A Brief Explanation

Twenty-five was a hard year.

I lost much of myself.

I lost control, parts of my mind, body, sanity, sanctuaries.

I had so much evil come knocking at my doors,

Physically and internally.

It was the biggest burning of myself I have ever endured.

My husband and few remained by me,

Some others finally opened their eyes to truths,

While others chose to close them more and turn me into a fictional character.

Twenty-five created roles I didn't want to play.

But I did find some parts I need for my journey in my life along the way,

As well as discarded an enormous amount with my love by my side.

I hate that I lost one of the biggest parts of me,

The part that has been a source of comfort since I could first read, first hold a pen--my words.

They escaped me, but I am working all the time to regain them. To regain me.

To, as always, rebuild from the ash.

Home is Where the Love Is

You chuckle, you don't understand it

            But it makes you smile anyway--

You know it says the most in the those few words.

Coming from me, it's almost bigger than the simple "I love you,"

Even though you have to explain to your father

            Who loves me as a daughter,

That while I may say that to many,

            It's actually not an easy line for me to say.

To you, I will continue to say "I love you"

But this, this I know from your smile alone

            Is the best way that I say it.

It's for you, and you alone.

I inhale deeply and the scent of you helps calm me.

It's why you unlike all others can get me down from a spiral within

Hours, with just your arms around me,

            Your presence near me.

Your warmth floods my lungs,

A repetitive arrow rightly sent

            Through my heart.

Just A Clip

I'm laughed at for my tripling, my quadrupling,

I have to recheck myself because it's called major anxiety.

I've screwed up too much from depressive and hypomanic storms

And blacked out memories that I can't allow,

Can't handle, or give up the need to perfect;

Too much has been ripped from my control these last few years--

And in these last nine months or so,

            My mental has felt so topsy-turvy,

                        Side-screwy.

How would you like hallucinations jumping in,

            Seemingly ordinary

That you're rocked off finding out

            Reality isn't

Is not

Yours anymore?

Accidental gas potions brewing like cauldrons,

            Threatening to kill your lungs,

Or flames licking your kitchen ceiling

            Slick with perfumed oil--

All of these are your mistakes

            And none of these registers until it's almost too late?

You laugh at me for my counting.

            My pacing.

                        My hand-wringing.

                                    My fast-talking.

You see these traces,

            My different faces.

But you've never seen me fully relaxed.

You don't get that I'm not making myself paranoid,

            I live with paranoid.

One error, I fail.

One error, you move on--brush off.

            It can eat me for days.

Even if everyone says things will be okay,

Unless I have a one hundred percent

            I cannot give you the guarantee

That I'm not going to recycle:

            One...

                        Two--

            Three,

Repeat. Maybe?

Disappearing

I feel like I'm drowning on sand.

I'm weighted down, can't breathe it seems.

I don't quite understand how I spring leaks,

When I feel as if I'm mummifying,

            Muscles calcifying.

Brain seems to obtain more holes,

            Caverns and tunnels I hardly know where they go--

Except further down into the dark,

Down through the tree trump I spiral out,

My how the lights all seem to go out,

            All over dear broken Wonderland.

I wake in the night to my cats' paws

            Stabbing my ribs and breasts

                        As if my familiar is stabbing

            Deep holes,

                        Jabbing quick and hard,

            As if wooden stakes are missing

Their marks.

I dark not drink, as if my subconscious

Is trying to hold off the inevitable fact that I'll become cement;

I already crack with each thwack my life brings.

Mind and body.

Body, mind.

Soul?

I fear she may have flown.

            Wake me, this stasis has me gagging, gasping.

Can we just halt the clock a minute,

The second-hand stutter in my palm

            As I search for the answers?

Back through to the other side of the mirror where a hint of me awaits?

I know she's sitting there,

A smirk waiting hidden in the corner

            Of her lips.

Shakespearean Mirror

It's funny how a man that swears to have loved me,

From the teenage years, until before I said I do

            To the right one for me

                        And wasn't you,

Could go hours and get rides for shades of me,

But only once for me did he--

After Helena and Hermia

            Before Ophelia,

The distraught and dark Hamlet who was more or less

A whiney, present day Mecrucio,

Have our backs until it no longer favored you.

            So in goodbye by making it clear

That I was better as a lighthouse for you

Who was only useful anymore as a silent painted portrait--

Rose red with thine petals at my feet,

            The I love you, love you not wishes which

Smolder to sharp thorns in my hands.

I'd rather the flowers I wear upon my crown.

Everything was your terms, and you grew scared when

As I realized other men in my life cared more than just words,

And would drive an hour no matter the weather

            Or pomp and circumstance,

To spend just an evening or afternoon.

No agenda. No intention to woo.

They didn't care I'd given my heart to my correct Romeo,

            Without pushing me to be their Juliet.

You act as if I am the one that did you wrong,

But after nails hammered in coffins and then

            Pried loose once more,

The assessment is more damage done to my heart,

            The one which is more whole

Due to true love's first kiss.

            The phantom of you will always be there,

A ghostly sonnet in caverns of old,

While real friends tend to flower beds by the lapping shore

Or throw pebbles of life to make the water

            Ripple with the growing wisdoms of time--

And my beloved watches over

            As the sun to warm my days

And the moon

            To illuminate

                        My darkest nights.