The iron extrovert makes an apology

Like so many 25 year old women, I feel like I've had my share of heart-breaks. But in hindsight, I realize that I am just the kind of person who will inevitabley feel brokenhearted, simply because my heart is built with so much sensitivity in it. It is a fruit on the vine, so ready to contribute something sweet to the world that I can bruise at the slightest or gentlest touch. A heart that eager to give isn't always good for people, and i've done my share of hurting- so eager to be significant to people that I invest more than I can keep up with. I dive deeper than my lungs can sustain and invite more than I can possibly honor.Maybe I put my identity in being a person who could be everything to everyone. Maybe it came from pride. I don't mean to do it, and the curiosity and care is genuine. But I am just me. There is a list of people in my head that I've hurt this way. People I let down when I wasn't as able as I thought I was. The iron extravert: the bearer of a thousand weights, a thousand stories, and no muscle to back up the dillusional feeling of might. How did the list get so long? Sometimes, out of nowhere, I feel a massive weight of regret and responsability for broken relationships and friendships in my life. And all I can really do is apologize. I'm sorry to anyone I've hurt by acting as the iron extravert. I am weaker than my will. More ambitious than I am able. I'm learing. I'm learning when to let people stay a bit unknown. And I'm sorry to those I hurt in learning this.

When inevitable shades of dust and silt
coat and shroud the windowed gaze
to pierce the greenest youth with guilt
sigh, shall I, a knowing phrase
For flowers, mine in open spaces
too have crushed beneath the weight
of ghost-like lists of names and places
built with masks that mimic hate
finger's touch cannot confront them
nor the bravest searching eye
they don't exist in physical quantum
but dwell instead in my own mind

Time that goes by quickly
is actually just steadiness under the fragmented attention of someone distracted
the days that pass quickly are the ones that eat up years because they know you're looking through lace curtained windows
and quick backward glances forgotten in the next moment
head turning back while hair is still tossing from the backward spin
you are too busy saturating yourself in presence to notice that time is still slow
that a year is still 365 days
and a day still 24 hours
you are too busy living to count down anymore

Tonight a red sun drops
broad and dull in smoke
the eye of Chiang Mai
a temptress for mine, which have always wanted to stare into that fire
impossible for such a beauty to burn

journal

I can't wait to blog from somewhere new and exciting.

don't know when. or where.

but i'd love nothing more than an hour to write about incredible scenes from my window.

crazy

i didn't grow wings til my bones caught the wind
and the breeze offered height when it ran 'cross my skin
no more like the butterfly up on the shelf
whose wings are outstretched with a pin

i didn't have sight till i saw from the cliff
steps i had taken to climb over "if's"
no more like the rocks that crumble and crack
and cause the foot to slip

girl in white

the man squinted close, face so near the painting that his breath warmed its textured flesh
dare he touch the surface and know its colors as warmth on the tips of fingers?
know the shadows, ye man, and how they veil each color
know too the ridges that catch a glare of light to set colors into gilded folds
each gaze steals a stroke for yourself on retina and holds it in close

he turns his head
a moment too long

the man tilts his head
his eyes, unmoving take in the whole of an image out of his reach
you may not know, ye man
but watch how each color fills its role
with details that melt and shout together across a space of floor

and i will be

as i am

even as you leave the room with the imprint of my form submerged in the eyes that sleep open

the radio takes me back

a year ago i was soaking up as much Charlottesville as I could in preparation to leave a town i'd come to love.

a year ago I was hunting for the best Miley Cyrus halloween costume C-ville's thrift stores would provide

I ran about 9 miles a week and had a 5 mile run in mind as my goal.

i had soft curly hair that got shiny if I washed it with the right shampoos.

a year ago i wondered what all those songs meant

i bid

if you sip cider with me by the window in the coffee shop

for today that's all i need to love you

tomorrow I may need a hand to hold,
or I may need space
to stride as a proud young woman

but today i could be madly in love with any of you who buys me a hot apple cider
and sits with me by the window
in the coffee shop

I took Ryan Adams with me on my run this morning in air I could tell was cool, even as my body heated up.
His voice suits a gray sky and a hill full of the good people of Millersburg resting in the ground beneath their monuments.
My obsessions collide. I spend my days chasing words and here a string of them slipped in and snagged on something: "I taught myself how to grow 'Til I was crooked on the outside, inside's caved"
I glanced down at the sleek little machine in my hand as tough "Title, Album, Artist" would tell me anything more about the sad man behind this curtain: this song.
If I can't have my beloved moon on such runs, I'll simulate her as best I can through the music I feed my halloween-head.
Ryan Adams, you glow sad as the moon and that terrifyingly honest lostness of home screams in your harmonica

i think i'm in love with Ryan Adams.

the streets

who will welcome me home tonight
what lonely article of setting and what washed out hint of color
sad reminders i welcome instead of fight
despite the grip i have on my lip with my teeth
pressure-white like knuckles
"come on something, pull up a chair"
"something" the man or "something" the mood
Lord knows i've seen glimpses of you
out in the current
glancing up from my pages
peeking out of the confessional in distracted moments
to see the dancers and drinkers
the thieves and foxes in all their colorful glory
i'll string them as beads around my neck and feel them drum heavily on my collar bone
running turns to spinning. wolf becomes old friend
sing little one, the belligerent Hallelujah of the market place
forget the empty chair at home. It loves you not
watch from painted eyes that catch questions for only a moment then release them to flight
melt wax strings glistening grease for the sun to swallow and cleanse with hot, fevered mercy
the confetti will not stick
open your arms to this sky that is not empty
welcome to your blessed away
your glorious elsewhere home
Hallelujah little one
your God has been awake forever

the rooftop

you won't always have this rooftop
one day you'll find a quiet second to break the din of the followers
and you'll want nothing more

than what is no more

upward

i do a lot of leaving when I'm lonely
drifting from place to place in an attempt to leave before i've created a new location to associate with loneliness: like some stench or virus that follows you and infects a room, driving you out before you've stayed long enough to let it weaken you

i left a lot of places this week
last of all, Anywhere Town, Northern Ohio

I drove "home" with a backpack and a pumpkin in my passenger seat
and the window down so I could let my hand swim in the rush of air

gold and blue
eyes on the upward and the inward for once

for a second
i enjoyed being alone
and smiled to myself at the words
"adventures in solitude"

a real smile too...not the cynical kind that comes in darker times
the smile of a girl who amuses herself
and admits she's found something she likes in her own company

for a moment
and perhaps a moment more

breakdown

i hate that summer's over
i hate that my passenger seat will be empty on my drives back from wooster in the middle of the night
i hate that my fears and insecurities were more accurate than my hopes
I hate that sweet poetry feels so awful when actually lived out
crying in someone's arms in a strange city
arms you can't do a thing with once the grace period is over
I hate that this is the moment you asked "how are you doing? Are you ok?"

I hate that my heart is breakable even when it's armed and prepared

but i love that I still feel like I make pretty good company
and that a clear sky can make me lost for a second

i will find more and more things to love this fall

just watch me


i hate you baltimore. i hate you and the rats on your t-shirts
but i'll probably love you when it's all said and done

3 words that became hard to say

I can always see the lost
when they're gone
out sweeping the plains for a reason the size of a needle

but answers are such slippery things I'm afraid
and questions,
they stick in your palms like the blades of something shattered

a piece of glass out on the beach

you might say

such expensive questions to have and hold

better to smash it into the bricks
feel the muscle of your shoulder moving with the energy of tension
cool air to hot, boiling eyes

a glittering cloud singing high and powdering little shards onto the side-walk like glitter
crack the colors and turn them over in your fragile fingertips
clench of fist to feel
just to feel

well i can do that

Adam the namer

Adam, you namer of things
did i catch your jaw tightening like the fear of an animal that crouches to retreat
sharp muscled corner
as if your words give substance to otherwise ghosts of life
filling them with bones you fear you'll break
and blood you fear you'll spill
you arch backward and turn your steps to pacing
in hopes you'll not be called
to such permanence

Adam these things will live
and grow
and break the cement of your names
bleed they will but not for you as much for life
Adam the names
are for you
relax the mandible edge
and sing in words you've built
to the Maker who fills ghosts

worn shoe

i see you there at the bottom of the barrel
jammed into weathered wood
shoulders squeezed tight into crooked shapes
bowing like a servant should

no one else saw you on muddied floors
tread into hardened soil
head so filled up with foreign storms
that the spine's afraid to uncoil

happy Friday, worn shoe

lace-less
from-less
face-less

Christ

how quiet am I?
in the back of your mind
in the corner of your eye?

How translucent is this flesh?



perhaps once hands and feet are pierced
and the spear has painted red the Holy ribs

perhaps then I will see You

when blood of sacrifice puddles on the floor to block my step
and the black, trembling sky serves witness to a Father's terrible sadness


then will I feel your terrible Love?

empty things

my rooms are best shared
cluttered with someone else's things and someone else's shallow breathing to soften the sharpness of dark nights
the rattle of the air conditioner in the window across the room may be just enough to stave off lonely lonely silence
maybe I'll sleep somewhere else when you're gone from this room we share. Or set my cell-phone on the pillow beside me and in my half-sleep, imagine it a rope in my hand that travels miles and miles to its resting place in yours..
beside you on your pillow where you are breathing shallow, sleep-calmed breaths..
in a room cluttered with your things.

this room will feel empty. this town will feel empty. the laundry basket we used to share and the closet we crammed our thrift-store finds in: those will feel empty too.

empty things scare me so

but i wouldn't dare fill the spaces that still feel like yours

summer

I run like ambition
eat like austere
sleep like an after-thought
confide like fear
but i speak like carelessness
and dress like the brave
drive like the lucky
rest like a rave
i'll paint like the sleepless,
the restless; obsessed
write like the hawk out circling its nest
and sing like a shrug and a sauntering stride
laugh like a child with nothing to hide