This is For You

This is for those who know Cancer isn’t just a word.

For anyone who has ever watched his or her loved one carried out in a black zipped-up bag.

For those who know the true extent of last words.

For anyone who has had to stand in front of a room of people and shakily recite a eulogy.

For those who have truly had to say goodbye.

 

This is for those who cringe at the word rape.

Who silently sit in the back of the room knowing all too well the sticky, ugly fingers of molest.

Who know that rape isn’t something to laugh at, make obscene jokes about, or even smile in the presence of.

Who know what it means to be violated.

Who have cried themselves to sleep bleeding there.

 

This is for those who woke up to a gunshot, found a bloody mess and dull razor, couldn’t find any more pills next to the cold body; Suicide.  They say it and they know what it means.

This is for the girls who see only darkness, despair, death every waking hour of every damned day.

For those who cower behind hidden scars they feel every night to know that something is still there.

For those who see suicide statistic and think brother, mother, sister, father, friend, husband, person.

 

This is for those who go to sleep at night praying for a better tomorrow.

For those who wake up in the middle of the night and momentarily forget what it feels like to grieve.

For every dreamer and hoper and lover and believer who just knows that it has to get better.  There is more than this pain. 

This is for me.  For my family.  My friends. My loss.

But most importantly, this is for you.

 

A Philosophy on Crying

Noah’s mom always told him life was full of tragedies, and crying about it wouldn’t do a damn thing.

He supposed she knew what she was talking about: her dad left her mother, her brother committed suicide at twelve, and she had to commit her own mother to an insane asylum before she turned twenty.

Still, sometimes Noah thought she had it wrong.

She didn’t cry when the army officers delivered her a flag instead of her husband’s intact body after a tour in Iraq.

She didn’t cry when Noah’s sister Astelle shattered the urn that carried her uncle’s ashes, even though he was the only father she ever knew, and the only man in her life who ever indefinitely stayed.

She didn’t cry when Noah told her he would join the army and fight like his dad, and that he would be proud if he died.

She didn’t cry when Astelle came home crying and pregnant, telling them how her future ex-husband hit her so hard she couldn’t remember the fight leading up to it.

She didn’t cry when her best friend of fifty years died silently in her sleep of an aneurysm.

She didn’t cry when the doctor told her she herself would die of lung cancer. In fact, she laughed. “Well, those cigarettes did their job then!”

She didn’t cry during chemo or radiation or any other treatment that Noah had to beg her to receive.

She didn’t cry when she asked Noah, recently discharged from the military and studying creative writing at the local university, to write her eulogy. She only smiled.

She didn’t even cry as she told him she wanted to be buried in the cheapest, most rickety casket you could find because she “just didn’t see the point in making it difficult for worms to eat.”

And his mother, the woman whom he had watched and admired for years, waiting for the inevitable slip, the single tear drop to drip, died on a sunny Friday morning before Noah had even grabbed his morning coffee. She never shed a tear.

When Noah went through her things, he realized she refused to cry because her mother never stopped after her husband left. But that didn’t mean she didn’t feel the ache of every tragic moment nestled deep in her chest.

In fact, reading her journals she had kept diligently for sixty years, his mother felt more acutely and tragically than them all.

Noah now tells his two children – Anita, 12, and James, 8 – that his mother always told him life was full of tragedies, and crying wouldn’t solve a damn thing. “But, kids,” he tells them. “Silence, doesn’t either.”

And Noah? When he feels like it, he cries. Because, unlike his mother – as strong and blessed and beloved as she may be – he never wants his kids to question whether he feels.

Because he does. He feels. With every single drop. Every drip. A tear. A sadness. A feeling. Every single day.

End of a Friendship

I wanted to find a poem about the end of a friendship so that I could send you the link and let you know how I felt without speaking the words aloud.  I couldn’t find one, not one that said the right words the right way, so I decided to write a pathetic attempt at one instead.

 

I can’t remember the last time you made me

Genuinely smile, full mouth of teeth showing,

In that dorky way you always used to know.

Or the sound of your worried voice

On the phone when you called after I

Scared you just a little too much;

These days you don’t even know when to worry

Because I gave up trying to tell you.

And I don’t remember what words

You tried to throw at me to make me

Feel better after a funeral –

if you tried.

And I can’t remember what your eyes look

Like when I know you’re glad to see me.

I fear if I were to walk past you,

We would not be able to recognize each other

Because you are so different, and I’m

So startlingly the same, even after

All these tears and crumbling pieces

I have lost of my heart.

I called you my best friend

In the same whisper I used

To tell you I just couldn’t take it anymore,

Wanted to grab a knife and just end it.

And I know we will never be the same

Because these days

I don’t feel the need to consult you at all.

Dearly Beloved

I am watching my life spin out of control.  I am too late to stop it, too late to try.  I am stuck watching the destruction, the pain, the final thread unravel and pull apart.

I have lost everything I ever deemed dear.  I am not okay.  It’s one thing to think it might happen, it’s another to witness the aftermath.  These tears can do nothing but add to the growing weight of shit sitting on my chest.

I want to reach for this razor, this knife, these pills – want to cut through this pain, watch the blood ooze and be hypnotized. Want to swallow these feelings.  Want to stop feeling this incredible hurt buried deep inside.

I fucking loved you.  I loved all of you.  I loved you.  Why am I not enough?

Love’s Poison

I hate this heart that beats nonstop, pumps life, loves

When everyone surrounding fills me with hurt.

If I could switch it off, even for a little,

Maybe this toxic care would finally leave,

Like a venom coursing through my swollen veins,

Burning, burning – never running out.

Longing

It comes to you like a whisper – soft, quiet, almost silent, a mere brush against your shoulder.  It progresses like a wildfire, quickly, passionately, a deafening roar and inescapable heat.  Soon, longing consumes you.

Maturing is about sacrifices, love is about distance.  Sometimes you have to do things you don’t want to in order to achieve the things you long for most.

Yet I am sitting here, hundreds of miles away, missing you as if it were you instead of me who left.  This is my fault.  I decided to prove to myself that I could make it on my own; I just did not realize I would be losing you in the move.

Our words are dust, nothing important, capable of being brushed away.  Remember when our conversations were tattoos, engraved pigment buried deep within our skin?  Somewhere my place in your life became footprints in the sand that are there one second, and washed away the next.  I guess I should have listened when my mind tried to tell me that.

It comes at you like a whisper, but it progresses like a wildfire.  This longing for you has left me incapacitated, cold and alone.  I only have myself to blame.

 

 

 

 

Soothing Simplicity

“Did you know that most people just live, with no reason for living?” – Dr. Charles Parker

“I just want it all to go away,” my friend texted me; I knew what she meant – she was thinking of suicide once again.  It seemed the less depressed I became, the more depressed the world became.  I was tired of suicide, depression and anxiety, but mostly I was tired of no one having the courage to try to save themselves before I could even attempt to fix what was so broken.

“I know.  You just have to find something to live for.  The stupid things.  Silly things,” I finally texted back after careful contemplation.

Her text was almost automatic.  “Every time I’m happy, something happens and it goes away.”

That’s when I rolled my eyes.  “I didn’t say be happy. I am incapable of lasting happiness.  I said find something to live for.”

“Like what?”

Those two words made me smile; I knew the answer, had known the answer for months now but never got to share it with anyone.  Now that my opportunity was here, I almost couldn’t wait.

So I told her the things to live for.  The stupid things, the silly things, the things that we overlook and forget and take advantage of.  Things like the smell of freshly cut grass, the feeling of cold air in your lungs, the gentle patter of rain on the roof, the pink smile of the sun as it rises in the morning; the changing colors of the leaves, the gentle laughter of someone caught off guard, the cold nights were you curl up into your bed with multiple blankets because your toes are cold.  The smell of sizzling bacon on a Saturday morning, the crinkle of paper, the fluffy clouds in the sky.  Things you see every day but never notice.  Silly, miniscule moments that have the ability to turn the world around.

“So, small things?” she finally asked after a while.

“Don’t ever depend on the big things.  Those disappoint you.  They’re too large to understand, and too unpredictable.  Best to just love the simple things.”  Somehow, that made sense to her, just as it made sense to me.  People may disappoint you, your grades may disappoint you, life may disappoint you – but every day the sun will rise, and the birds will sing, and the leaves will change every fall; when it gets too stressful or depressing to live, we can depend on these things, these simple little things, and it gives us a reason to inhale, exhale, and repeat.

Only Hope

It would take swallowing all 60 to take this pain away.

Dear Friend

Dear friend,

What hurts the most is knowing that you just don’t need me anymore when I would have sacrificed my entire life for just one moment of true happiness for you.

Sincerely,

Broken and abused

Unrequited

The lightening cracks in the distance, and I see it as a promise.

If I had to describe myself with one word, I would use unrequited, and I would offer a sad smile to accompany the even sadder meaning.

I smell rain, and the waft reminds me of the saltiness of too many tears.

Unwittingly and painstakingly, I lift my arms to the sky, crying out in a mangled whisper as the thunder rattles every cell in my already shattered body.

The rain comes in sprinkles, a fine mist that serves as the tears that I will not – cannot – cry.

If my life were a concert, you would walk out before I finished the opening act because I am just that incredibly easy to leave.

The lightening lights the sky in a brilliant metaphor of my brief happiness – bright, electric, quickly fading.

If my life were a movie, it would be categorized as a drama, or perhaps a tragedy, and I have only myself to blame.

I lift my head, call to the sky, to the thunder, the electricity, the violence in the storm.  People walking by will smile at the girl enjoying the rain.  If they only knew.

My words come in gasps, my heart thuds in my ears in tune with the thunder, my entire body shivers at my implications.

Take me with you.  Take me home.  I do not belong here.  They do not want me. 

My one word that can be carved on my marble slab should be unrequited.  That’s all I will ever be.

Please, save me.