Built on sand.

You said:
"I woke up when you left.
Not at the sound of the door,
but at the feeling of your having gone."
I said:
"If you were a tent,
I would drive all of your posts into my body
So you would stay beside me"
And I felt your chest empty;
sighs pull you deeper into the bed
and my lungs become places where I store you.

When you were here, your body moved around me like sand:
weaving its way in between my fingers and legs.
Your wholeness was cut up into tiny smallness
that I could bury myself inside. Beneath.
You found your way to curl into every cranny of me.

When you left, I found myself, in spots, eroded.
small spaces, new coves in my bones,
  places where the sands had scraped.
  Grinding in my insides, Like how the ocean can make pockets out of stones,
Somehow, you carved out shelves inside me,
made a lovelier dwelling of such a grateful cave.

Now you're gone I find myself a room of empty shelves.
I say:
"What used to live here? In this cavity I have never seen inside me?"
and I tell myself that the answer is
"Lamps. Coal. Jars of earth. A terrarium. Keys."
And so I fill each empty place with feathers and spices,
ceder, sweetgrass, sage.
I say: "How clever that I have made shelves for such things"

You said:
"When you try to leave me,
I will refuse to let you go.
I will always have your warmth beside me."
I said:
"When I leave,
I will fill the place of your warmth
With lamps, coal, spices, and a fireplace made of Independence.
I suggest you do the same".

  And when I wake up at night,
I look at all the places I've filled inside me
Where you, small, invasive sand, used to live.
And the sound your your being gone keeps me awake.

"Yes, Nicole, breathing is good for you."

Underwater, your song fills my mind,

spheres full of oxygen, racing, glittering over our heads.

I try to catch your racing breath

as it rushes out of reach.

I think to myself "this must be the atlantic"

because inside my blood is getting cold and slow

and it's nothing like the volcanic ocean I love back home.

But as the waves come, they roll me far away

and I feel myself lose sight of your face.

Your face - and the pockets full of air and light.

Echos of your song, breaking the surface of the sky

with tangled seaweed and sweetgrass and clouds and Chronos keeping time.

But I let the dread stay inside

because eventually, I'll come up for air,

and find the land you promised would be there.

Move on.

I think sometimes

of ending this romance I have had with religion.

I want to sign my name at the bottom of the

list of things I've learned,

fold it up and put it in a box somewhere;

resting on top of old macaroni art projects

and forgotten, angry songs.

I want to walk away from this part of who I've been

hang it up like a winter coat in spring,

let it gather dust while I just

shed layers, let myself wander;

hold the palms of my hands, upturned, out spread,

to the warmth of the sun, and get

horribly sunburned again.

Because you get so tired of the personal, you know?

You get so tired of people being so sincere.

You get tired of the stories, the anecdotes, the internal evidence.

You get so tried of "women! guard your hearts!"

and "men! remember how He lay down his life for her!"

and "if it's meant to be, God will make it happen."

and all the bad advice and transparent platitudes

and shocked divorcees and secret teenage abortions.

I'm tired.

I'm tired of the pressure to write "He" with a capital "H"

and I'm tired of the same subjects being discussed

with the same people in different contexts.

I'm tired of internal struggle to drag myself through this interior castle,

and I am tired of how overwhelmingly lonely friendships become

when they are forged on dogma.

I am tired of using words like "overwhelmingly" and "lonely",

and I am exhausted by attempts to chart my own spiritual progress,

and economical progress, and personal progress

and measuring out in my mind

how much attention I pay to myself

vs.

how much attention I pay to the poor.

I think sometimes

that I want to be something else

then what I already am.

Live life with people who believe that

it's better not to marry and that

life can be fulfilling, without striving for perfection or

waiting for another to fulfill us.

Oh, heavy woollen coat,

how I yearn to put you away,

but for you to still keep me safe.

Because all my friends are getting married.

You are like a star, shining so brightly, so far away

and I am like a child, covering the entire sky with her outstretched hands,

pondering how the moon could be so small

that she could blot it out with her thumb.

You are like a star, a flash that lasts thousands of years, a flicker of bright light and sound

and I am am like an old woman, squinting her crinkling eyes upwards,

mourning that she can no longer see the map in the sky that would once guide her

and wondering if the same lights that

punctuated the path of her life

are still there, tonight.

But tonight, you are you

and i am Me.

And I write my name in kisses

across your ever-fading face

as you draw my future in pencil and in shadows.

This poem is not about the Ocean.

My beloved ocean.
Your cold kiss stings my chapped lips,
but you and I both know
I will give myself to you,
regardless.

Violent, beloved ocean!
Keep me preserved in your salt and sand.

Disasterous waves.
You tell me stories in frantic morse code,
I understand little, but I can hear
shipwrecks and mermaids,
iceburgs, coral.

Beautiful, terrible ocean,
when my body is yours, hide me in seashells
which my children will collect from the shore.

I wait all year for the fall.

I have lessons to be learned from autumn;
You do not die gracefully
but you die with passion
and when you have clothed the streets
with your
fire-scented blush
we look up to see
the sky shattered by
the angry arms of empty trees.

Teach me, autumn!
and I will break every heart
that has ever loved me.

For honesty's sake (first draft)

I have given birth to a half-breed of utmost honesty and straight up lies.
For months, stumbling past Spanish street signs in my summer disguise,
I speak to the ghost who follows me, him with impassive eyes,
and snowboots always. Wearing a woolen cap and mittens to defy
my sunscreened skin and tries to convince me, despite bright, sunny skies
that he is not, but it is I who meets the other in unseasonable attire.

I helplessly watch the trees I adore turn to the brightness of fire
and their blood coloured ashes, like leaves, rush towards the roots by which they were first inspired
and conceived. As though praying, I press my ear to the concrete, so tired
and worn thin through the seasons so I may hear the root's longing and desire
to embrace those rose peddle and sun-coloured leaves, who once aspired
to kiss the yawning sky, and now, rejected, return to the cement ground to die.

I tell the ghost that the tree is searching for my heart in the soil, and cry
bitterly, knowing she will not find me, for my heart had long before died
in his hands. My heart; pierced by arrows like icicles which time had tried
effortlessly to melt, was given to my then-living love who had lied
in action, vow and word to protect it and hide it from the howling winds outside.
Ashamed, he offers the gift of my life back and I
refuse. What use have I of this heart, now only able to remember and mourn.
Instead of the steady pulse of love and blood my heart once sang through my now-torn
veins, she is capable only to do this: remember and mourn, remember and mourn.

I toss myself from the limbs of the empty trees, for a moment airborne,
now, I rush to the ground, falling upon a crown made of thorns.
I allow the wounds of that accessory twisted from mockery and scorn
to tear through me. I lay over the roots of trees and I adorn
them with the same colour as the autumn leaves that, from the very same tree, were shorn.
The winter threatens to bury me here, but I stay, for
Underneath the concrete, my new heart swells through the season, warm with forgiveness and reason
and by Spring, I know I will be reborn.