Broken

I feel terminally soft

pink skin golden flesh peach fuzz soft

my heart ripe like high summer fruit

my soul cool and rippled as a spring thaw creek

first clinging tendril of creeping vines

sweet pea paper petals

cat noses pink paw pads concealing claws

soft down pillow

sinking down to the belly of me

flesh yielding

subtle bone protruding

desperate ache of tenderness

don't push to hard

thumb bruise

crushed

broken

chewed up

spit out

pulp

where do I put my heart

how do I preserve its pulsating flesh

dripping juicy softness

in your world of hard edges

fast words

crushing bleeding blows?

slicing flesh cleaving flaming hot anger

desperate disparate devastating

here I am ripe and ready for love

there you are looking to fight

how can I lay myself down in front of you

allow you to devour me in one bite

chewing swallowing without tasting

how can I?

you are hard like smooth glass

cold like metal

sharp like knives

the guest room

tonight i slept in the guest room

because you last slept there

the sheets had been changed

the bed had been stripped

but you still linger

you that I should not love

you that I should not want

you that is all but yes

and how do I explain the ghost of you

imprinted in this room

imprinted on my heart

wafting in like a warm evening breeze

rolling over my brow

caressing my cheek

I don't know where you are tonight

where in this vast world you are sleeping

some hotel in some town west of me

but tonight I sleep with you

the ghost of you

in my guest room

Spring?

spring has not sprung but slid in like a night crawler

I smell her in the garden but cannot see her in the sky

the faint tweet of nesting bushtits should be a sign they are no longer flocking

but pairing up like high schoolers at the dance

unlike so many springs past which fell into my lap like a token, fully formed and redolent,

this one has slipped, tripped and false started

on a cold morning I discovered the first origami sheaves of the hostas unfurling their sleeves

like geisha undressing

then the fiddle heads first brown and nubby then pale green and hopeful unwound their tendrils into the late winter

and I thought really? so soon? its too gray outside still

how will you breathe in all this heavy sodden air?

but the waxy new leaves of the lemon trees reach up

cradling the tiny flowers whose perfume, mingling with the wisteria

makes for a heady flower bomb one cannot bottle or buy

so instead of a full blown ecstasy of scent sight and sound

no grand opening no season premiere the red carpet was not rolled out for this years vernal debut

perhaps it is natures recession

no grand expense paid no bonuses doled out

if you want to enjoy this spring you must seek her out in the shadows

turn under the stones and find the moss stand in her midst and breathe her in

and feel the nuance that has escaped our oh so brash and expectant selves

I have turned into a consumer american with no patience and no work ethic

I want it all at once handed straight to me

this spring is teaching me that some things take time and must be born slowly

it is a metaphor of my own painful and lengthy birth

I came into this world tentatively and did not fully embrace it all at once

I needed time to adjust to the new light

the new scent the new air

so I will embrace this new child called spring

coax her out slowly into the light

take her in slowly one new miracle at a time

I will take my time getting to know this shy and complicated girl

So now what?

The love was confessed, but I was rebuffed, so now what?

The attraction was mutual but I was rebuffed, so now what?

"So thats really is no" I said, quoting Anna Scott

"Yes, it really is"

I was told it was impractical. I was told it was unacceptable. I was told how flirting was cheating and although it felt good it was wrong. I was told it wasn't really about her. But then why is she all I think of? Why is she all I see?

WHy do I wonder after her? Where is she? What is she doing? How can I further engage her? How can I reel her back in?

My mind is a factory of plans and ideas, of tortuous schemes, plotting and twisting and seeking. I look two years down the road, I imagine my way back to her, staring at picture of her, I have memories of things that haven't happened yet

I taunt, I flatter, I flirt, I weave a web of seduction. Should I have admitted it at all? Should I have played the tune longer, stretched it out farther? slip it over the two of us like a silk sheet?

I see you too

For as long as I can remember, I have been living an invisible life

doing all that I can to remain unnoticed,

unremarkable and unseen.

Never shining, never garnering laurels,

I worked, ascended, but only so high.

I made acquaintances of my friends,

settled for much less.

Quietly my soul shrank into a shadow life,

an occasional glimpse of the divine, fleeting, transitory, meaningless.

Of course the irony was that all the while I was hiding,

I was in plain sight, obvious, evident, visible to all those that chose to look.

And when I came to my senses,

and my heart pushed open,

through the fortress of my chest,

when the door to my soul opened,

and a beam of light shone in,

the face I saw through the crack was yours.

And then I realized, you had always known, always seen,

and when what you saw was me, you hadn't looked away,

but instead, quite remarkably, unexpectedly,

you smiled, a soft and knowing smile, as if to say

"there you are...I've been waiting for you".

To be seen, to be known, to be loved,

the thing I ran from so fast, so far,

buried myself under,

it was there,

all the while,

all my effort was mere charade,

a child in a monster suit, a puff of smoke, a spirit in the night,

I fooled no one but myself.

And what now?

Here I am, laid bare, with my wet stain heart thumping its new rhythm,

unstable on my new legs,

blinded with my new eyes,

a hatchling, scrubbed clean, naked.

To you I may be just one more girl with adoring eyes,

but to me, you are an elixir,

the new air I breathe, the dewdrop on the grass,

the pause between lightening and thunder,

the face of G-d.

I want to drink you in,

pour you over me, glide naked in you,

submerge myself in your grace.

I want to possess you, and have you possess all of me.

It is but mere fantasy, a crush, a new, first love.

For what I see is not in fact you, it is me, mirrored in you.

Your compassion is my compassion, your tenderness is my tenderness,

your love but a reflection of mine.

You have seen me and my soul has found its home.

And now that I have found you, my soul friend,

my anam cara,

how I miss you, long for you.

So far away from me.

So illusive. So out of reach.

Are you as terrified as I am?

that I just might see you too?

I see you too.

And she is beautiful.