Things Left Unsaid

There are times that I wonder if what happened between us was a fever dream.

If it was my own illness that created the saltiness of your skin, The feeling of your lips,

The ebb and flow of your laughter

Echoing on and on into the frigid night.

Those fingers, stealing away my breath,

Rolling a cigarette,

Shuffling a deck of cards

Again and again.

Maybe I imagined the time you seemed hopeless;

The night you ripped your heart from your chest,

Held it out to me still beating

And said taste it.

Perhaps Descartes was right before he began his meditations.

Perhaps there is nothing left for us to believe in

Except a God that has exchanged forgiveness for vengeance.

Truth is, I only know you in the lamplight

Behind a cloud of marijuana smoke

That makes false promises of lovers

Who will hold my hand in public.

I keep thinking that saying “when I grow up”

Will heal old wounds

But I can’t stop the fact that every day I am becoming more and more my mother.

I can no longer hate her.

I lick my fingers as if it’s powdered sugar

And pretend the pinkness isn’t because I have blood on my hands.

Pretend that I don’t have bones

Threatening to shatter like glass

Under the weight of all my secrets

That wander like skeletons out of my closet in the dark.

I guess I don’t want anyone to know

About the time I swallowed shards of a broken mirror,

Coughed up blood,

And called it poetry.

I don’t want anyone to know about the Lonely,

About how me and him have drunken sex

In dark rooms that smell of whiskey and stale cigarettes.

I don’t want anyone to know that the time I spent on my knees

Was a silent prayer to a God who had forsaken me.

Truth is, I have already written my eulogy.

Picked out my funeral dress.

Made sure I’ll look real pretty,

It’s not necessarily that I desire death,

But rather that I am plagued by an inner indecisiveness

That is crushing my chest.

My life has become a revolving door

That refuses to stop spinning

And I have become, so tired of being dizzy,

That I am just letting it rock me to sleep.