Where did it get you?

You took away all the oceans and all the room.
You gave me my shoes-size in earth with bars around it.
Where did it get you? Nowhere.
You left me my lips, and they shape words, even in silence.
- Osip Mandelstam

Forest

I feel the forest in you when we touch, I see its deep green shadows living in your eyes.
Your skin smells like pine needles and fallen leaves, and when you sweat, you leave the sweet smell of sap behind.
I feel the forest in you, secret and wild, it’s there in your deep-rooted silence, skittish and holding all of your secrets deep inside of your chest.
There is a wild tang on your lips, the smell of wet earth on the palms of your bark-rough hands.
You stare at me, slowly stripping away your layers of formality, of illusions, until you stand naked in the cool air, green grass tickling at your feet. And then you turn and walk slowly home, alone.
Alone into this place where I will never be able to follow you.
Alone, with your heart stripped bare, your secrets carried away with the wind and picked up by birds.
The trees rustle welcome, the leaves hardly make a sound underneath your feet, and every day there is a golden Fall leaf sitting on my pillow.

Possession

“The novelty of possession is still an exotic thing to us, a precious thing, intoxicating. I envy the table its scars, the scorch marks caused by the hot bred tins. I envy its calm sense of time, and I wish I could say: I did this five years ago. I made this mark, this ring caused by a wet coffee cup, this cigarette burn, this ladder of cuts against the wood’s coarse grain. This is where Anouk carved her initials, the year she was six years old, this secret place behind the table leg. I did this on a warm day seven summers ago with the carving knife. Do you remember? Do you remember the summer the river ran dry? Do you remember?”
- Chocolat, Joanne Harris

Unhappily

Sureality, dA

“Eventually, if you follow them long enough, even the happy stories end unhappily.”
- Shalom Auslander, This American Life, “2010: Chronicle Of A Death Foretold”

For the Telling

To say that I am a walking contradiction would a capital offense cliché
I wear this face for you,
a smile, maybe a laugh or two
Letting you know that "hey, everything is ok over here"
But you only need to dig a little to find the truth
Place you spade under my 4th or 5th rib, twist
and a crack that was once an inch and half long becomes a hole the size of the Missouri
Letting out rivers of everything that’s ever been wrong
Here's another one to add to the charges
I'm an open book
With a broken spine, pages fluttering in the wind
Stories, I believe, are for telling

- Dain Michael Downs

Today

I fiddle, fidget, and fumble
I chew on my bottom lip
Crack my lefthand knuckles under my chin
Shifting my weight from foot to foot

Cryptomnesia

Um-Nadia thinks about it a moment. “That too. But I mean insomnia first. Where you sit up at night trying to think of silly things like, where did I put my old husband, what happened to my blue pants, why does my hand hurt, and so on et cetera.”
- Crescent, Diana Abu-Jaber