inert

she's bringing it all down upon herself.
she winds her watch and feels the difference in hour.
but the difference is a season, it's a year.
then, she sees;
she's scoring years upon her thigh
where birds could dance along the raised skin.
where happiness graced her closed-mouth grin.
she chooses mellow music,
she chooses her,
she chooses you.

she thinks that, in films
when the unreliable lover rushes back
to proclaim everlasting, undying, irrevocable
unconditional
love.
how convenient for them
that their object is waiting,
instead of clipping their toenails.
or in bed with somebody else...

she often thinks that would happen to her.
they'd be pounding at the door,
and she'd be brushing her teeth.

they'd give up
and leave.

time

Things taken for granted
each day
leave unphased,
you soak in them,
unnoticed and soon forgotten;
seldom remembered,
if ever.

But the moments of
sorrow and despair,
when you felt something
within your fragile mechanisms stop
and the wheels,
the bridges,
the ticking mechanisms,
bevels,
stems,
mainstays
and jewels
sift through your hands...

No longer a time piece
but a piece of time
that altered you

you will never be the same
again.

Broken.

Unable to be reassembled.

When I feel those moments
I like to pretend I'm an orphan,
my memory is a train-
I can see it getting smaller
as it pulls away.

But the things
I can't remember
tell
the things I can't forget.

That kind of history
puts a saint
in every dream.

beneath the dust

Beneath the dust,
the cast off faces and places are exposed,
memories surface like trinkets
and sink.
snippets of a grin, a game, of youth
indolent grace.
a locket of recollections, resolutions, reinventions
[of rage, to escape, to survive]
generations of photographs
generations of unspeakable abuse.
I see myself,
among their faces and places
now cast off ‘neath the dust,

though sometimes I wish I didn't.