I
Coming Clean

The sun massages my neck & joyful students chatter on; frisbees & jokes fly through the air.  Freshly cut grass & tulips tickle my most memorable of senses, which should be reminding me of better days, but all I can smell is her skin; all I can see is her hair; red red red is all my mind can hold.  Its been months since I’ve heard her voice, weeks since I’ve read a word penned by her hand.  I see her every day, but she’s gone… gone; my guilt kicks me in the gut minute after minute, & her sapphire eyes whisper their love to me when I sleep.

Here she comes; I stare at the ground, but my eyes can’t tear themselves from her face; the face that held me with such desperate devotion just hours ago… no, not hours.  That was a dream.  She held me long ago… so so long ago…

Wait… she’s—turning around; my gut flares again hate hate guilt love guilt love hate!  Silence as she sits next to me.  Those bitter baby blues flash to my right hand, looking for the silver spark she gave me; I removed from my finger just days before.  What did she expect?  Our love died in that salty bedroom ardor; we lied on the same mattress, but it was miles wide.

Then come the words that she feared all along, but never heard from me; the words I should have admitted to her years ago; the words that I never expected; each one another kick.  The first, that recognizable sharpness in my stomach, but the next hit my groin, then shattered my knees, then spit in my face before I hit the ground.

He held her in his arms while I held her in my heart.

But, you know… we’ll be friends.  Oh, of course we will.  How could we not?  So many mutual moments; our eyes connected so many times; we’ll be friends, we’ll be friends, we’ll be friends, we’ll be friends while tears rot in my chest.

II
Water & Glass

That familiar flame, bubbling; smell of green accompanies the soft sigh of an exhale.  ‘round it goes, & the lavender fog rises to my head.  My body sinks into the couch, but my essence extends into the All.

It’s the beginning of my month long descent into a musty leaf that Those That Be insist will rip me from my friends & family.  But when I finally lift the fog, they still endure.  They still endure, but my brain is in mushy shatters.  I deny its effects; I’m addicted to the circle it creates; the pure, bodiless contemplation it simulates; the Oneness & love it stimulates.

I rise on a seven petaled lotus whose enlightenment offers nothing but the kind of wisdom that takes the pain & buries it in a ball of tar; one that escapes with hack & cough when the sun rises, sits congealed on the rain-stained brick, then crawls back down my throat as I sleep.

III
Tarot

The Queen of Wands sits next to the Page of Cups.  All the cards are laid out, & the path is plainly seen.  The Page knows the cards; is well versed in their meaning.  He walks a way riddled with thorns.  Beasts & demons lurk around every bend, but the Queen beckons, so he stubbornly travels on.

In his land, reason is an act of treason; an offense he dare not commit, for the Queen is wrathful, & does not abide disloyalty. He does her bidding willfully & without question.

Until the day he finally heeds the cards.  He can no longer tread to his demise.  He topples the Queen’s crown, & places it upon his head.  From this day on, he turns his own wheel.

IV
Ring

How long has it been since I’ve worn it?  I can’t remember, but I’m sure it’s not as long as it seems.  It feels bitter, yet oddly kind on my finger & holds the dull glint of memory.

I swore I’d only wear it ‘til our love slipped off, but you looked for it then, anyway.  I took it out today just to feel its smile against my skin.  Smiles aren't always benevolent.

Did you notice when it slipped on again?  I’d like to think you did; but now it sits in a box, ready to move on just like me.

V
Turn, Turn, Turn

Her fingers trace my scar with loving ink.  With her, I forget it's there sometimes.  It was another life last time I was held.  In the tunnel I dug for myself, I barely saw her coming; then she was in front of me.

When I asked her where she came from, she recited the most exquisite poem I ever had the grace to hear.  But it is not for your ears.  It is not of this world.  Like the name of some clandestine god, it is not meant to be repeated.

We demolished each other’s worlds that flurry afternoon.  Expectations were spun around; whole pieces of self were given new shape.  Purple made her eyes go red, & giggles dashed the ice.  She was given a talisman that night, brown fibers to ring her neck; a rite of passage.

Now my wheel is spinning again.

VI
Coming Clean, Reprise

Friday night, a day usually full of smoke induced laughter & carefree drives; I am drudging through the drizzle, raging against the winds of the inevitable, drops striking nails into my coffin, my habit skulking close behind me.  It hasn’t caught up with me yet, but I'm just a phone call away from ambush.

All doors are closed to me; jagged shatters of my choice jammed into the locks, so I pick up the receiver.  He pounces.

Shreds of paper flutter through my room.  He turns it upside down in search of stem, leaf & seed.  He succeeds.

Talons grate my skin & the paper is soaked with blood of a shameful passion.  My hands are shackled to the walls of law; confession is snatched from my lips.  A friend spirals to the same shame, & a lover shares my shackles.

VII
Answered

Night crushes my skull with its dark inertia; beer & memory leak through the cracks; exhaustion wrenches my eyelids.  She, the joyful lesson born of failed loves, lies next to me.

“You smell like my father,” she says.  I loathe the thought.  To be the mirror of such a negative vigor makes that rotting creature swell.

I don’t want to be a pitiful scrap of child anymore.  I don’t want to replace crutch for crutch.  I don’t want to pass the weight of my tears even one more time.  It is mine.  I will take it like Atlas, world that it has become; hope my back only bows, resign to it if it splits.

I feel her embrace tighten, & cannot hold the creature in.  My spine begins to creak with stress.  A vague love I once held in the same embrace prods at my memory.  The unvoiced prayers of my former self come to life.

The salt of my depression, decaying for a year, finds release.