stuck on repeat

they expect her to be beautiful
they expect her to be perfect
they expect her to be happy
they expect her to fine.
but she isn’t.

she screams and they can’t hear her
because they are blinded by the fake smiles that she
plasters on every morning when she wakes
from the nightmares that cripple her, the nightmares that
are her life.

she sees every bad thing;
every mistake and every bad decision,
every situation and every bad thing that she has ever seen,
in every dream.

some nights she dreams of the blood, blood
flowing from her wrists without stopping and the darkness
that held her in its grasp until her father’s hands found hers
and pulled her back,
gasping with the pain and feeling the tears from her mother’s eyes
falling on her cheeks.

and other nights she dreams of him falling, falling
down to the ground in front of her
because he had sat in his walker and they had been joking
and he told her to push him, but the brakes were on and she didn’t
know and she couldn’t do anything as he fell back
with eyes wide to the ground and didn’t move,
wouldn’t respond to her and when the EMTs finally got there
and lifted him from the ground she could see the pool of blood
staining the sidewalk where his head had been.

once in awhile she gets nights that are empty, empty
and dark and she is nothing because in those nights
she doesn’t exist anymore and the mornings after
are the most terrifying because she has to wake up
into a world where she does exist.

yet, sometimes it happens during class
when she will zone out and all of the sudden everything he has
ever yelled at her, every single time he has thrown her against a wall
and every strong grip or thrown book or bloody nose
starts to repeat in her head.

over and over and over
again.

they are the nightmares that are her life,
nightmares that are her past.

nightmares that don’t ever stop.

stuck on repeat.

darling, give me your heart

darling, come here and let me write you into the story
that is my life,
let me write you into the painful bits and the laughter, give me
your love so that i can spill out my heart
and love you back so much that i can’t sleep anymore, give me
all of your dreams so that i can whisper in your ear all of
mine and tell you that yours will all come true, give me
the chances that you missed and the ones you took
so that i can add myself to the list of chances taken
and so i can wake you up, late at night, so we can go
take some chances you thought you missed.

baby, let me give you my heart and let me take yours,
trust me with everything you have ever desired
and let me stay up all night by your side so that we can
wake up in the morning and think about how much
we love each other and how glad we are that we are
so very alive
and so very much in love with
each other.

and i love you, but you don't know

i wonder if you would be mad if i shot you with

cupid's arrow because i just love you so fucking much and i know that 

you would never ever in a million years love me that much

back and you would never ever hold my hand or kiss my lips, you would

never ever look me in the eyes and bring me close with your arms

wrapped around my waist to show me that you care when i want to cry

because you will never know what i'm like when i'm sad and you will never

be close enough to me to care about me and to pick up on the signs.

 

we spend our time together laughing and making jokes, we talk

about practice and the team and spanish class,

but we never talk about the things i want to talk about, we never

speak about the fact that i fucking love you because you don't know

that i am laying on the floor with my heart cut wide open,

waiting for you to pour your love right back into it and fill in the empty spaces

i have reserved just for you.

 

so i wonder if you can see that i am waiting for you

or, maybe, you can see and you don't want to love me back or don't know how.

baby, if you don't know how then i would be more than happy to teach you

and if you don't love me back that is okay too because i am used to loving

too much and not being loved back, i am used to people not caring about me

in the ways that i wish they would, and so i would not be mad at you for not

loving me back - i would just have to teach myself how to not love you either

and if you just can't see that i love you then tell me how i can tell you without

scaring you away from this girl who is waiting for you to fill her heart and kiss her

scars (and lips and face and neck and everywhere else) and draw her close with

your strong arms to show her that you care.

 

but i'm also afraid that if you find out that i love you that maybe you wil hate me for it

because who can love me?

 

i have yet to meet someone who can.

they were lies what she said

"they are just words" she said,

"they mean nothing" she said

 

she lied.

 

because there is no such thing as just words my dear

these are words and i am speaking them, writing them

onto paper and they have meaning and they are not

just anything, they are not

meaningless.

 

i can take these words and i can make things

that are ugly seem beautiful and i can make things that seem

boring a little bit more exciting, i can

use these "meaningless" words to make you feel

worthless just as easily as i can use them to make you feel

wonderfully meaningful.

 

so my dear, my dear little young one, don't listen

to her when she says that words are nothing

because they are something and they are not meaningless,

without them there would be nothing, they make things

and break things, they are

the very core of our beings - writer or not - because

we would all be nothing without these words, the words

that lift us up and pull us down.

 

and i ask you this;

if words really do mean nothing than how can i say

"I love you"

and actually mean

something.

baby, i've burned myself away

baby i've got myself a new addiction and you would kill me if you knew

that i quit cutting through your carefully sewn stitches because it was too easy

to get new ones and too easy for you to notice that i was breaking again

because i have a bit of an obsession with the idea of shattering into 

a million pieces and your careful attempts at sewing me together

made me want to scream, made me want to cut through the strands

of your love that was holding me together and so now, now i've got myself

a new addiction baby

and this time there is no way to fix me.

this time you can't sew me back together because i'm becoming too hard

for your needle and your thread can't get through my skin because it is burning,

burning away your attempts at fixing me baby

with a little bic lighter and little yellow flame i've got you out of the way

and now you can't fix me because i'm too charred and if you touch me

with your needle i will just break because i am so burned out, i have

burned myself away into a pile of ash and dust

that you can't sew back together

and you will never know this because i will never tell you because i secretly

want you to make me a pile of nothing, then i would have an excuse

to die.

 

and baby, it would be all your fault.

its too soon for you

they say that age doesn't matter in death and they were right

because you are only two years old and yet death is sneaking up on you,

slipping into your room late at night when the monsters plague your dreams

and make you wake up suddenly, fear making your little two year old limbs

tremble as you cry out for your mother and your father;

"mommy, daddy!"

but those monsters are not the ones you should be fearing,

the one you should fear is hiding in your blood and your bones

and you can't see it as it rips you apart from the inside out,

making your parents want to cry out to God and plead for Him to save

their little baby girl with only two years of experience who is so close

to slipping away because of the cancer that plagues you and eats at your

two year old body, two years of no experience yet

so close to being taken away.

 

and i pray that someone can come and take away all of the monsters,

hiding in your dreams and hiding in your little body that is already

so very frail and fragile

because, you, more than anyone in this world

deserve to grow big and strong and fight those monsters and live a life

with many more cakes because two is not enough to know

which one is your favorite.

it was too early for them. (dedicated to the children in the Connecticut shooting 12/14/2012 RIP)

i.

his big brother came home from college last night

and promised him that they would play soccer together

when he got home from school that day,

so when he hugged him goodbye and told him

"I love you",

he had something to look forward to.

 

he hid underneath the table when the big scary man

with his scary gun turned towards him and the sound

was so very loud and so very scary and he just wanted

his big brother to come and save him, to come and get him

so they could play soccer together when he got home from school.

 

he never got to go home, he never got to play soccer

with his big brother who was at home waiting for him.

 

ii.

she told her mother that she wanted to be a nurse someday

as they sat down for breakfast that morning,

she said it was because she wanted to help people

like her grammy did and it made her mother smile.

 

she didn't even have time to react,

the gun was pointed at her before she could even scream

and when the shot rung out through the room

she could only hear the others around her as she fell to the ground.

 

she would never be a nurse someday, she never would get to

save people like her grammy did.

 

iii.

her mommy promised her that they would go out for dinner that night

because it was her birthday and she was going to be

six years old, a big girl, and she was so excited 

for cake and ice cream and presents when she got home.

 

her eyes were closed and she pressed herself against the wall

as he fired away at random,

hoping that if she couldn't see him then he wouldn't be able to see her

because she was scared and everyone was screaming.

 

she never got to eat that cake, never got to eat the ice cream

because she never got to finish her birthday.

 

iv.

he was excited because he was going to play with his

new baby sister when he got home,

his mommy promised when she dropped him off at

school in the morning and he was so excited he even bragged

to all of his friends and his teacher that day.

 

when the man started towards him and the chaos around him

made him turn to run,

he didn't know that behind him the gun was being raised

and the trigger was being pressed and the shot was being fired.

 

he never got to play with his little sister, never would be her big brother

and would never be able to teach her everything he knew.

 

v.

at breakfast she had gotten to eat a chocolate candy,

the 14th one of the month,

as she counted the days until Christmas morning

with her family everyday because she was so very excited

to give her mom and dad the gifts she had picked out for them.

 

when the bullet hit her it caused a pain she could have never imagined

and she screamed out as she fell to the ground,

her teacher ran to her side and knelt down to try to stop the bleeding

but she couldn't get it to stop in time and she began to fade a little bit,

becoming oblivious to the sounds around her.

 

she never got to eat the candy for the 15th day, never got to see Christmas morning

or give her parents the gifts she had picked out just for them.

 

_____________________________________________________

 

and that was only five of the twenty children who had their lives

ripped away from them too many years too early,

torn from the world and their families only days before Christmas

by a man whose rage became so uncontrollable that he couldn't

keep it in check and so he brought those guns to that elementary school

where he shot so many children and the teachers who just wanted to protect them

from this monster, killing so many people,

including his own mother.

 

what has this world become?

 

[author's note: the children described in this piece are generic, semi-fictional children who represent the ones killed today in the Connecticut shooting]

beat-up-old guitar

her fingernails were chipped and her fingers were hardened

from hours of struming on her beat-up-old guitar

sitting on street corners with her case wide open

and empty.

 

her clothes rested on bones with skin stretched tight

and her shoulders were slumped

but her eyes were alive with the music she was making,

she couldn't express herself in any other way than

her homemade songs and beat-up-old guitar.

the old abandoned ferris wheel

[inspired by this video - http://youtu.be/Z8tH_i47E-U  by John Green]

 

they were screaming out to be heard,

voices pushing against the old abandoned ferris wheel

screaming, but only sounding in the soft wind

that moved them from silence into sound, pressing them

against the old metal carriages that once held

their laughing children.

 

they were screaming for redemption, for revenge

on the old rotting wooden steps

and the man who left it all behind,

confined to a prison cell,

letting their children's joy rot away

with the old wooden platforms.

 

the only way they could make it run

was by screaming into the wind

and hoping that it would push them with

enough force to make the old abandoned

ferris wheel

move again.

the words are singing

these words are singing through my mind

like your voice used to create beautiful melodies

out of almost nothing,

guitar in hand you were

invincible.

 

so now that you are off in the world

discovering yourself,

i just let my mind sing for you to fill up

that empty space where your music used to be

and i write lyrics for you, for songs that only i

will ever hear.

 

now i've got my own guitar in hand, i've got

words in my head that are singing and

i've got the voice to sing them

so the songs that i've written that you will never hear

can be heard by the ones who have words singing

in their heads too.