for a moment

Felt just like a shooting star.

[priceprime]

Who allowed this?

What god gave me you?

You cannot give

someone like me

Something like this.

I will choke

like a starving man on food.

It must have been you

Who asked me, pre mortally

To find you here.

Had anyone else asked

I would have said

It will hurt too badly

To hold so much love

In a human body.

But I am so glad

That I would do anything

You ask of me.

Because I got to meet you

As if we were strangers

I got to fall in love again.

I got to spend

an extra lifetime

With you.

[eyedle]