Weapons Drawn

Your side, my side:
definitive lines in the ground
Fingers crooked in eternal condemnation
every weapon drawn
What should be safe haven
is our own personal war zone
Who threw the first stone?

You

Yes, I see you
peeking through your lashes
Yes, I hear you
your lips move and I can
feel you
quiet laughter like
fingers on my spine
I watch you and I think:
I know you
The curve of your cheek
color of your hair
so much like mine
You have a look in your eye
that is hard to define
It says:
Yes, I see you
and
Yes, I hear you
and
I wish I did not know you

The Thought

Can't shake it --
thoughts anchored in my brain
taken refuge under the skin
swimming inside every blood vessel
toxic
Want to hide it --
words are all betrayal
voice dissolving into whispers
easing into soft consonants until
silent

Faces

It was quiet
until it made a noise
like a gunshot
It tore the air
like it might through
flesh and the
pounding
in so many ears
I watched and said
nothing
I was simply a
bystander
Nothing to say and
no words to add
A typical woman
and a
"stereotypical"
man
I felt the need to speak
but words felt
redundant or
overly simplified
It was your everyday funeral
of the unknown
I shed a tear for her
the woman whose face was
beyond my recollection
Goodbye
I will dream of you
of that I can promise
Hello
Goodbye
I miss you
and
you were loved

Doors

It is in so many ways like a flower that is afraid of the sun. What do the innards look like? Are the colors ugly? The risk is too great! I must hide myself, lest the world see the garish truth and the clashing petals. It is in this way that I become a frigid thing, locked away inside many rooms. I pace the floors and I know these tiles so well that my mind begins to believe that I have imagined the ones before them. I can still recall the scent of her perfume. I close that door.
Running, I find that I am lost among many memories, and that another has been stripped from me; no matter how many frames I beat upon, it is gone, gone, gone.

Burn It Down

The days blend into one another, dissolving like paper on the concrete after so much rain.
The burning echos of your words fade, and the dull bruises in all those dark places barely ache anymore. Who were we back then, that we fought so viciously? We sought purchase on one another's weaknesses like desperate people going to war, trying to gain ground when there was nothing of value to win. Did you see how cramped I felt, inside of my own skin? I was clawing, scratching my way out -- you were only in my way. It wasn't you I wanted to hurt; it was myself and my own foolishness that I was trying to destroy. I wanted to smash the mirror that reflected the sorry soul that avoided my eyes, day after day, but you stood in the way of my fist! You loved the crumpled being that I was, and I perversely, unconsciously, needed to prove to you that I was as despicable and undesirable as I knew myself to be. So I lit a match and I threw it upon us, deliberately destroyed something I knew could save me because I needed to burn a part of myself to the ground before I could begin again.