The Things You Do Not Say

If you took your heart out
of that brown paper bag
you keep under your coat
If you cracked it open
like the book beside your bed
that you read every night
Would it scream?
Would it shriek?
Would it sing?
What story would it tell?
What images would it project upon the walls
within you hide
and would you wish to hide them, too?
Would you quickly clap your hands down on its pages
on its song
lest someone hear?
Or would you hear?
Would you bow your head and offer
all the tears you've never cried?
For whom would they be shed?

What if you caught your mind
impaled it on a pin
Watched it lash and wiggle, creep and crawl
blindly bare its mandibles and lightly dripping fangs
What would it evoke?
What would it awake in you?
What response would it call forth?
What desperate and defiant acts would
play there in the dark?
Would you scoop it back inside your head?
Place it under glass?
Watch in fascination when you dared to let it roam?

But your heart is an unopened book
in a bag
in a coat
long hung in the closet and forgotten.
Perhaps you gave it to Good Will.
And your mind, it is a monster
you've been feeding every night.
You never meant for it to leave its cage
as you took the creature out
and watched it kill the girl next door.

What if you said the things you do not say?
The words that rest beneath your tongue
inside your throat
behind your eyes.
Would I know you?
Would I know you at all?

A Moth to the Flame

O flame, that you could teach me
to burn without compunction
to light without grief
to consume without shame, apology, or regret
to be nothing more than fleeting, dependent, and frail
and yet powerful
unignorable
undeniable
untouchable
unstoppable...
Would then I be satiated?

I Remember the Sea

I stand
my feet in the surf,
my toes in the sand.
My skirt clings to my legs;
my hair whips at my face.
I turn my eyes to the endless horizon of waves.

You never came.

I speak.
There is no response but
the growl of the sea.
A new wash of foam swirls at my feet.

I stand and I glare at the tempest I once called home.
I grab my hair and wrestle it back into a bun
and I tie it there.
Loose strands immediately defy me;
wiggle about my face.
I hug myself close, just as defiantly,
and stare into the empty gaze
of the compassionless sea.

It is not a far-away look that plays;
It is not the look of the sea reflected in my eyes
in my face
anymore.

I am angry.

You never came.

You promised me.
You promised me first, you know.
But I released you from that promising
didn't I?
I let you go.

God let you go.

And that is who I have to blame
in this broken, empty, wind-swept place
inside
How I want to scream and hate
the salt-tinged, heart-eroding tide.
But the ocean didn't take you.

You just never came.

I don't want to pretend anymore.

I don't want to pretend

that you don't have the past that you do,
that more isn't required of you
that you didn't violate the one thing I asked you not to do
I don't want to pretend

I don't want to pretend

that I'm not completely justified in walking away
without hearing whatever you have to say
because it's all excuses anyway
and I don't want to pretend

I don't want to pretend

that I don't wish it could be redeemed, different
even though all my grace has been spent
but if this wasn't all completely evident
well, then, I don't want to pretend

anymore