georgia

when I set foot
on Georgia ground
did the echos in my heart
resound
and fill the empty cells
of yours
with memories of
the summer days
halcyon
and free?

when I set foot
on Georgia ground
did you hear the whispered sigh
of midnights spent in hush?
feel the flicker hum of
falling asleep by
screen light?
remember faintly
driving under
starlight?

did you perhaps
feel the earth
tremble
with remembered
shared moments,
almost sacrosanct?
promises made
in the naive hope
of youth?

promises broken
into shattered dreams
to be touched only
by fingertip
to bleed
onto
hallowed ground
blasphemous

did you feel me?
did that fragile red strand
still tug?

and now

I sit

crying

in an airport

in Georgia

pulling the gratifying weight of grief
around me
not a shroud
the - not quite
the - almost was
of us
of them,
(two young and foolish lovers)
trembling on my lips

our choices
made
apart
irrevocably
-but still-
regrettable
even if that regret means
pain
even if that regret
doesn't go all the way down
to the depths

doesn't shift
continents

but it's there
the knowledge
of the might have been,
immutable,
like the constellations

but

we both made choices
and now we're bound
by  vows made
to people found

by things we thought we wanted
and things we truly did
and
by the love we made in the process

so far from our own

you

gods and stars

here witness

this

the whole of my heart –

the hole in my heart  –

aches

I tell myself to

remember the bad things too.

the things that you said

 and the things that you did

that made me feel

s m a l l

but 

those moments when

I stood tucked

beneath your chin

or stood with your hand in mine

those times you didn't yank away

the rough, dry warmth of your palm

to my palm

soft and –

they still shine

those moments when we

g l o w e d

and I find 

it's hard to forget

it is

so hard to forget

shoveling snow

with our bare hands

watching you smile

and sing with the band

your surefooted stride

as you took the lead

I thought it was all

I could ever need

the crystal clear water

of ice melt

freezing against my skin

the shiver click lock

of songs sung in tandem…

you want a window?

you want a door?

tell me a memory.

make me believe

you believe.

from sadness

half 

truths 

secret 

messages 

 

but

it's not enough 

to bridge the 

gap 

to salve

the wounds 

is it not 

enough?

 it is.

it is not. 

 

fragile flower petal wishes 

falling from my fingers 

searching for the words to say 

my heart was not just broken 

it was shattered 

discarded 

crushed 

and now...

the broken promise of summer:

shards 

driving into my heels 

searing hot 

the leftover fragments

message bottle remnants

whispering 

 

regrets

tell me

was it me?

i feel sometimes

in the deep night

awake alone 

with crickets and cicada in my ears

that it was 

you

sudden and broken and whole

in my life

you saw inside a cage

i was barely beginning to believe 

was real

and you opened the door

or maybe

gave me the keys...

and waited. 

and waited. 

but too late

too late

we were on a course

feet on dashboard

songs on radio

the ocean on our right

heading home

and suddenly

suddenly 

veered

overturned

and now

that road is closed to us.

no more familiar foot paths.

no more songs in voices

we know better than our own.

no more entwined harmonies

exhaling

exalted breaths in tandem.

lost.

forever.

forever?

tell me.

was it me?

i...

i think

it was you.

in another life. 

Smoke and Mirrors

curls of vapor around my face

I wonder what this would have been like

between your teeth.

if we could have ridden the high

past our downfall.

were we inevitable?

that ending cracking through

words we wished we could take

back

to the beginning.

a spill of silence through my veins 

oh, god, my veins. 

but they must be silent now, too

a relic of a broken past that is 

being slowly

deconstructed

and lain in the dust of memory. 

do we lie when we say

we can move on?

that we have

moved on.

are there bits of me all tied into you

like the bits of you

that still scream your name

inside of me?

pieces that seem broken?

jagged enough to

cut,

but who's edges can be 

matched up

in gold and lacquer

if we are patient enough

to make some beautiful new

whole,

in a world where we

still smile?

are those smiles 

a betrayal?

do I feel guilty because I 

look back

or because 

I moved forward

past a bridge left burned

by another's hands?

sometimes

i miss you

sometimes

like fire

like ice

i miss the slender hips of you and

the wide spaded palms of you

and the careful look behind the blue summer promise of your eyes

when you laughed loud and thought

you might be judged for laughing

worried about how you might be percieved.

i miss the wit beneath your tongue

the intelligence in your tie twist words

spilling out of your mouth

pouring into me

i miss the passion of you

and the hope you kindled

ember bright

in your heart

beneath layers and layers

of self loathing and

the irrevocable compulsion to live up to standards you had set yourself

hadnt known had been set.

i miss the midnight quiet breath of you

and the sweat of you

and the dirt and the grease and the capability

beneath the nails of you.

i miss the red summer gold glint of you

i miss the life of you

when we were alive

flicker bright

for an instant.

sometimes i even miss

the fear of you

striking out

driving away

denying

gods all above

how i miss you

sometimes.

and i read.

i write in pencil

i write words that i am afraid to say

out loud

i know how much

my words can harm -

in the 8th grade

when i took my father’s advice

(his advice was law, though he’d probably deny that

not seeing his absolute influence over me)

i told my best friend

in a letter

that i was afraid

she would go to hell

if she died during her

-very necessary-

heart surgery.

and she turned nearly the entire school against me.

(so, the damage religion has done to and through me is so much

of my story.)

So, I know what power my words can hold -

and i write in pencil.

I am trying to write about

my father.

I haven’t talked to him in years.

but still

his presence in my mind

is enough

to stop the words from

coming.

in jr. high

-my mother tells me-

i was bullied everyday.

I cried every time she dropped me off.

I remember the mean girls,

and some instances of bullying

-being asked out as a joke-

I remember one of my only friends telling the

mean girls

a lie about me.

I don’t remember what,

but i remember crying in the bathroom.

sobbing, in a bathroom stall,

unable to keep it under control anymore.

broken.

I remember the PE teacher telling me

...something.

that i was worth more.

It’s mostly a blur, or blacked out with nothing there.

I remember-

but no.

I wanted to talk about my father.

When i was in Jr. High

i was bullied

a lot.

I stopped caring

about living,

but that was not allowed

(oops, there’s that religious injury again).

and i didnt understand suicidal ideation

or depression -really-

even though my mother suffered from it.

Depression was indicative of an unhealthy spiritual life and so

MUST BE DENIED

I stopped doing my homework

i hid notices from school

i hid my status reports

and

until my report card turned up…

I read.

and read.

I escaped the bleak, tormented reality

that i had to deal with everyday

-persecution means people know you are GOD’S FAVORED

did you know that!?

so the more bullied you are, the MORE god LOVES you!-

I read.

I read book after book after book.

Mostly fiction.

Fantasy.

Sci-Fi.

Adventure.

I read every single book the library had about insects.

The Titanic.

anything that could take me away for awhile.

I would lose myself so deep that i would startle and get annoyed(not allowed!) when someone interrupted.

I would read until i passed out at night.

At lunch.

In class.

I needed to escape all the time, then.

I was a bright, sensitive girl.

I wanted to like everyone and for everyone to like me, and learning the world was not that way was hard.

So, I read instead of homework.

And I hid all the notices they sent home.

And then my Report Card came,

and my mother said something like,

“I can’t even look at your face right now.”

And I ran away from home.

I wrote a note, which i think my parents still have,

about how sorry I was, that i didn’t want to be a burden

(things i recognize as an adult as painfully similar to so many, many suicide notes)

I wrote a note and i ran away

and i went to the library.

I was in Jr. High. I had no friends.

The library -

books -

was the only place that felt like home.

So i went there and i hid behind a sofa in the children's section and thought about what to do

and i read.

I brought crackers and water.

but not enough.

A man approached me after a few hours,

or maybe only after a few quarter hours

-i call him THE VAMPIRE-

and he wanted me to go with him.

He asked about my book,

my name.

He invited me outside,

but i don't remember what for.

I refused and he left.

And then i was afraid to leave.

and i read.

My parents found me in the late afternoon -

my mother said “I knew she’d be here.”

my mother said, “where else would she have gone?”

on the ride home

my father asks

annoyed and incredulous

“where were you going to sleep? what were you going to eat?”

and i answer.

because to not answer a question

asked by a parent

especially your father

was. not. allowed.

I say,

“I was going to climb onto an apartment building roof to sleep.”

I say,

“I brought food.”

And my father scoffs at my lack of planning.

my stupidity.

my inability.

he says,

“You’re lucky we found you. You could have been kidnapped or worse.”

My mother says nothing, because it’s true.

I don’t mention THE VAMPIRE because i am exhausted and afraid of my father’s retribution.

I know now as an adult with an adult understanding:

I hadn’t intended to survive.

I don’t remember if we ever talked, really, about me running away.

I think we must have.

...but I don’t remember.

And then my parents grounded me from reading.

I could read nothing but THE BIBLE and my school books.

and

I was ordered

to write, long hand, every single verse about lying in the bible.

I’m pretty sure it was my father’s idea,

but i don’t have the courage to ask my mother.

The grounding from reading never really “worked.”

You can’t just take away the life preserver from

a drowning person and expect them

not to fight back.

not unless they

are young

have no power

and are influenced almost totally

solely by

you.

I think that’s why it

surprised

my father

when i didn’t immediately

obey.

If you ask my parents now

or if i mention being grounded from reading

(which surprises people every time they hear it,

and which i joke about because to think otherwise hurts too

much)

the response is usually something like

“we didn’t know what else to do.

we didn’t know how to get her to obey.”

and there are two parts to that:

the lack of education about personality type

and mental health

and how to help young children being

severely bullied

to the point of

suicidal ideations.

and

the desire for a

“good,”

“obedient,”

“christlike” child.

also,

the confusion of suddenly having a child who was

once

all of these things

and is now suddenly

seemingly

apathetic.

careless.

recalcitrant.

disrespectful.

And, now, i am trapped between

wanting to understand my parents

the way their minds

and ideologies work

and understand they were just doing the best they could

and

and

hurting so much

for that little girl

so lost and wounded

not wanting to live but

not knowing how to die.

not understanding wanting to die.

She just needed help.

and instead

someone pushed her out of her lifeboat

and gave her

bible verses

as punishment

“It’s not punishment!” my father said when i protested.

“You’re thinking of it wrong!”

adding yet another failure to the stack of failures

marked “daughter.”

but

have you ever read the verses in the bible

about lying?

they’re mostly…

punishments.

and condemnations.

the most memorable being

Ananias and Saphira

who god killed for lying.

I was in jr high.

i was broken

and suffering

struggling to stay afloat.

I wasn’t copying words that could lift me up and tell me how not to lie,

or how to tell my parents why i had lied…

Just condemnations and promises of unimaginable punishments from a god

who

hated

liars.

and thus

me.

I ache for that small child.

for me.