"you are too beautiful to be broken," she said to me.

"i break every day...

i am beautiful because 

someone keeps putting me back together."

Job 5:18

picture by lauraisakitten

rain, rain don't go away

i am all kinds of aimless fury inside.

where can it go?

where can i go?

sometimes

sometimes i forget that you haven’t known me all my life,

that you never knew the little girl

that became a not-so-little girl

that became this young woman you call friend.

sometimes i remember what never was

because today is something that i never imagined.

sometimes i forget that i have to tell you about myself for you to find out

what’s in there.

sometimes my past catches up and my present wants to step aside.

sometimes my present catches up and i just want to go back.

it is strange for me to think that you have made assumptions

about me,

but i suppose we all have our suppositions.

i feel i know you where the rain meets the leaves,

whatever that means,

and though i am so familiar,

you don’t know what to think

sometimes.

down

a morning of masks and disguises—
each sound that comes from my mouth to them
at odds with a shapeless weight my shoulders bear.
what is it?
a glance, a despairing feeling, and we look down at our feet.
still down, my eyes go to the sky, to the sun.
it was golden when i awoke
and now warm, melting winter bit by bit,
but still i stand before a shadow,
always between the sun and my shadow…
they see me as usual,
but i am the shadow today.

pages

(the edges of these pages are as ragged as my thoughts, but they are beautiful, they are beautiful too...)

ghost

she cries into her hands in the softly lit room...

she is the reason children still tell ghost stories...

i can hear it,

i can see it coming down the hall...

draped in white, she sings through tears,

music coming from her

like the song of a thousand strings...

she cries before the cross,

lays herself down,

a river to make glad the city of the Most High.

sweet lady, what grieves thee?

dear lady, what sorrow...

she must have been real at one time

the way her weeping catches in her throat--

fighting herself, casting off demons that plague her memory long--

sweet lady, who are you?

dear lady, what beauty...

and tragedy makes sweeter still the ashen frame,

a pain that prods the past and future dame,

still very much alive,

so very much alive...

she is graceful but not liquid movement,

not luminous but pure and clean,

and now before my face, her presence

is all grace has ever been.

i am cautious

as though treading on the ice of Spring,

refined, exhausted,

weak to the warmth of April.

this she cannot flee.

i am afraid that much she cannot flee.

sweet lady, where are you?

dear lady, what dream...