
Who do you think you are?
Shouting to me from across more than one sea “If it’s meant to be, it will be”.
As if love can be safely propped up on the fingertips of stars,
as if the sun were to finally get a grip on reality
and say something like despite how bright she’s been burning lately she’s actually been feeling like concealing some of her light,
how refreshing it would feel to slip behind the moon for a while.
But everyone knows that not even a planet could disguise the kind of monsoon
I see forming in your eyes.
A tidal wave of words are crashing my way
and I’ve never been one for surfing but I’m damn well going to try.
And I know that I’ve never even looked in your eyes
so maybe it’s your words that’ve got me feeling sky high.
You tell me that you’ve been “contemplating the L word”
You dance around the syllables that sound like “love”
with the kind of wariness we ran from the word “fuck” as children.
You try and use the letter L as a selling point,
offering up your heart for a dollar a day
but I’m ready to pay in the hundreds,
and if forever is as long as it takes
then I guess I’m going to be here for a while.
I’ve got a stockpile of savings
from every time I’ve had to pick my broken heart out of the trash
and cash it in for recycling.
But this time when you dump me out,
I’m going to spend as long as it takes in the rubble looking for the rest of those letters, forever solving the puzzle of “the L word”.
You told me that you’re not afraid to fall but
But the fear of heights is the number one fear for a reason
and no one really knows the feeling of the fall
until after you’ve played the part of the rag doll.
Our moms and dads told us when we were younger,
“When you’re hurt, 911 is the number you call”, so we called.
But even the kindest doctor cannot foster the broken heart.
So accept the fact that we’re going to fall,
and figure out what it’s gonna take to fly.
I want to be the kind of friend that brings along a spare pair of wings for the whoever can’t afford the airfare of another broken dream.
It seems like we’ve just been sitting here waiting for the cloud cover to clear,
but maybe it’s time we learned how to dance in the rain.
I want to move my body so unapologetically that the mad scientist calls up the cat lady just to say, “Damn, that girl’s insane”.
Because insanity has only ever been a measurement of how much life we’re willing to get out of living.
We were never made to stay sitting so take my hand
because it is time to stand and jump up off of this ground that keeps trying to ground us.
I think…
I come from the Heavens,
For the face of the sky is scattered glowing freckles
that mirror the dark ones on my cheeks and this is why I think
I come from Hell.
The spots on my face are backwards stars,
Each one makes up a larger piece
of a dark black shard of ice I had to smash through
As I crawled up out of hell after it froze over.
I think…
I come from hope.
My imagination is to blame for my months spent as a child
Collecting every bird feather I could find
With the intention of sewing them into a pair of wings.
And I come from a hopeless faith because when I realized
That the human body was not meant to fly
I sent prayer after unanswered prayer up into the sky
To whatever God I didn’t believe in
Asking why exactly it was,
That my wings would not grow.
I am now as old as I have ever been
And have aged to know that it’s not the wings
composed of hand-me-down feathers I should be holding onto,
But rather the naivety that propelled me up
Instead of holding me captive.
I want to grab hold to the kind of spirit that doused me
In the belief that
Someday
I will be soaring.
I’ve always been good at playing games.
It all started with Monopoly.
I collected properties faster than a charmer
who’s perfected the art of hoarding torn-up hearts
and putting them on display
as if to say,
“Look at me… I broke two more since yesterday”.
Now that’s not to say I haven’t had my fair share of losses…
I’ve been buried so deep under a fictitious flame I’ve resorted to prayer…
and I’m not even religious.
We’ve all been guilty at one time or another,
for being caught
caring too fiercely for things we should not,
and by the time we realize that the sky
is in fact the limit,
the wings we constructed
from our torn up heartstrings decide that the ground is a more desirable collide
as the destination for our glorified joyride.
I don’t know if anyone ever told you
but cloud nine was never meant to hold anyone up in the night sky
long enough for our signs to align with another’s.
And maybe that’s why all the star-crossed lovers
I’ve ever met
never seem to survive the nosedive
back down to the ground.
I’ve met more than a few people who keep a playground
where their hearts should be.
All the broken and rusted parts
hidden under a new layer of new paint,
because according to our society,
anything with a little variety is with taint.
Careful!
Watch out for that wet paint!
Don’t you see the lines that the masses are boxing you into?
Being different is your crime
and all the judgement you’ve faced
just sentenced you to a life behind bars…
it’s as if they couldn’t tell just how far back in your mind you’ve been sitting,
as if the greatest prison known to man
isn’t hidden inside your head.
As if this mind-made lockup isn’t casting shade
over the part of yourself
that used to harbor memories of the days when summertime meant holding a buttercup under your chin.
Has been are the days when flowers were a symbol of fascination,
at our age,
their silence shouts apologies
for the lovers who have discovered that an unrequited love
isn’t something you recover from.
I’ve never been good at playing games…
I guess I’ve only got myself to blame.