Waving from Such Great Heights

taken for granted The sun, some sort of father figure to oppose the earth and the moon,  creeps higher as I sip coffee too early out of a paper cup and watch a  half-hearted soccer match with quiet moon beam cheers. I am going to be late for class, but the timer ticks up to one-hundred and five  minutes and I am exhausted in this early morning atmosphere. His  hand grips tight his own cup, while he loud jaw chews and clicks his  breakfast that he slipped into his pocket on his way out. I don't know why I didn't know I was always going to be taken for granted. Even  as I feel the pressure of his knee on my knee and move away, some  fake discomfort surging within me, a tide of envy pressing itself on  my throat, I didn't know.  I wanted her to see me, to see the faults and cracks in my spine, the  way her words rippled through me like a unmedicated and undeviated solar flare, each rip and tear a nebula of gaseous effects, and...

I've gotten so caught up in  pretending I didn't miss you that I think I forgot what it was like to  see the look on your face when you're working. Some part of me wanted to  get out of that car and sweep you up into arms that are not hers, hoping beyond hoping that you of all people would realize that I am falling apart.  I am so caught up in falling apart that  I forgot what it was like to be in love.  I embraced the floral perfume of escapism and forgot how the words I love you  tasted inside a wounded mouth. I forgot what it felt like to live, to thrive, to keep my shell open and tolerate the living. Sometimes, I even forget what it feels like to fall apart.  I got so caught up in loving you,  I didn't even stop to consider what it would be like to miss you. To not have you,  to feel that aching chasm in my chest,  like a wound, a deep dark mark,  pressurized and suffocating me, ...

Sometimes - sometimes, but not always, my depression is a nest that I can bed myself down into, forget where I was, where I have been, where I need to be. Sometimes it is a weighted blanket that covers me fully in its heated entrapment, remembers that I am just fragile and young and imperfect. There are times when my whole being is made up of this depressed state, where depression becomes me, and I become it, and there is nothing left to say but sad. I am not lonely. I am not the fettered youth I used to be, tied down to some great rock in the bottom of a too deep pond. I am just a tired adult, made of inadequacies that rage inside me like fermentation, with bubbles that build until I cannot breathe. Sometimes I am a catch all state for human decency, and sometimes I fall fast for breathless men in pink shirts with a can of beer in his hand and a pool cue digging into my side because skin on skin on skin is too intimate - and you were always a hallway between then and tod...

I want this to be the last poem I ever write about him. I want to forget falling in love with a home that was already occupied. I want to forget the first time I saw him cry, and how he held my hand in that dark theatre so tight. But I can't fucking forget. So instead I wonder: does he think of me, and are his thoughts crue? Or does he remember what I do? When I whispered that I loved him and kissed his collarbone and left him standing on a dark street corner alone while I, drunk and red faced, ran home; or that I cried I would never find love? If I am recovering, why do I feel hollow; there's a weight inside of me that I think is incurable and it was left by all the loves that never stayed.

Perhaps I fell in love when I was far too young, when February rains had not yet  turned the ground; no bright, new flowers had been painted in by the spring.  I fell in love when I was fresh and gently preened,  new, raw feathers flushed by a late September sunset, red glow bypassed to turn the whole world pink. Then rainclouds razed the earth cracked lightning in their grasp to scream thunderous loud; each plink spraying frosted bolts against its blackest countenance. Rain wet the ground and then turned tail beneath the wings of caustic winter snow.  My young heart beat so fast and out of tune - perhaps the yawn of his mouth  erased my love of loneliness - perhaps when I felt out of my lovers arms and hit the ground at speed - was this when I realized: nineteen is far too young to try to count forever when you only have ten fingers? His brunet eyes and walnut hair gripped tight inside my soul; just as the dusty rose of his matching lips and palms...

My anger precedes me because she is a war horse, rough stallion with sharp teeth for gnashing, and a hand full of her enemies hair. My anger precedes me because she has no patience, her inhibitions are made faulty by the long stretch that incurs her wrath, and the tendrils of fire which fall from fingertips better made for caressing. My anger precedes me because when she falls down, you must fall with her, and the fall is long, hard, and rough; tumultuous in its landings, uncomfortable in the silence. My anger precedes me because I am not strong enough, and I must displace her until I am, until her raw, seething visage, is nothing more than a shadow on your back, and I have lost your image. There's something to be said about anger, with it's loose canon grip. There's something to be said about the times that cause your slipping words to catch within my wild heart, as if by some prayer, I will not hear the words you meant to say. But I heard them. My An...