Some words by Blue

[wordsbybluedabade]

This morning, I remembered the red crescent moons you left in my arms. I took a shower and I was still bleeding, blue blood running down my fingertips-- I turned the water hotter and hotter. There was hair, clinging to my skin and caught between the folds of my body and I felt myself folding in and I panicked and turned the water cold and picked off all the hairs that I could see through my blurry eyes and I got out and put moisturizer on my face which I never do. I saw other moms. Old pictures of moms smiling and hugging their daughters and I don't think I have a single photo of us that makes me feel like they must have felt. Maybe I will look again today. Maybe this time I will find one. Maybe I will burn the whole cardboard box and never search again. Maybe I will never make eye contact with another mother. My sister tells me that sometimes you use a wheelchair now. That you adore your grandson. That you asked her if I was still with my husband and she lied about that for me but told the truth about the cat. Why do I even care anymore what you know or what you think? It's not like you ever cared what I thought. Should I pity you? If I were to step into your presence, would you still have strength enough to hold the leather whip? Would you strike me even now? I still dream of you almost every night. I pretend it isn't happening but the main component of every dream is me trying to talk with you, reason with you, building up to screaming at you that I don't need you anymore, that I can make it on my own, that I have a plan and I am acting on it and I never want to see you again. I wonder when I will believe my own words. You will likely remain firmly in my dreams once you are in your grave, forever the same, forever unmoving. Today I struggle with my coping mechanisms. I want to give in and call you. I want to pretend that the past never happened just like you do, but I don't seem to have those skills. You are a monster, a nightmare, a woman, my mother--and today, I am hiding from you; from everything you were, everything you are, and from everything you could have...should have been.

[wordsbybluedabade]

Suspended in time, in conversations, in old photographs You are a shock of red hair and haunting notes Older now but your heart has not aged; Only ached, Tired arteries reaching for oxygen Tired blood seeking rest. You are still here after all these years Ten years, more My friend, tearbound Sighbound Silencebound You sit in the gnashing dark Knowing not how brightly you shine.

[wordsbybluedabade]

My hair is damp and faded My legs warm with leftover sun The birds are making pleasing noises Unlike the early morning crows. There is dog hair still clinging to the blanket That my cabinmate left for me I don't mind it as much as I miss him Or as much as I hated the cigarettes left in Coke bottles. I am tanner than I have ever been I am more scuffed up than I have ever been I am in love with the deep dark water The cold and the warm clear shallows. I am no longer afraid of spiders--there are just too many here to bother with the fear. Someone nailed their summer-worn flip flops to the ceiling above my bed...I could move it but I like resting my feet on the windowsill. I drift in and out of citronella scented dreams Lulled by the dripping of my swimsuit in the corner.

[wordsbybluedabade]

This is a love poem.

My heart is filling with memories and hope and they are quivering, vibrating down through my veins to my nails and pouring out through my thumbs like my tounge would release if it were not midnight in a quiet house on a Tuesday.

There is love in every room. There is pain as well undersurface and under skin but there are hugs and kind words and bonds and they are a hell of a lot more useful than one might think when it comes to not feeling like you are nothing.

There is promise of tomorrow and even more to find, more to discover and learn and I wouldn't trade a single day of this adventure for a solid mediocre normal because I rather enjoy making my own.

Even on bad days, real bad days love sneaks in somehow and curls up next to me on the couch until I don't want to sulk any more and when I hit those points where I am crying too hard to breathe it rubs my back and brings me a crumpled tissue.

I will never be able to understand it fully--there is always another side I haven't seen. But I know this as I drift out of consciousness and into sleep...

I am in love, and love is in me.

[wordsbybluedabade]

I need to touch

I need to push

I need silence and all the noise in the world

I need organization and synchronization and Complete and utter chaos

One dish two dish Old dish new dish

I need to do well but not too well

Need to sit still and need to run

I need to be all serious but still have fun I need to eat my vegetables

I need to consider the variables

I need communication and I need everyone to shut the fuck up

Please. 

I need distraction

I need attraction

I need to be careful to not infer any infractions

I need a drink

I need self control

I need to scream

I need a good night’s sleep and I promise

All will be fine in the morning. 

[wordsbybluedabade]

The wheels on the bus go round and round, pausing five minutes in each little town, endless fields turning gold as the sun goes down I'll be there soon. Passing big rigs and cars and small town bars, chasing trains, watching planes in the clouds make temporary scars Counting houses, counting road signs counting passengers, counting songs Pick up my book and put it down again; it won't really be that long. Tapping feet, glowing wheat, endless white lines Check my bag, check my phone, rest my head, close my eyes Open them, count the cows, count the grain bins, hum a tune, itch my nose, adjust my posture, stretch my toes, change the song, poke the seat in front of me, start getting hungry, count the fence posts, write a poem, think about home, think about destiny and fate, hope the bus isn't late but mostly... I just wait, and stare out the window at nothing.

[wordsbybluedabade]

The trees were were overflowing with soft pink blossoms in the first full rays of daylight

Guitar chords spilled from my lips--the taste of familiar change.

I adjusted the bedsheets and floated through the back door to yell at the neighbors

“Stop blasting that fucking song on repeat”

And they did

I woke knowing that I can fly without a chorus reminding me to believe.

[wordsbybluedabade]

I am water that has been filling

Jars and bowls as needed

Changing shape and making room Careful not to spill

But I am a river; I am a sea

I am the deep ocean blue

Crashing waves upon the shoreline

I am bursting with solitude

I want to know my own currents

My own reefs, my own saltI want to carve patterns in the rocks

And shape my bed  how I like it.

[wordsbybluedabade]

There are sparks in my blankets and flashes behind my eyes and storms in my stomach and I can't sleep again. I can't cry but the nightmares are back, reminding me of everything I do wrong and leaving me with a sense of oceandeep loss when I wake. There are new people disappointed in me every night and I always do something to lose them. There is hope on the horizon, I swear. I know that I will be okay in time, but I don't know how long it will take and I am not okay right now. I wish I could cry and get it over with. I just... I was doing so well.

[wordsbybluedabade]

I am awake long before the sun, lying silent in the dark. My husband is snoring lightly. I flick idly on my phone through facebook. His alarm goes off, he hits snooze. I put the phone down and spoon him until the alarm goes off again. He gets up slowly, has a cold. I get up and wrap a sweater around myself, hunting for cold meds to give him. I crawl back into bed, sweater still on. I flick through webcomics on my phone. He gives me a hug, turns off the lamp and goes to work. I consider going back to sleep but I am too awake. I consider getting up but it is too cold. A car alarm goes off on my street, continuing for several minutes. I stare at the ceiling in the dark. I consider crawling into bed with my boyfriend down the hall but I know that he has only been in bed for a couple hours and needs the sleep. I pick up my phone again. I think,  I could touch myself; that's a pretty good way to start a day. I look up nondescript porn on my phone and bring myself to decent orgasm in a few minutes. I put the phone down and think of someone descript. I burrow deeper into the blankets. Now what? I can hear traffic getting started and there is the slightest streak of purple showing through the curtain. I pick up my phone again,  thumbing to the note app...

I write.

[wordsbybluedabade]

I found a room in the pauses between my promises

The walls are a pale yellow

There is an open window with a view of a grass rippled ocean

And a bed with a single soft pillow

That is all, nothing more

but a breeze blowing through--

I don’t stay here enough, in this space in between

All the promises that I make to you.

[wordsbybluedabade]

The Frost

I walked to work this morning. 

Early, so early, long before the sun, I left my front door and for once my eyes and ears were wide open.

 I heard nothing but the soft crunch of new snow underfoot, my path the first to venture out--well, not quite. There was also a trail from the neighborhood cat. 

To my delight I found hoarfrost covering every appendage of my caragana bush; every thorn shimmering. 

The dirty yellow streetlight somehow looked more golden folded in with all that glitter. 

My eyes drank in every fence picket, every tree as I walked a little more slowly. 

As I got closer to my destination I noticed... the frost coated a cardboard box and the clothes spilling out of it on the sidewalk. 

It climbed an abandoned shopping cart and a lone boot. 

It reached out for my cheeks and I quickened my pace, past a frozen bike that has somehow been there for at least a month and past the door with a broken window, snow in a delicate balancing act on the broken pane.

I found that the hoarfrost doesn’t discriminate. All is beautiful. All is cold.

[wordsbybluedabade]

Please tell me that the wait is worth all this, that the time I have spent here is not wasted

Tell me I have done good in this world during my blip of existence

That my words have meant something, that I have mattered

Tell me that all my grand deeds have in fact, saved me from the darkness, and the nothing

That love is real, and not just co-dependant validation

Tell me that feeling things means that I am living and I will always feel them and I will never become calloused and cold

Tell me that I will figure out how to be okay, even though it is strange to me

Tell me how to float above the labyrinth and and see all of my existence from sunrise to sunset

And know that...

I don’t need you to tell me anything.

[wordsbybluedabade]

It is on the tip of my teeth, my tongue, my fingers, resting like hangnails and popcorn husks

I am itching to write something worthy of mention in the calming clarity of my medication

I am washing dishes and laundry with fervor, I am performing better at work

I am handling social obligations with something close to ease and I am not even tempted to reply to my mother’s backhanded ‘sweetness’

I am wrapping Christmas presents and shovelling snow, I am holding close the ones I love

I am doing squats and pushups and eating salads and I feel a million times better, I really do

But damn, am I itching to write.I miss being delirious at 3am, house silent around me, tapping away in the dark

I barely stay up past 9 anymore, what with all my being a morning person now.

 Well okay, I don’t miss the despair but now I really need to find some new ink, or a new font

Because what kind of a poet can’t write?

[wordsbybluedabade]

I am nothing but a repeat of Groundhog Day

Twelve years eterna

lAll fear and fierce devotion

No, I am not twelve--I am twenty

The year I spent trying to make my peace with God

The months I spent telling you that I would be gone for only two weeks

The week that I spent packing and unpacking and repacking everything I owned 

The day I boarded the plane and didn’t look back.Even in the midst of all the love that has found me since that time

I am clasping my hands over my ears to block you out when there is even a moment of silence

I am stuck in a memory loop of defeat and defiance to you

I am both the water and the woman drowning.I want to open my eyes and unleash the magma flowing hot behind my eyelids

But my wrath is as useless as my subservience;Neither of them will ever make you be a mother to me. The truth is, I want off this rollercoaster

I am tired of writing poems about you

I am tired of writing poems

I am tired.

[wordsbybluedabade]

My brain feels like a standard vehicle that I can't quite get the hang of

Eaaaasy does it, then lurching forward with my heart in my teeth and sputtering into "...what was I saying?"

when my thought just kinda...ends.

I thought I had a handle on it, I mean, even when it got rough I was still managing to stay in the lines

but lately I haven't been 100% sure if I am awake or still dreaming--

I smack myself in the knee when I am on the toilet to make sure that I am not about to pee the bed.

I am having nightmares, still. The past and present meshed together and I am always, always fighting

There are too many things, too many people to worry about

World events that I have no control over and they make me sick, I have to close my eyes but I still feel like I should have done...something

Events with friends, the people that I love have become something to dread,

I feel like I am always letting them down, that I am hurting someone

I am drinking too much to hide the fact that I'm not sleeping.

They gave me some pills. And then, they gave me some other pills to give the first pills time to work

Names that I can't even wrap around my tongue

They told me that the side effects might kick in before the benefits do but I refuse to even look up what the side effects are

in case I try to convince myself that I am experiencing them.

I am angry. I feel like a failure every time I place a bitter pill on my tongue but I swallow anyway

They told me that counselling and meds help cases like mine about 50% of the time.

I have stopped crying every two minutes.

I am doing laundry now, and dishes. I am eating sometimes.

I re-activated my facebook and put the missing app icons in the blank spaces

There are spaces of dead time and times where everything is more funny than it should be

Where I am laughing like my life depends on it

Where I am laughing until it gets hard to breathe

There are reasons why I do not have my driver's license.

[wordsbybluedabade]

Heavy; cement in my stomach and tar on my shoulders

Snaring small stones one by one

Atlas would remember my name if he knew me

I am holding thin lips in a thin line, grinding teeth

Worried glances and puffy red eyes

There would be a river if I had the strength to cry

For someone else

So afraid of the quicksand on my childhood list of fears

I don't even know if I should struggle

I am taking a deep breath and choking on the beer I find myself drowning in

It is so easy to close my eyes

Submerging my brain matter in musical notes

Shhhh, hush now and listen

Hush now, listen

To the nothing

And sleep.