Tea for Three

5:41pm

We sit and have a drink. 

But she's there;

She's always there.

I try to ignore her and conversate as people do.

But she's looking, only at me.

I itch in my own skin, and tug at my neck

Wishing she were never born,

Wondering why she cares so much,

But here she is. 

I can't focus the lens

So I glare over with sharp eyes,

But her stare fills me with discomfort instead.

I'm never going to be without her.

She means well,

But regardless I picture drowning her in a shallow pond.

I picture choking her until her last breath pops out of her throat

Like the last bit of toothpaste in a tube.

But we are connected like skin and muscle.

We are connected like life and breath.

I will never escape her. 

I have been here before, 

And she has dragged me home kicking and screaming.

But as long as I keep coming here to have a drink,

She will always be here too.

It will always be tea for three.

5:57pm

I'm Scared of Crows

I'm scared of crows,

And one approaches me, watching.

I drop my head like a sack at sudden impact.

I succumb to a fate I don't have awareness of yet, with the ease of existing, with the ease of breathing.

It pierces through me yet I cannot see.

I rest my hands at my belly, like a hungry child begging.

Something rustles through the fibers of my muscles as it inches further and further in

And sounds like a low hum that I usually hear faintly in my dreams.

The hum comes from a siren on the 7th hour.

This must be a violent dream.

I wait for death or escape, but nothing comes.

I resign like a brick in a wall as I wait to feel the warmth of blood oozing from this wound and yet the blood never comes.

I must be in a violent dream.

I want to pull and tug,

But what am I fighting?

Am I dying; or am I actually living?

I have struggled here before, and in dark places I roamed.

But where am I now?

The crow just observes; does nothing, says nothing as it usually does. 

But it puts on a show and spreads its wings when the world is watching.

And when the world goes home, I don't know where it goes.

But I guess it goes in dreams, as I do.

I call it closer to me, as the warmth starts to burn.

And so it perches on my shoulder

With its crimson beak while the warmth oozes out of me.

What Was

 [inspired by: "Amelia by Cocteau Twins]

[Draft from 2021, never published until now]

What was is completely gone.

What happened will never biodegrade

like rubber gloves in the gutter

until we are all gone.

It's easier to forgive the things I was robbed of

so that I can keep looking

and sheltering my back from the wind.

Time converted into light

and in a flicker its absence stung

like a thinly quick papercut.

I bled just a little.

Days and nights kneaded into themselves

with stress of my "diseases."

The diseases of my brothers,

my kin, my false child

choked me into calamity 

and flung me to the edge of sight. 

So I wandered in the silent space

looking down at the noise.

Living just to breathe and pay my dues

seems like cheating life itself.

Where did the memorable go?

Where did fantasy and the unforgettable 

go to hibernate?

The old threads are hung up and retired,

but will it be a joke to take them off

of the hanger tomorrow?

Will you laugh?

Maybe I will, too.

If and only if, will I bury

it then.