The book.

So yesterday I finished writing our book

and I wanted so desperately to

finish

and so achingly to not.

It was raining yesterday while I was writing,

and there were tears on the window pane.

I couldn't tell if I was hurting, or if the hurt

was alive and its own

maybe I was the parasite

and the feeling was the being

maybe I was feeding off the feeling--

--maybe I was leeching--

just to feel alive.

There was no way to un-write our story.
I was almost at the ending.

It wasn't even sad, wasn't wrenching...

The skies had cried for nothing

--their tears unquenching--

The rain was wasted on the window pane

--there were never any tears to hide.

It was so exciting, wasn't it,

the writing?

I wanted so desperately to finish it

that I never stopped to read.

And then, suddenly, it was over.
There were no more pages to turn,

no more letters. I searched frantically for an empty page

--a space.

There's still ink in my pen, I mumbled, blubbering.

There's still more story to write.

But all the pages were gone. I'd filled them all.

I sighed heavily and set down my pen.

I let the ink dry while my eyes got wet

I let my muse die with the dreams I laid dead.

I finished our book--filled it so tight with words

that the pages ran black.

I'd packed in our story with smiles as a filler

and now that it's done I guess

I'll read it

again and again

and forget

that it had to end.

Letters

For a while I didn't know how to read

our book

and the letters on the pages were just

scratches of ink

but even then, I think, the markings linked

in even patterns, given patterns

and today, I know the letters are more

than just letters

they're letters from the grave

and the brave

and the scarred and

the scared.

Snow globe

I want to keep you in a glass-globe prison

and wrap up our memories in foil

and stick them in an oven.

I want them to cook and bake and boil

inside the tin sheets till the juices and the oils

evaporate

like rum in a plum cake

and all that's left is over-baked

memories dry

and desolate.

But you. You I want in a snow globe.

I want to shake up your world

every time I miss you

and smile whenever the fake snowflakes

kiss you

I want...I want to be in there with you,

frozen forever in porcelain perfection

hanging on by my fingertips

and I want...

I want to be the fake snowflakes on your lips.

Yesterday

If you'd asked me, even yesterday, I would've told you.
I would've splashed ice-cold water over my eyelids
to camouflage the tears
and chugged a mug of scalding hot chocolate
to force down my fear--
to burn away the chill,
the ice-cube in my throat,
and I would've spilled.

Yesterday, I was so bloated with emotion,
so stuffed with nostalgia that I began
to float.
I drifted to the glass ceiling of the master
bedroom, reeling
from the intensity of the feeling that
had briefly seized my throat.

I was choking on the words that had lodged
like hot fudge in my gullet.
But still. If you had asked me yesterday,
I would've spilled.

I wanted you to know--yesterday--
Yesterday, I knew exactly what I would say...
if you had asked.
If there had been a ring involved,
if there had been song,
if there had been nothing but the words
and the sentiment of the thought...
I still

would've spilled.

But of course you didn't ask.
You waited. Hesitated.
I debated, mind you,
I weighed it...
and I decided, finally,
that when you ask me
if we'll ever be
what we were once before,
I'll just say,
"We might've been--yesterday."

Me

I am quite the ordinary person. Ordinary being, by definition, nothing spectacular. I am, as one would say, unremarkable.

I am a shadow with no gender and no form. I am a voice that makes no sound.

I am vertigo.

I am a stone that bleeds when cut, a priceless gem of useless dust.

I am Mother Teresa's gnarled fingers.

I am the Pope's abandoned robes.

I am the raging half-life of a teenage girl.

I am the smothering pillow in a would-be widow's hands.

I am, by virtue of my skin,

glass

made from the wind.

I am an iced ivory face

in an Iron Maiden's embrace.

I am a ghost that knew no life.

I am life that knows no ghost.

I am a mirror at my best,

and a reflection at my worst.

Glassman

Yesterday I met a man sitting by an ice-glass lake.

I didn't see his snowy beard

and I completely ignored his face.

All my attention attached itself to his fingers

And all my thoughts--my vapor thoughts--condensed and settled

as tears

before my eyes and there they froze

most stubborn

stillborn

Till they became glass, ice-glass, organic lenses to focus

my sight--

--my insight and foresight and hindsight and true sight,

on the glass man's fingers.

They were mangled, the fingers, and gnarled

like charred stubs

of a paper tree--

--paper that had once held words

and memories

but is now

scoured

and chewed out.

And I watched through my marble-tear lenses

as he held up a pipe,

a solid affair of iron wood--mahogany--ordinary

and blew through it a ball of molten fire,

and, as I watched, the fire hardened,

into light and a heavy orb

of cranberry-orange ice.

But then I blinked,

and the vision shattered,

and my tears broke and the ice-shards clattered

as they hit my face.

A moment later they melted and the world dissolved

into marmalade skies and apple liqueur,

Because the glassblower had

fashioned, from ice, from sugar-dusted air,

and fingers broken and unrepaired,

the Sun.

Ink

I peeled off the ribbons of cursive ink,
Words, they're called, apparently.
But all I see in the pages free
of ink is blankness
that the ribbons briefly hid.

It's a book, Someone whispers and I laugh.
What's a book? Pages filled with ink.
It's NOT a book, I whisper back.
It's magic trapped in liquid black.

Magic? Someone scoffs.
What is magic? It's not real.
But what is real? I then ask.
It's blank pages
dipped in solid thoughts
and painted in vapor dreams.

But what is MAGIC? I hear Someone hiss,
It's NOT a book.
It's not a book, I agree,
and I've pissed Someone off immeasurably.

It's the words, I tell them.
It's the words. The magic's not the ink or book.
The magic's in the eyes that read,
and in the curves of the cursive ink.