TheCourtRose

At day's end, the body is crusted and crepe-d with a thousand collected words Clinging, barbed and desperate, to skin are letters, phrases, excerpts, insults, hopes, emails, curses, or any mutant combination of the above Unless, of course, you despair of human interaction in its entirety and currently live in a cave (Understandably so, good sir) Only fellow humans to could sling such words Hobble forward beneath a shower spray to scrape clean with pumice-d vigilance Yank those suckers loose with tiny, shrill cries of indignation and crossed little arms But what happens when the water sluices down, only to clog the drain? Sure, some words head straight for the pipes, like barely tolerable prepositions and unremarkable conjunctions Even a super cheeky determiner may grip the drain, squaring off in its many-limbed form, a desperate ninja, wanting only to be close to you (but a slight toe shove will send that sucker swimming) But adjectives? Verbs? NO

Do not presume to fix me, kind ones Because, truthfully? There's nothing to repair here under your control Nothing more or less than a shattered heart mending Please, please just stand vigil in the dark A quiet witness to the ravages of grief My grief Hold a candle, hold it high Surrounded by light, there is a way through Enough to know you are here, a silent sentinel to this pain, reminding me I am not alone Weight lessening even now as we speak Already smaller than it was a moment ago and a little more whole

Heel prints on the ceiling Bracing, for the love of God Or you Not sure if any difference matters considering the breathy sigh of mingling names gets more confused as we go And go And go A little to the left... And go Until the floor is the ceiling, the wall a spiderweb of silk I, a desperate, ravenous, many-legged beast You turn to me, turn inside me I am seeing you, a pillar of flesh and love that I scramble upon Beside me, residing in me I thank God one more time while screaming your name When all goes quiet and the ceiling returns to its place above us, I wonder for the eighth time- How is there a me without you, a you without God, and what really holds the ceiling away from the floor if not the jagged limbs of creatures making love? And why on Earth would we willingly separate any of these things at all?

Forces like rain, earthquakes, lightning, like love and falling stars, are simple Existing in and of this world, a statement to those that molded time and space You are the rain to me As simple as that Fighting this truth surrenders us to shame (and we have traveled too far for such nonsense) and insults the bone-deep truth that love is as necessary and inherent as air Even though, unlike lightning, it will strike more than once, love never strikes in repetition You are the rain to me Could no more will away my heart for you, than I would beg for the stars to stop falling The axis incessantly tilts, clouds stray across mind and shadowy landscape, these forces never cease Long after these bones have shed, love continues And will do so, until the rain itself has stopped

Where are you, little one? My tiny fairy queen? Stardust and adventure make your bones into a terrific tornado of light and sound You never worry, do you, about when the sun will set? Focused on the moment at hand until dawn comes again Yet, I am mourning for you What happened, little one? How much I have disappointed you as years go by Quieting you slowly, hushing your big voice Letting the world convince me of my lack In turn, convincing you of yours Breathe again, my tiny queen I will cut space into my chest to make room for you I will listen for your calling bells in the middle of the night, at the dinner table, when fighting the terrible shadows of "Have-tos" For so long, I thought I needed It, needed Them, needed Him, This or That But I really just need you I clung to the scars of experience too long, as if they are unique in any way As if scars make me special- when they do not There are enough wounds in the world to go around