TheCourtRose

Extra tears line my throat from years of swallowing ice. Not fair, not right, that I may drown you, though you are far away from where this started. Fault lines in my heart where places are still healing, misaligned limbs from being mangled, and terrified that now, right this second, you will walk away. Trying so hard to be together for you, my best for you, all the sexy, curvy, sassy bits that you love so well. Yet you make me honest beyond recourse, and being in pain makes me hide against your skin, or inside whatever sweater you've left at my house. Flee these foreign feelings like a horse bolting fire. Buy gloves to protect the rawness of my hands. Touching you has made me naked. I should resent you for this, if being your smile didn't light me up. Don't give up, don't stop waiting, and if I try to walk away, trip my shoestrings. Unnerved and unstrung, cold and unsure, sometimes love to me is running into flames. But for you, I would burn all over. Melting ice th...

Taking your time to coax instead of invade Asking, instead of demanding, you find in me impossible things Skin is living, luminescent pink- I would pour forth a million pearls to satiate the hunger of your tongue and teeth You seem to find as much joy in the searching as you do in the finding Turning a hunt for pearls into art, as much as most would string them forth in conquest  And I, suddenly believing in impossible things, am treasured by your patient desire

Your parents bought you a plot next to theirs in the graveyard up the road It was on sale, I imagine Otherwise they're secretly wishing you to join them as soon as they go, and your mother always seemed such a sweet thing Your sister is looking for a grave and you were never the burying kind She wants to buy yours, but you can't imagine the price Giving it away would make you ungrateful for the resting place waiting for you Selling for too much is putting such a steep price on death Sell it for the price of a cremation, I say Trade for trade, you both get what you want You can keep your wings and your gratitude I'm sure your parents will understand

Sign for a store "Opens midnight on Monday" and wondering- Is it the midnight after the Monday already happened? or the midnight before, really a Sunday? I've never really understood Day aren't over until you fall asleep, it seems Blazing through a midnight means a No Man's Land of simply falling onto the other side of something Clocks keep turning, but I'm not convinced that time, let alone a midnight, belongs to anyone at all

Wanna know a reason why I love you? 'Cause you leave the lights on for me when I'm driving in the dark On an unknown path, to a house I've never been, following hopeful, yet vague directions, the anxiety kicks in Did I miss a turn? Am I going too slow? Am I going too fast? Goddamnit! I should probably turn around... But I move ahead, hoping you were right all along and then there's the house with all the lights on and I know I'm coming home because of you

There's a blue rag doll on the shelf near the door Her hair is matted and her one button eye hangs loosely She is unhappy, and lonely I avoid her gaze when I walk by, though she travels my spine nonetheless There's a rope on the shelf, too a Hangman's necklace for hidden, unspoken fears There are ribboned notebooks, velvet boxes , jars of warm whispers and bundles of feathers It is not all dark corners and sad nuances There are joyful things, things full of life, things worth living for They are all on the shelf because no matter how different, each is much too big to hold in my arms every day

Tattooed skin rises to the surface Fallowed, pale hills, humps on the horizon Face turned to the tile, ridged backbone scraping ceramic Calming the beast in warmed waves, choking the panic of a thousand voices that swell the ocean tide The moon has no power here, except in a maddening heart Erratic tides that ebb and flow in a panicked push Again and again, swamping the skin Calm the monster in the water Let her scrape the bottom, plumb the depths, reveal all hidden in the night and beneath the scabbing scales Chink the armor, watch her turn in the wake, face half in, half out the water A large, blue-green eye, watching you, watching herself, waiting for the tide to ebb

The arguments we didn't have are inside the pockets of your jacket Jangling about, fingering them idly during restless moments, the change and bubblegum wrappers of a hundred bitten tongues and swallowed rebukes I borrowed it for a time, a shelter against the temporary cold Smells lingering in the threads reach my nose, mixing memory and mind A gentle weave against the fraying seams of time All the what-ifs are buttons, first open, then close, first fast, then slow A back and forth Dr. Seuss collage of putting it on and taking it off once more   The jacket is on the chair in the kitchen, right where you can find it The one place in the city where our lives have yet to overlap

Time to stand down though the night is raw with sound Cannot guard the sleep of others for eternity, nor protect them from the truth, though you tried Rest now, lay your weapon gently upon the earth, for what has she done but feel your anxious boots cut into her flesh with pacing Be soft with her, as you've never been with yourself Lay that tired skin against her breast and breathe for a little while The night is insidious, a yawning void brimming with missing whispers, voices you've stood vigil against from the beginning Let the whispers float through air and into the ears of their owners It was never a war you could win, never your right to interfere Lay back down against the earth, cradle yourself there as your own whispers rain down Breath deep of the mud, and dirt, and heavenly soot It is the only thing left now that your vigil is done

My headstone will read "She died doing the right thing" alongside Harry Dresden (Although, to be fair,  sharing a grave near or with Harry Dresden would be joy enough to kill me if I wasn't already dead) if all the right thing does is cause cascading anxiety and bouts of disordered eating So, even if it doesn't kill you out right, you're miserable until the end I love you, I really, really love you (And by love you, I mean I'll give you everything, including my dignity, time, and the tattooed skin it comes in, because that's childhood training, baby!) but I'm gonna save myself instead, one little shiny mosaic piece at a time I get it, it's all uphill (Life is uphill and Sisyphus is tired) but I'm sick of protecting you from yourself, you see Gonna put on these big-girl knickers, leave you to your own devices, and walk these wobbling knees onward I'm grateful for you, and you know it 'cause I make damn sure to...

Wrote names in soap on the bathroom tiled wall and said a prayer for each one Happiness, health, abundance in careful cursive, written into each curve How much love, desire- what vertebrae to break, indignity to swallow, what spells to cast- for a guarantee of their contentment Instead, I kiss my watery hand, wipe away the letters, hoping that as I let each name go, there will be room now for the lives we all dreamed of

You said I taste like a caramel apple and as much as I have learned to abhor them, suddenly I smile Yes, of course! I can get down with that (and you did get down with that, which is why we're here) because I'm sweet, but I'm sharp My skin is thin, but my flesh goes deep I will nurture you and be the forbidden treat you crave in the dark Instead of making jokes about apple pie, (although the situation begs for it) you can eat a caramel apple and think of me, and I can eat a caramel apple and think of you, thinking of me Wondering how who I am between my thighs, against your lips and beneath the sheets, can be so much closer to who I really am

They have called it a miracle when streams meet oceans, and lightning insists itself across the sky Flowers unfold and weep their petals away Bees continue their dance- the tale of ages marches on A miracle? I ask Perhaps not, but simply the way of things What else do flowers and lightning and bees know of the world? Yet, when two souls make a choice Standing together amidst the chaos of a thousand rifts and voids Knowing at each crossroad to come, both must choose together or not once more Is this not the miracle? It is the way of things to choose and choose again But that every time they have chosen each other- a living fairy tale For what do lightning and flowers and bees know of love? They know nothing, absolutely nothing, compared to this

Here, on this knee is the thumb tack scar from the Wal-mart parking lot where I bit my lip and did not weep And there, on my belly and chin, are round pock marks, hole punched skin from chicken pox too numerous to count Yet me without a whimper, enduring the oatmeal washes Over the left eye, where her cat took its swipe, I remained silent because I knew what I deserved Criss-crossed and hop-scotched across body and time, a litany of choices and swallowed silence Would my flesh be clean, I wonder now, had I just learned to cry out instead?

It's because I get tangled, you see? Got used to being alone Still love being alone, in fact Makes no never mind to how much I'm diggin' on you but you're an awfully cute monkey wrench in my me time Hope this isn't one of those non-negotiables in things like this Up there with cigarettes, dead cats and still living with parents 'Cause if I had to see anyone every day I'd be locked up quicker than a Trekkie at a Star Wars convention Kept alone on purpose, needed to unravel those dark imaginings Needed to figure out how I got so tangled for so long Got it mostly smoothed out these days, all the limbs laying about in proper order and along you came with a New Year's swagger and trouble on your lips, and now I'm factoring in you time, too I get tangled up still, like I am right now And I deal with it alone, laying out every confusing thought and feeling and word and limb like colored bits of yarn Ordering and sorting and figuri...

Rivulets running over your eyes Watering cascade across moist turned earth To drink you, taste you, everyday like this Always

Constantly negotiating the balance, insisting upon extremes She held the scales, muscles burning with exhaustion Internal dissonance is a resounding off-timbre clash in the chambers of her heart Brass gripped in trembling, white knuckle control, opposing sides that would never touch The stars revolved here, the sun rose and set here, seasons turned on the axis of this woman and her scales Until the day, with a gut-filled sigh, her fingers finally bled an inch too much Gulf in her heart became just too loud to bear The stars kept moving, the sun rose and set, seasons turned on their axis when she set down the scales Opposing sides touched, crept together like desperate lovers, met somewhere in the middle, in the middle of her Then she knew silence Then she knew peace

layer by layer the skull in the skin rolled away from itself leaving fresh flesh beneath breathing in the sun