little girl, get up.

i wish i could say i’ve changed,
but oh honey, i’ve only changed for the worse.
my family’s falling apart:

Faith’s a shambles, she’s a bedraggled old woman
tottering round trying to find a coin she dropped
in the floorboards of my heart.
Grace left a long time ago (well, I say “left,”
actually we got in a shouting match and I
told her to get the hell out)
Hope rests in a bed at the back,
breathing labored, face translucent and fair.
I don’t know if she’ll ever give birth.
And Love? Oh, he sits quietly beside my bed when I sleep,
gazes meaningfully at me in the mornings,
his eyes asking me to take his hand.
(He does not follow me as I live dyingly. He waits.
I want him so badly, but I think he might be a ghost.)

I pound on the walls of this place,
with these dying roommates,
their rough breathing rasping.
I swear if I hear another –

and crumpling i fall apart
i’m killing them, these gentle friends,
with my silences, my arrogant refusal
to meet their eyes or acknowlege their
existence.

they draw near anxiously as i
bang my head on the floor
like some animal in pain.
i hear them murmur to each other
their concern weaves around me,
trying hard to coccoon me.
i struggle.

and Love looks at me steadily
and waits for me to – what?
stretch out my hand?
and i look at him bitterly
and dare him and yearn for him
to take me, savagely

what an experience you must have had in england.

oh, yes. but i don’t remember most of it.

really? how old were you?

fifteen, but i was
writing letters and
buying phone cards
i barely remember
keble college’s odd ugly roofs,
the way the sun streamed in the porch windows,
the way to the tea house and how
clotted cream tasted,
the courtyard of christchurch and the
smell of the bookstore drifting onto the street.

all the muscles of my brain flex and strain
to conjure up these images, to answer
“where’s oxford?” when a fellow traveller accosts me.
these half-imagined, hazy strains of life
that are so overshadowed by longing.

if there is one thing i regret,
it is this: spending so much time writing letters,
emails of i love you, i miss you, i’m coming home in
seventeen days, so many hours on the phone
gazing out at people playing cricket
instead of running out myself to play,
but this is one benefit:

i remember very clearly what i wrote to you
about taking communion at st. margaret’s,
how i couldn’t figure out how the damn wine
was supposed to get in my mouth
when someone else was holding the chalice.

my feet are cold.
so are my hands.
i sigh and arch back
to pretend i’m in your arms.
if i close my eyes,
maybe i’ll convince myself your face is next to mine.
will you be with me tonight?
come, wrap me up and warm me.
coffee in my heart
sunlight on my eyelids
imaginary fingers laced in mine

we can pretend we’re married
won’t have to wait another thousand years
to see your eyes all tender-mine
won’t have to wade through grey days
to be your wife all gentle-mild

but already in my heart a steady assurance
like domestic bliss
that as i pad around the kitchen humming
your eyes are on me, loving

I feel like after that terrifying downturn in August and September I never stopped to heal. It scared me so much that when it finally fell off my back I just ran and never stopped. I still equate God with my depression, still hold him responsible and wonder why the past four years I’ve been wrestling so hard and so long. But until August I would always run to God when it got really bad. But after that horrible time I just decided God didn’t really care whether I ran my car into apartment buildings or ditches or whatnot. I am not convinced of God’s love for me. I simply don’t believe it.

I believe we’re acquaintances. I believe in his kingdom – passionately. I ally myself with him. I identify myself wholly with his cause. But it is as a king far away. I believe he wants my betterment like a good king wants his subject’s betterment. But I don’t believe he loves me ardently, passionately. In the same way, I don’t think I love him ardently or passionately. But I admire him from afar and would die for him without hesitation.

Without God, I have no identity. That’s not empty rhetoric. I literally would not know how to describe myself outside him. But now that I reflect on it, my soul has stopped believing that God has any interest in me aside from my ability to further the kingdom. What king would?

so just a disclaimer: recently all my high school friends have been having facebook-comment-coversations on old pictures, and that’s where all the sad stuff is coming from. it’s not super bad like it would’ve been this summer, so that’s good. it just makes me a little wistful, and it’s only those kind of bittersweet feelings that wander into the poems – i can share my joy with everyone i see, but it’s the little tiny bits of sadness that get channeled here. i siphon them off into these lines and then i can go until another bit resurfaces.

essentially it’s this: i’m looking at these pictures, and i was gorgeous. i mean, beautiful. and i can’t figure out why i didn’t know that then – why i never wore shorts or bathings suits or dresses. i mean, i had this itty bitty waistline and this hair and this smile – and now, you know, i’m not bad, but i don’t wear my retainer or stay as busy, so it’s just not as vibrant and young as it was. and i’m remembering all the ways i held myself back: my hair was always in a ponytail, no makeup, no tight clothes or shorts or whatever. and i’m looking at this young face just pouring out joy. and of course, the boy, so yeah.

so i’m wondering where that went and why i didn’t love high school more or take advantage of it when i’m looking at the pictures thinking this sixteen-year-old had so much to offer. it just bemuses me.

i’m sorry we stayed at danielle’s birthday party
when you had a migraine.
you should’ve told me we had to go.
you should’ve told me a lot of things.

i felt beautiful that night
and i felt like you didn’t think i was

i’m sorry your head hurt.
i should have sat with you and held it
instead of dancing
held you close to my heart
(then i remember how beautiful
i felt, dancing alone)
but i was a little resentful
you were ruining my night
(then i remember how
beautiful
i felt dancing
alone)
and i didn’t think i’d lose you,
i thought i’d have a million nights
of holding you close to my heart
(then i remember how
beautiful
i felt
dancing alone)

i accidentally hit the “trash” button,
and it dredged up memories,
opening files and files of pictures
of one night at home over a year ago
and i am astonished:
is that me, wrapped up in arms?
did my lips/tongue/mouth really do that?
i do not remember being a creature of love or passion.
it’s another person, another life.

a million hells ago was that crazy heaven
of youth and love and hours spent
on couches and floors and car-seats
long stretched out luxurious days of summer
and movie theatres and picnics
and sweat down my spine and misplaced safety
and love

and now i’m
old
with a life made of
to-do lists and agendas.
i will look back on this time and think,
unhesitatingly,
“winter.”

i hate sundays.
they come quietly, lazily,
in a sort of afterparty haze
deadly stirring and knowing
this day has nothing waiting at the end
but an early bedtime and recovery.
sundays you sleep in and let the
sun wrestle its way through the closed blinds.
sundays you think of all your chores and grimace.
sundays you spend alone,
ruminating the 365 days before this one,
remembering the mistakes you’ve made.
you wish you could just press fast forward,
and wake up to the hectic grumpy busyness of monday,
which is better than the dead dull emptiness of sunday.

sunday is for inbetween and falling
through the gaps in the flooring.

it’s okay
stay here,
safe.
in the palm of my hand.
i’m not gonna stop holding you
i won’t look away
you’re my dove, my perfect one
you’re safe here.
i love you, my beloved.
stay here. my hand is warm and strong.
be here. be still. i love you.
you’re safe.

i didn’t realize how deeply i grieved till
i read a sappy romance novel and hated the heroine.
but then she got her heart broken, and she
couldn’t sleep at night because her chest hurt.
she was lifeless. she was damaged.
and reading it i relived it,
all achey and wounded,
a humiliated animal licking her wounds
on the bathroom floor.

i did not hate the heroine so much
after that.