Twenty-One-And-A-Half
Fresh snow upon palm leaves;
west coast winter air sits like silver
in the hollows of my heaving lungs.
How many years will pass before
I can say I’ve finally caught my breath?
Growing and going through changes.
In this blue period, it is acne scars and furrowed brow
that act as my bench marks.
Grasping on to any evidence
that all still moves,
even in this inky stillness.
I tell the mirror
that today I am twenty-one-and-a-half.
With celebration in order
I drink coffee in the shower,
wear layers and leather,
to keep me together
while I spend dawn till dusk
tracing stars in the dust of the road’s fork.
Stationary my head spins its fastest.
Attempting to shelve the guilt of the growing notion
that my cup could be ever-brimming
and still it’ll never be full enough
to hold her as she cradled me.
Is it easier to pour all contents before us
than to feel inadequate?
I leave,
but the parts lost to haunting blue avenues,
they glare and they spit
that I’ll rue leaving them so forsaken
if I dare to make my existence where the path verges.
Advancing requires the smothering of
the bruises blooming from internal turmoil.
While soaking the shame from my spine
I spend hours writing prose upon bathroom tiles.
At the store, I pick up mint, raspberry and chamomile,
so I may call the space to the oven’s right
my own tea cabinet.
My last task before every apartment departure
becomes two sprays of the perfume
given to me by Morghan.
Routines and rituals progress to life lines;
attempts at halting constant contemplation.
I’ve always been brimming
of desperation for comprehension.
Question why I require others to tell me
my pain is worthy of its impact
when I am the one
shaking under its weight.
Question why: ‘you wear it well,’
brings anger to my eyes
like swell to shore.
Always,
I tried to be good, I tried to be there,
but how could this not have been in vain,
when already I burn rationed oil
by the new-moon midnight
with only my bonfire of roses as light,
Am I ever the fool for believing
I deserved gentle even in failure?
Lack of guarantees
leave loneliness to fester,
and I wish it would rain
so that I may pretend
all is soft and renewed again.
Is there any way to accept
that anything possesed
is but a promised loss?
Today, in mid-December,
as I turn twenty-one-and-a-half
I yearn to lay atop the ocean
between the eastern Japanese coast and home
just to experience a setting so serene
all indispositions can’t help, but be lulled asleep.
So what if I drown?
So what if I play and perform?
So what if I strangle every of their assumptions
by the locks of my hair?
All will fade and all will falter
with every spin around the sun.
Don’t look at me like that my darling,
I’ve always been a saintly melancholic;
I’ve just run out of glass so that I may bottle it.
So it runs, so it stains,
so it escapes down the shower drain.
And in the morning,
I will bleach the marks and iron the creases;
leave her buried in a white button down,
so that I may go on with my day.
Twenty-one-and-a-half
moves on with March and with this we reconvene:
the cynical optimist with iron first around a joie de vivre.
She walks to only the echo of her boots on the stones
to prove to herself she made noise;
that she existed in every space
her feet felt earth.
