splinters

It dropped to the floor. Splintered and broken, I swept the fragments into my hand. Clumsily I tried to glue it back together, but after a few feeble attempts I reealized that I was missing pieces. I recall leaving a large piece in the smooth hands of my first, his freckles and green eyes melting me into a pliable mess. I handed it over to him, it was still whole back then, and he cradled it in his gentle way. For a time. But something shifted and the ground shook and it slipped through his fingers, shattering on the pavement. We stooped to fix it together, and when my back was turned he deftly shoved one of the fragments into his pocket. I imagine it stuffed away in his guitar or perhaps his army-issued gun case. A holy temple to love lost.

I moved on, the gaping hole in the pulsating flesh making my movements difficult and laborious. My health suffered. The next sauntered along, his dark hair and shifting eyes were both charming and dangerous. I did love him, in a different way. It was volatile and violent. Words thrown back and forth as grenades, the craters left behind we patched up with false hopes and disillusionment. I was a child then, as was he. It was doomed from the beginning. But he still has his fragment, probably hidden in the liquor cabinet behind the half-empty bottles.

Others I did not love have held onto pieces I never freely gave away. Treacherous thieves that swept me up in their empty promises and saccharine words. Some have jagged pieces that cut as easily as knives. Others have splinters, beckoning for infection. There is the dark shadow of my past who comes and goes, crooning sweet lies into my ear with perfect pitch. He fools me every time. And so I kiss him, and we swindle ourselves into thinking it is so much more. There is him, his tattoos and piercings or the All-American with his blonde hair and blue eyes. There have been those in between. The mysterious charmer and the blatant asshole, the sincerely hopeless and the casual smooth-talker. I no longer care for any them.

I just want the pieces returned.

ineloquent truth

Well, fuck you then.
You were just like the rest.
Spinning your glittery web,
Entangling me in your lies;
Saccharine words spat out,
to rest in their grave
along with my pride.
In the enveloping dark,
I whispered distrust
But I relinquished, my love,
Resolve no longer strong.
Here we are, my adversary,
as I originally predicted.
You, victoriously satisfied.
Me, vengefully bitter.
Well, fuck you then.

galaxy tango

So minimal in chance-- When stars collide.
Possibilities. Phenomenons of the universe.
Two neutrons join-- Magnitudes swallowed.
Within each other, they become one of the same.
Glorious light, strengthened by the rendezvous.
Or there is us-- Each entity meeting its match,
Counterpoint in the other. Unfalteringly stubborn.
An astrophysical train wreck. Inevitable.
The explosion! Translucent, fiery. Milliseconds.
Unstoppable shock wave -- Flash of brilliant light.
Pulses and energy gone. The universe left with nothing.
Nebulas defying predicted stellar evolution.
Lone blue straggler remains. Weakened and dull.
The death of a star. What does it matter anyways?
Stars are just old light. Brilliant, disintegrating bodies,
Incandescence of years old. Supernovas and Casanovas.
The death of two is inconsequential, unimportant.
Countless remain -- raptured in the glittery death-dance.
Life goes on just fine, I suppose. The planets encircle.
The galaxies watch on, in spiteful scrutiny. Lurking.
Globular clusters bemused and entertained. Hypocrites!
Taking pleasure in this entertaining destruction.
Sadists, the lot of them. Enjoying the shining demolition.
As the luminary slowly dies – Old light extinguished.

acetic

"My thoughts are crabbed and sallow,
My tears like vinegar,
Or the bitter blinking yellow
Of an acetic star.

Tonight the caustic wind, love,
Gossips late and soon,
And I wear the wry-faced pucker of
The sour lemon moon.

While like an early summer plum,
Puny, green, and tart,
Droops upon its wizened stem
My lean, unripened heart."

"Jilted" by Sylvia Plath

metaphors

Shrouding words in ambiguity, does not alleviate their sting.

eros

I am stuck on the idea of love. I ponder it not in the overly sentimental, femininely obsessive way that you might expect. I refuse to stay in on Saturday evenings with a box of chocolate and a stack of sappy chickflicks, ruminating despondently about love-lost. Rather, I have been examining love in the same method I approach everything else in my life; through the analytical lens of a scientist masquerading as a romantic. I dissect and scrutinize every element, every attribute, and as a result slaughtering the joy that love in its various forms, brings to me as a human.

I desire to categorize and classify, mentally filing away each relationship that exists in my limited universe. I need to understand situations in their entirety, not out of curiosity or intrigue, but rather a revolting need to control. With the goal of protection. A methodical outlook as fortification from all the sharp and jagged thoughts in my head. Cleaning house, to avoid the ambiguities and unanswered question that can fatally wound.

And yet there are still powerful mysteries, dangerous enigmas that I am utterly incapable of explaining. There is the ripping of clothing, grasping of flesh, and lascivious mashing of lips. Caresses and sweaty heat. Whispers of the god Eros in the dark. Erotic love. Interactions fueled by mindless passion. Suggestive movements and serpent tongues are his preferred form of communication, because words and emotions are too laborous.

Eros is the inexhaustible source of my emotional strife, and yet the primary fuel of the lyrical imagination. He makes his rounds, fulfilling the empty sensual desires that rule the night. Selfish and panting, his smirk is so alluring and charming it is capable of weakening the resolve of even the most guarded woman. Once compromised, she will inevitably find herself broken and bruised, discarded among the pile of those who came before her.

photo album

Compulsively, she is drawn to that forgotten corner of the room. Her feet continue in their forward motion, as if propelled by another force more powerful than her own. It is there, tucked discreetly between a flimsy, leather-bound bible and a stack of trashy romance novels. Fitting, really. How many times has she glanced this way, considered taking it out and scanning its pages? Today. Gingerly she pulls the cloth-covered album into her unsteady arms, sliding it through the filmy coating of dust lining the shelf. The flowers and cartoon bunnies on the cover have long since faded into mere dingy remnants of what they once were, the soft pastels of a little girl’s childhood. She exhales, shooting spirals of dust into the air, the light streaming through the partially-drawn window shades catching the particles in their weightless dance. Gently tracing the embroidered MJS on the cover, she fights the rational urge to stash the book back into its rightful place on the shelf. The voice returns, reminding her once again that she has no idea the significance that this moment might hold. Ignoring it, with cautious intentionality she turns the cover.

The first page is a familiar one, the very same photo has been hanging in the hallway of her home for as long as she can remember. The squinty eyes of her newborn-self stare back from the page, full of innocent perplexed wonder, her forehead crinkled in confusion. She turns the page and is instantly struck by the unexpected, yet eerily familiar face of the man grinning back. Holding a tiny baby in his arms. It is funny how our mind plays tricks on us, how our memories become distorted over the years. She had always pictured a handsome man. One with rippling muscles and a serious, stern face and dark unreadable eyes. Bronzed skin, leathered by the dry tan of decades working in the unforgiving sun. Tall, dark and handsome she pictured. Perhaps she wanted him to be this mysterious brooding stranger. He would fit more easily into her perception of him, easier to picture that type of man as the mystery of her past. Instead, the smiling face on the page is startlingly similar to her own. Ivory skin over a round face. The same unremarkable nose, with a speckling of brown freckles, surrounded by full fleshy cheeks. The same impish lopsided grin warms his face, making him both mysterious and approachable at the same time. Dark hair. Full lips. Their eyes are hauntingly the same. Identical, actually. A deep crystalline blue, with the same flecks of turquoise and green. She looks just like him. The spitting image. Almost every physical trait that she has, comes from this man. A complete fucking stranger. Oh god, why does she have to look like him?

She recognizes this moment for what it is, understanding why the voice warned her to stay away. She can no longer detach herself from this part of her past. She is deeply and indisputably tied to this man. The flesh of his flesh. Like salt to an open wound is the pride and joy beaming off his face. He gazes at her infant-self with such unbridled adoration, like a blind man seeing the sun for the first time. His hand is resting atop her fuzzy head, as if to shield her, his precious baby girl, from the harsh realities of a strained life. The love is written plainly across his face. She was once the sole object of his affection. Captured by the flash and the shutter, and even if just for one fleeting moment, his love for her is undeniable. When did this change? When did this passionate fire extinguish from his eyes? When did this girl become nothing more than a financial burden and baggage, holding him back from his more promising future? A future alone, without her. Unhindered by the responsibilities of parenthood. He was not the father he promised to be. Selfishly, he wimped out.

She closes the faded album, her heart and mind unable to continue with the self-inflicted torture. Instead of answering her questions, she is now forced to contend with a thousand new ones. She was sheltered by her ill-conceived notions and the distorted memories she manifested about her past. It was so much simpler to believe that he never truly loved her. That she never lit up his eyes. That he never cradled her in his arms. She could no longer feign ignorance; she had photographic evidence. Her father’s love, was not hers to keep.