I Fear Change

Posted on by hearkd

When the world moves at I clip I have not planned
I will eventually trip.
I will demand time to take in what it has been throwing at my tortoise life.
I am very demanding.
I will flip through the stockpile of fears that have been adding up since you put me on your rocket ship.
And you’ll surprise me again.
You plop down next to me and carefully examine each one
Listen
Reassure
Discuss
But never beg me into calmness
I’ll sit there, weathering my storm until I ask you to wrap your arms around me;
Feel how secure you are
While I wait for my storm to blow out.

The Story Line

Posted on by hearkd

Far from perfect, but I’m tired of not sharing this part of my story.

How I learned about Shane Koyczan

We sat on the kitchen floor with the laptop

As the party moved around us

Hazy with liquor

He showed me poetry

Held my hand and shushed the party

He told me his dad was too drunk to remember Father’s Day phonecalls

He said, “thank you” for being with him on his 19th birthday

“It’s the best I’ve ever had”

Leaned into me

Started crying

So he grabbed one more drink

Once more, lit up

Cigarettes

To save himself from his self-pity

He continued to seduce me

He kissed me once more

Told me “it’s time to sleep”

Snuggled in close

Not to reassure me

But to hold on to something

While I thought:

for every paper crane

there is a cricket with arthritis.

Every miracle destroys a part of someone else.


One Type of Alcoholic Guilt

I feel guilty

I always liked him best when he was drunk

He’s affectionate

More honest

But the liquor

is killing him

and bringing out his father.

When He Raped Me

When he raped me
He didn’t stop to ask if I’d regret it
He was busy assuring himself he wouldn’t
With his arms on either side of me like a cage, he repeated it
Over and over
Like I had a choice
As if each repetition wasn’t drowning me out

“this is a bad idea”
“I’d rather we didn’t”
“I don’t want to”

In the few minutes it took to steal something unnameable from me,
I got angry
“I’ll hate you forever now”
It erupted out, deadpan

You came to a head
Thrashed out at me
Like you hadn’t pushed me backwards into the car
Like you hadn’t made up your mind the moment you realized we had never slept together.
As if my gut didn’t tell me to run when I saw your expression change
How I slipped from the party only to have you catch me at the last second.
I tried to push my instincts aside.

Nobody wants to believe their friend is going to rape them.

Crime shows had always taught me it was a strange man with a knife at the throat
Not somebody I could illustrate the story-line of
Turning their body into a cage

It doesn’t take a higher education to figure out a friend doesn’t leave you wondering if what just happened was rape.
For weeks I tried reconciling your denial with how you left me feeling and they never matched up.
The same word echoed back to me.

What I miss the most is thinking of you as a safe place.
What I’m most angry about is going through memories to see their darker underbelly; how nothing with you was safe, but a way to escape your realities.

It hurts to learn a home was only ever collapsing.

I’ve only ever wanted to be safe.

The Haunting vs. The Lights

Posted on by hearkd

When you get the negative reception you weren’t expecting

There are a number of ways you can handle it.

First, to cower and hide.

This will be your first reaction, and

you will probably follow it.

The world has become a dark place

it reflects every right choice

as a mistake.

Hold On

They’ll keep flooding in

 

Expect Bitterness

Expect Self-Hatred

Expect The Haunting

You are a vacant mansion

Where only the ghost of your spirit waves

Side to Side

Haunting hurts,

but it’s the burning tears that remind you

you are alive

 

When you realize your life

to choose again

You will have two options

One, return to the ensnaring branches of your bitterness

To fold back in on yourself again

Or

Option two:

Reclaim yourself

Wake up in the middle of the night reeling from the pain of truth

Only to be left smiling at The Lights turning back on in your soul

Regaining your Peace is not easy

You’ll be expected to Accept your faults

Question your past

and realize it can’t be changed

You will learn to accept

you’re suppose to Be Here

For that, you’re exactly the kind of human that needs to be loved

cherished

That it doesn’t matter who you slept with

Or how dark your thoughts get

Or what an absolute disaster you are

as a human being sometimes

You’ll learn to love yourself again

To look more carefully

For those who see The Light in your soul

How I learned about Shane Koyczan

Posted on by hearkd

We sat on the kitchen floor with the laptop

As the party moved around us

Hazy with liquor

He showed me poetry

Held my hand and shushed the party

 

He told me his dad was too drunk to remember Father’s Day phonecalls

He said, “thank you” for being with him on his 19th birthday

“It’s the best I’ve ever had”

Leaned into me

Started crying

 

So he grabbed one more drink

Once more, lit up

Cigarettes

To save himself from his self-pity

He continued to seduce me

 

He kissed me once more

Told me “it’s time to sleep”

Snuggled in close

Not to reassure me

But to hold on to something

While I thought:

for every paper crane

there is a cricket with arthritis.

 

Every miracle destroys a part of someone else.

High School Ghost

Posted on by hearkd

In Memory of  Alyssa Sialaris

I saw your name

and it tickled my brain

so I looked you up in the student dictionary

to see you were the one.

 

One of the few to look me in the eye and say my name.

I found I had memories of the way you run after big dogs in high school parking lots.

 

Long legs covered in denim,

Soft winter beanie on long curly brown hair

Your hooded eyes looking at me

From the back of a pickup truck

Talking despite my silence

Always trying even when I didn’t know how

To respond to your kindness

Except for a smile

A feeling of awkward peace.

 

It was then that I realized I missed you.

It was then I realized death would never let me rekindle an acquaintance

To see if it could be friendship

That my choice of school meant I’d never see you again

The loss to the world

The typical thought of how no one would see you in a wedding dress

 

I’m sorry,

This is how my society taught me to be

Thinking of your unlived future with a shot of whiskey

But you,

You’re one of the few that ever seemed to believe there was something in me.

 

So, I’ll brew a cup of tea

Reflect on a sweet memory

Of a parking lot at sunset

And long denim clad legs

Running free.

In Your Memory

Posted on by hearkd

I get high school butterflies of a girl backstage

Making ready for practice

As everyone sings a song about Star Wars

And she,

she’s crouched on the ground

watching

He, he sung along with the crowd

Spun like a silly thing

So the theater lights glanced off his glasses with dark frames.

She could never resist dark frames

She found silly endearing

And he was encompassing

 

He makes her remember things that never happened

But he gave her high school butterflies years after she should have had them

She pretends to be there, and watches him carefully.

Possibilities

Posted on by hearkd

Hello

I think you’re interesting

The kind of interesting that makes me think I could like you

Through liking you I could learn to love you

While loving you I could find that somewhere along the way I fell into it

Upon falling I could find my other half

On becoming whole we could rock this earth to the core together

For the rocking, we would be remembered

as people that loved one another

But first

Let me start with

Hello.

Unsure

Posted on by hearkd

I am unsure of the act of trust

But I’m willing to see where you lead me.

Whether its bright fields, or dark hallways

I can say I tried once more.