My poetry

all the trying and failing and trying again,

the small steps, the big ones,

the backtracking,

and the painfully shallow forward momentum,

in all that,

there are some things that will remain forever lost.

You will never regain the hearing in your right ear.

The teeth ripped from your jaw.

Or the soft skin you once had.

The trauma will remain in parts of your body as a token of what you once were,

and who you will never be again.

Every part a thread in the tapestry of who you are,

His hands, “no father”,

picking up the stones to throw at me,

“it is” he insists. I mourn for his loss.

To treat the earth as if she was something he could ever deeply care for.

My message will be buried under the pile of abuses that he hurls at himself and all around him. My cup would break in his hands. The cracks from childhood perfectly molded for it.

“You don’t have to stay there,” my brother says. But I don’t know how to leave. Perhaps once I wrestle myself from his grip. The feeling of rejection is bittersweet against the lip of my cup. My tears will not meet them, they just bubble in my eyes like when I was a child.

The way he uses his autism to absolve himself of everything reminds me candidly of an actress in a recent interview. How her story gripped me.

To whom she speaks, no one knows,

but she whispers all the same.

Vibrancy and animation in every word.

It doesn’t even come close to the paintings in her mind.

And again.

To whom does she speak? To the earth?

The watcher? The pine?

We do not know the answer.

For no one ever asked.

Sit for long enough and you’ll understand.

There’s no one there to ask.

They’ve all found other flowers who are easier to pick.

Her petals are almost covered by vine, thorn, and sand.

Only the smallest amount of light peaks through

to the entrapped plant.

And this she basks in.

The rest of the world moves on, glittering, gleaming, dancing in the light.

But she has no response to this.

For what of it can she see?

Her blindness, not entirely her fault,

is a void of possibility.

Her hunger is lost on the whispers.

You’re probably,

most likely,

surely

When the blood cools in the body

happens to me most often.

I forget what it is to live.

Each day passes without a flicker of gold or stardust.

I pretend I’m content but it’s really complacency.

Contentment wouldn’t despair of its existence every other day.

Dried blood turns the body numb,

casts a shadow over figure of speech.

What is it that resuscitated me?

I saw a flash. Before my eyes.

A future that I have no way of making mine.

A past muddled with pity, poverty, pestilence, and pleas.

A voice that I have no conscience of.

A shoulder that will never be there to cry on.

A form that does not exist without breath.

And the breath cannot breath without my blood to pump it through my lungs.

Forgive me.

For all the time I quieted your voice,

filled you up inside just to leave you void,

turned your words into spells that floated down the river of time,

toyed with your heart and wasted your life.

I am sorry.

I did not know what I did.

I had no concept of truth.

And no image to even misconstrue it.

Complacency wasted me,

left me feeble in my search.

I feel no further than a babe,

I stood in the hot air brushing horses manes. No thought passed through my brain as the caked dirt let way to well oiled locks and a happy snicker. I couldn’t remember who I’d been before that. Couldn’t remember why I did anything. I just lived as if I never had before.

But the year crept on as I realized how unprepared I was. How much the ego does for your future. The little ambition that gripped me before disintegrated on the floor. I just don’t care for it anymore. I almost wish I had jammed my way into the doors I walked by before so that I could live comfortably as my ego death gives way to the spiritual apathy of equilibrium in the cosmos of me.

But alas,

this summer,

hands folded across her lap,

small and hunched,

looking about at the giant pit she found herself in.

Crumbled towers of pedestals from long ago

on every side.

She finally realized she had created one for everyone

but herself.

The deepest attention seeker of all,

basking in shadows.

Misfortune was too simple a word to describe

her current situation.

Her life.

What could she do now?

Everything had culminated into this moment.

The moment where nothing was left

but herself.

She looked down.

When it doesn’t pay all the bills? 

What do you do when you’re bad at it?

And then get worse?

How should you navigate how you feel?

What do you do when your calling is all that you want?

So much so that there’s not room for anything else?

What do you do when care flies out the window?

And your dogs eat better than you do?

What do you do when you have all the answers?

But they don’t fit right in your shoes?

What do you do when repetition isn’t enough?

Because you didn’t let it last long enough to pay all those bills?

What do you do when there’s only a month left?

But in that month everything falls apart?

What do you do with the answer?

I once sat for hours writing my pain away. Asked hard questions.

Thought about it for days.

Amassed a fury of gentility and genius.

Now, I just think about how to get out of it.

Why not to pick up the pen.

How comfortable my bed is.

Though this twisted shoulder would say different.

My poetry all sounds the same now.

I suppose because I have not continued the pursuit. I used to cling to tradition.