I know you love and admire nature, but what makes it beautiful? I believe it is the purpose in disorder. Our designs and attempts to restrain and landscape it only serve to ruin it through study.

 

The trees do not adhere to moral rigidity.

They just grow and reach upwards. But some can only grow slanted, some develop holes, and it is those gnarled, sloping forms of imperfection that inspire us

and shelter the animals.

Canals rarely touch our hearts.

While winding rivers quiet us when we remember the simple rules guiding water’s flow.

Following the path of least resistance. Wild and unrefined. Perfect in its imperfections.

@sphoenixee

I do not own the rights to any of these pictures. Don’t sue me.

She touched her lower lip to the rounded ceramic rim and gently sucked in the wisps of steam rising from the hot tea. She watched the smokey strands suddenly find direction from their meandering dance to rush through her lips and into her lungs, returning to their relaxed rise as soon as she stopped inhaling. She wondered if her lungs benefited from the moisture. Then she wondered if the essence savagely boiled out of the tea leaves evaporated along with the steam.

He cleared his throat. She looked up, daring him to make demands of her.

His eyes flickered away instinctively from that look before he quickly regained his resolve and composure.

“There’s something we should talk about,” he started before she responded with, “So talk about it.”

He looked at her and saw the same radiance that first made her irresistible to him. She wasn’t the type of gorgeous that turned heads or made men think dirty thoughts. She had the type of fearless beauty that inspired you to forget your fears and take her hand for the jump. It didn’t take him long to make the jump with her.

“We’re not working out. In another time and place, we might have worked out, but…well, here we are.”

He paused to give her a chance to speak, but her eyes and lips remained unmoving, waiting for him to say something of substance.

“You need too much from me, and I can’t give you what you want. I’ve been incredibly busy and you haven’t made life for me any easier.”

I gave you everything I ever called my own.

“I know you’ve given me so much and bared your soul to me, but that doesn’t make anything better. Maybe that makes me a coward, but I was never the type that imagined saving the damsel in distress. You need a prince and that’s just not me.”

When she came to know him, she wanted to save him. He was too isolated, too unexposed to love. She tried to show him what it was like to be loved unconditionally, to be worth sacrificing for, to be stronger than selfishness. She failed, but he succeeded in showing her what it was like to love and lose in utter helplessness. She learned that she had gone through life following naive dreams. For the first time, compassion lost its universality in her heart.

“You–” she started, but as soon as she started he stopped her. “No, you know it’s not just me. You messed with my feelings. You kept pushing and pushing and you eventually pushed the wrong button.”

It was both their faults. That they both recognized. They hurt each other. A led to B which led to C, D, E and here they are at F. It doesn’t matter that once, they had touched and felt the world in each others fingerprints, that once, the golden leaves rained in the autumn sunshine just for them because they were in love, that once, music made sense and gave them a place to spend time with each other when they were apart. It doesn’t matter, because he didn’t let her touch him anymore, and there was no more music that didn’t stab at his heart, no more leaves left in the sky to prove love was real.

They both knew where the turning point had been, and it was tragic. Fate timed the provocation perfectly. She planted the seeds of doubt in his head, and as soon as she did, she fell victim. He responded by blaming her, making her believe that it was her fault for putting herself in the way of another man’s insult. He refused to acknowledge her pain. He shrugged at her when she reached for him. He even laughed at her.

She blinked. “I agree. We’re not working out.”

He swallowed, afraid of her power to drench his denial in acid with her words if she continued, but she didn’t. She had looked up and memorized jokes so that she could cheer him up when she knew he would be stressed. She had stayed up late, writing love letters and saving snippets of inspiration for his worries. She had rubbed salve on the embarrassing chafes on his body. He had grabbed her hand and refused to let go. He had held her through entire nights. He had opened her unrealized body with his patience and tenderness. He had kissed her forehead and promised to show her the world.

Finally, she looked away. “Although,” she continued, “if you don’t want to end up alone and unloved, you need to learn to be less selfish.”

She thinks she knows more about love than he does. She doesn’t know anything. She’s the one who will end up alone if she can’t be content without drama.

“Goodbye.” He got up to leave and then threw at her, “You stopped being important to me the first time you told me what happened that night. I’m sorry it took me so long to let you go.”

The door slammed without the finality expected of moments like these.

She looked down, saw that the tea had stopped steaming, and then the world began to quiver.

Here, my devotion, you can have it.

Instead of my usual currency,

take my tribute to you, cruel conqueror, this pinup

proof of color in my life.

You’ve won this territory,

pillaged me of my last words–gleaming and malleable,

my gold,

and granted me status

of refugee.

But you haven’t obliterated me in this two person war,

because we are not zero sum.

As you swallow my heart and pocket your plunder,

I gain revenge.

The passion that has poisoned me will become your sickness.

Of sentimentality,

you will know.

 

We’ve been dying since the day we were born,

leaving a memory smear of dead babies, toddlers, adolescents, dreams.

The painting of orphaned skid marks left behind

gains streaks and strokes from swerves and stops,

increasingly incomplete.

The beloved shoes will never be worn again,

but the earth keeps the obituary.

There is only one reason why women stay in bad relationships. It’s not because they’re too stupid to realize they’re being abused. It’s not because they like getting hurt. It’s not because they’re too afraid of being alone. The woman stays because she clings to the hope that the man she fell in love with will come back. If he changed into this state, he can change back, and she’ll be there to help him through, she’ll be there to save him. How could she abandon him when he obviously needs help? She knew what he was like when he wasn’t like this, and she hopes, all the while sustaining herself on memories. She hopes her love will bring him back.

The only way to get someone out of a bad relationship is to get her to give up hope, and that’s a really hard thing to do when the person she still loves looks, talks, and feels exactly like this person who now hurts her.

How do you get her to give up hope?

I squeeze the cough out

like a meaningless pleasantry

how are you? good, and you?

but the pressure is still deep inside,

unrelieved.

And then I found the trick maneuver: heave

and the weight lifts.

The fake retching only expels dry delusion,

but the soaking heaviness can still ride the squeezing wave,

disappearing for a moment before settling down again

to its home where guilt is born, nursed, and harvested.

 

These nails bother me more.

They’re too soft to pierce through this bone deep ache.

They scratch at the same surface to rawness,

never reaching the itch that needs to be dug out.

If I could just remove these useless nuisances

and not have to call this pale, tender leather mine.

Something has to break

before I start snapping off these caresses saturated with poisoned nerves

finger by finger,

limb by limb.

 

---

 

It’s my millionth circle.

Rounded, complete, perfect.

Circle circle circles

circle circle lies.

Each point on a circle is equidistant from the center,

but mine are all imperfect,

from the first to the millionth,

so actually, I have no circles,

just shapes

pretending.

There’s something you must know.

I never want to give you up.

Never have and never will.

You

are my will

to change and discover the meaning of <my own>

but circumstance tests us and

we

are failing.

We’re already at round three

and the punches come slower,

breathing becomes harder,

aches heat up into burns,

I know.

I’ll still look for you in the next bracket.

You and me.

You

and

 

I wanted you with every fiber of my past present and future

ice your secrets when they sear

expose my charred skins,

make love with your demons

share my evils

and I’ve done just that.

“Life is simple….If you want to be happy,

find someone you like and never let him go.”

Never

knew of emptiness between my fingers.

To let go and have room for

growth

for grasping tomorrow’s opportunities

for unlocking, desecuring tomorrow

from the absolutely

unknowable.

Girl, let go

not of everything

just what you love most

for what matters most.

Girl, your tomorrow is not yours to decide

but it is yours.

Who are you to want what you want?

Who are you?

Girl, let go

and you can only be replaced

with yourself.

Girl,

love him but let him go.

An old man sits among hip young people. The young people are absorbed, they have pictures to comment on, text messages to read, videos to watch, trends to follow. The old man doesn’t even drink coffee or know what a double shot mocha latte is.

The young people don’t want to appear unbusy or alone, and they have tab after tabs of websites and applications to sift through. They’re hip. The old man just holds his hat. He doesn’t need to look like he’s waiting for someone. He has the end to wait for. He just needs the simple pleasure of being warm and alive. That’s what his hat is for. He thinks about life and his only desire is for these young people to live a fulfilling life and change the world for the better.

I’m rootin’ for ya, he thinks, as he looks around, holding his hat.

I can hear the bells tolling.

They ring for lost souls,

come to find relief from hurting.

You’ve tried and said all you could say,

and the only direction left is away.

I can hear the bells.

Doorbells perhaps to wish me a good journey.

Ding dong, good luck

finding the real from the phoney.

Most times people will comment, “your nose is bleeding,”

but this time no one takes the effort to say a word

and for a while I didn’t notice.

And because nosebleeds don’t seem to hurt,

letting me run like a faulty faucet

is permissible.

But for a while I didn’t notice

as I bestrew each interaction with my wound.

And blood is disgusting–it smells and stains,

and smears my face until it’s unkissable.

I can’t wash it off, because it doesn’t dry and crust.

It renews and remains fresh, crimson at its finest.

 

 

A girl told me to look at hers and demanded that I recognize her pain.

And I finally noticed

the horror right beneath my nose.

Stains and splatters

soaked to the skin through my clothes.

And it’s true, it does hurt.

This time I failed to avert even with my best effort

even if I did understand.

But I didn’t understand just didn’t understand

that the blow of an unwanted, probing hand

hurts more than a physical, condemnable strike.

We know that an unjust power structure over the years can ravage a nation.

Who knew than an unjust power structure between two people

can turn innocent admiration

into cold calculation

and eliminate all wonder and ambivalence towards domination.

We don’t like being puppets, being used,

but some don’t have to accept being refused.

It’s hard, and I never understood, was oblivious

until manhood ended my girlhood,

and though the bruises of evidence are gone,

I’ve been banished into weak womanhood.

 

It’s hard and I’m back to not understanding.

It’s my fault for having broken vessles.

It’s my fault for accepting drink from someone stronger,

but I never expected the impending wrestle.

What will stop the nosebleed?

Then, how do I clean this soul that has been bloodied?