this bridge we've built / i don't need it anymore

I have wasted tears, drowned myself in self-pity and explicit confusion. A missed call, missed signal, no sign of entry. An armed robbery of my heart, you palming your words as weapons, such an archaic tactic but one that levels me to angry silence- and tears, those tears. Where you simmer brilliantly in carelessness and arching brick walls, I bend to sadness and melodramatic heartache. Our acid neutrals clashing, burning, fissuring into bloodied drops of mercury, splitting and running off into the desolate corners we avoid.

I know what it is like to be adored, to be obsessed over, to be desired and wanted, even just liked. The exhiliarating ego rush, even if the feelings are less than returned, and the overwhelming sense of want crushed into the words and gestures of someone that isn't the woman I'm with. It's too much, too little, not enough.

I abuse fragments. I don't draw clear boundaries. I overstep lines, reformulate while I'm playing the game and winning/losing; I never win/lose, I always finish. And I am no angel because I don't know how to say: "I have a girlfriend, and I love her." Instead, my grey area speaks for me and says: "I'm unattainable but you should like me anyway because I love to have my ego fed."

And if I never thought my life would catch up with me, trip me and toss me down a flight of splintered stairs, I was disillusioned from the start.

Stand up with a backbone you've whittled from bamboo and snowflakes. Dissolve your spine into salt and sand, brushburn your knees over the fire you started. I can't listen because I watch, and I can't watch because I don't know how to see.

My heart is a bruised icon, a landmine, a landfill, a dumping ground, and a harbor. And you're not getting your hopes up. I got rid of my hopes over a year ago. I just wanted you to know.

be still / anyone can see

I cannot see myself the way that
you see me. And I do not want to, because
I am unfamiliar with the taciturn reactions
and blood-whittled avoidances.
And sadness avoids me where frustration
causes over, tricking through wind eroded
shatters in my skin, shards of emptiness filtering
past photo album inconsistencies.
I can't give up on love
but love has run from me, its nightmare ribbons
trailing through abandoned hallways,
turning over blurred photocopies. If I relied on emotion,
I would cry over the phone, belabor my lingering
insecurities, and aim for sealing the cracks with dried
saliva. But I have lost my tears to something less palpable,
something less worth my time. Where you remain
is a vast horizon, one littered with trepidation
and senseless reprieve, one I cannot reach
nor see.