Sworn

Some weeks, it's a record of days

Of getting into my car and crying

We drown the fear in caffeine, a

Respectable substance of choice

Hoping it's not real

Praying it's not real

Counting breaths and minutes and wondering when

The chapter ends

Racing ahead, page by page

And I've always been a fast reader.

Catching Lilies

(The story that inspired the novel Georgia, 2008)

White sash, keeping close the
Secrets tucked into your waist
Thin as grass, swaying tall
Graceful even motionless;
Sandy dust on an eastern shore
Brushes your feet, your train
Shallow prints in changing grooves
Memories forever intact in film.

You're smiling
Smiling so wide, like you
Used to back when things were good--
Whole, beautiful, right.
Back when things made sense.
Never thought I would
See that again.

I miss you, missing you
Keeps me sane sometimes
Gives me something to cling to
(Purpose, if you will)
You're that unattainable beacon
That ribbon that just slipped
Through outstretched, grasping hands
The one we lost
In a turbulent sea
And never will regain.

I miss you.
A bond lies shattered
Fragments on the floor
Held fast by resentment
In your old house tonight.
I miss you...
Come home.

Quantity

There is never enough gas in my tank

And

Never enough money for my student debt, and

Never enough time in the day

To do

The millions and millions of things I want

To do

But there is always enough food on my plate

And

Always enough money to get by, and

Always enough love and work

To do

To make me feel like I am

Enough

And that is more than

Enough.

Maroon-y

Being a synesthete is sort of like being Superman.

Except not at all.

It’s sort of like being trapped in your own skin when you neurons are screaming to be free of their chains, to be released from the crusty tendrils of old notions that others have of you.

It’s a responsibility. To be better than people who don’t understand. To blend in so that those people don’t feel threatened or belittled. To be there for younger synesthetes who are just beginning to learn the significance of their difference.

It’s a privilege, to know and to see what other people don’t see.

It’s a curse, to know and to see what other people don’t see.

Synesthesia is not a disease. It is not a problem. It is not something that prevents you from living your life, but prevents others from living in yours.

It is everything and nothing, so important and so disastrously useless.

But being a synesthete is more than synesthesia. It is the knowledge that you have something others want and others fear. It’s that rumbling ache from the soles of your shoes to the soul of your soul when you see another synesthete, one who is not comfortable in their freaky, colorful skin, one who is crying out to be understood and you just want to shout I GET YOU. I GET YOU, AND NOBODY ELSE DOES, AND SOMEHOW WE WILL BE OKAY.

But you can’t, because it’s all a secret, because the mere mortals will never just let it be okay.

To the End of the World

(My first attempt at a villanelle, 2008)

Maybe you'll find that I'm the safest place
Seek shelter right behind my burning eyes
Someday we'll make the patient mountains pace

As tears of bafflement stream down my face
The pleading crowds stare helpless at the wise
Maybe you'll find that I'm the safest place.

My shallow, bleeding heart begins to race
The temperatures and tempers start to rise
Someday we'll make the patient mountains pace.

With secrets kept within a bolted case
A solitary figure turns and sighs
Maybe you'll find that I'm the safest place.

The narrow, bending path that I will trace
Will lead us both to where the moonlight dies
Someday we'll make the patient mountains pace.

Dreaming of seas and clouds lined with white lace
The sun will set forever for black skies
Maybe I'll find that it's the safest place
Someday we'll make these patient mountains pace.

Midtown Scalawag

I look out, and it's grey.

Not in a bad way, I suppose. Although I'm trying to see it in a positive light.

So there's that.

It's a grey that I've warmed up to over time, gotten to know like a scalawag learns an untouchable girl over sipped, gifted drinks. The grey--the dead trains and crumbled homes and parking lots crackled like toffee in the cold--it's all I see from this window, all day, every day.

But it's home. It's work, which is just as home as home. Detroit has that effect on people like me, people who use it as the beacon for explaining home to strangers who've never been. An hour north? You're still from Detroit, and it owns you just as securely as the kids playing in its city-limit streets.

It's not so much the grey that gets me. Grey isn't bad. It's the void, the lack of anything else, and the way I burn to fill that void, just like the rest of us who say we're from Detroit. We want it to glow.

Part of me wishes that's how my story would end, in a blaze so fierce it left Detroit glowing in its wake. Speramus Meliora; Resurgent Cineribus. We hope for better things; it shall rise from the ashes.

But it doesn't end that way. I would be able to see that glow already, if that were the case. I came here for the thrill, the danger, the adventure, and that's what I will find--but Detroit, much like the untouchable girl and the scalawag, will not find those things in me, because at first glance, she will not think to further look.

Leaps

And so it began, the season of numb toes.

Caleb was used to the cycle by now, but the start of the winter months still filled his cell with dread. His heart, too, but then again, he had little heart left to speak of, so that mattered little.

He missed snow. Snow was the only thing that made winter worthwhile. He longed for something beautiful here, something that wasn't hard and grey and monotonous. He used to consider himself to be beautiful--on the inside, at least--but he himself had grown harder and greyer and more monotonous each day, so much so that his reflection barely matched his memory of the man he was.

He stared up at the dim light and tried to count the days backward by month. 8,760 days. 24 years he'd been in here, counting backward and wondering where his true reflection had gone.

Ah, shoot. Leap years. He had forgotten to count the extra day in the leap years.

Time to start counting again.

Prompt: Missing Calls

She kept the voicemails on her phone long after their contents were obsolete. As long as she kept them, she could remember.