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.

Autumnal Goodbye

I stare out the window at the blustery autumn leaves,

Thinking of how this time last year

            Was full of turmoil and stress

Where we digressed and our souls took to wanting

Hibernation in our chests.

            We clung to those we still loved, while I also held tight

To the man I now consider my one.

            You could have won you know,

If you knew how to grow up before

            It was

                        Too late.

Like Peter Pan, the man I used to love

            Is still a boy. I grew up though,

And you weren't ready.

            He was. He is.

Now unlike last year, instead of pulling close

            And standing united,

Just as the red leaves,

            You remain in my veins--

But the faith and strength that was our love, our past,

The friendship tied with one love--

            You fall,

Fall down on cold ground and

You resurrect the queen who finally

            Must give up the knave that held

Her soul,

            Swearing  to keep it safe,

But has bruised and used it

            To where you were so close--

The last straw in this barren month

Where the ripest of apples are born

            And pressed and cooked

Into sweetness renewed; you taught

The queen how to be cold as fae may be,

            And he brought the warm

Fire that thawed his way to the side

            By me to be my king, humbling but raw.

You encased our endurance while creating

            Space for him and the ice walls, yourself.

I shall miss you, but I've changed

            And spread my wings that were

Once shattered; to rise as you stand low.

Towering over me, I no longer recognize

            The boy I gave my all, a stranger in my eyes.

I do not cry as I used to though;

Maybe we had to become close again,

            Tighter than we'd ever been,

So you could see what you'd miss and took for granted,

While I learned the difference between

A thimble and a compass.

I'm as naked as the trees become before my eyes,

But safe as the bark that has grown harder

            And beautiful

In its rough glory.

I'll miss the old you, the us in Neverland.

It's just time for me to grow up

            As you continue with the lost boys,

Skipping lightning across the water

            With all the rocks that eventually sink to the bottom;

Our memories, laughter, kisses, and friendship

Haze over our minds.

I'll love you always as I often told you I will and would,

It's just time that while I had faith and trust,

To leave and move on from the piece of my heart

            That only held pixie dust.