Pieces

Heart torn in four pieces.

Atriums and ventricles beating apart,

distance seen through cracks

held together by thread,

tiny sinews clutching

at the shards of a once beating muscle

meant for all the love.

Breaking,

shattering

when whole is needed

instead of real.

Four knives

ripping my flesh,

the blood which makes life,

the possibility of complete.

They tear me,

slice into each chamber,

each valve,

and they know what they’re doing.

They know the end

and so do I.

Always have.

It’s inevitable.

My heart will break again.

Turning four into five

because the heart is infinite.

For every love,

there is a piece.

For every piece,

there is a blade.

~Patience

Hopeless

Deviantart.com, DigiZCP

My tears won’t recede from my eyes

the way the sea leaves the shore.

They pool in egg-shaped patches

where my knees once begged you to stay.

They fill empty cups of coffee-stained tables

where you drew pictures of Christmas

and held my hand to your heart while we slept.

The tears won’t fade

as the ink from old newspapers

stain wrinkled fingers.

They saturate my ticking clocks

carried by night drives up wooded mountain trails.

They sit with me in bowling alley parking lots

and in autocorrect suggestions of good night.

My tears won’t vanish like you did

in that tiny yellow box,

that blue flashing bulb worn gray.

No.

Instead, they etch their way

through broken windows,

crack my bones on dry pavement

torn from my tires,

they seep from my skin in darkling hues

of forever gone sour.

So when I look at your sad eyes

bound to her face,

they come.

They carve canyons in my cheeks

and sculpt me into salt towers

filled with your smile.

They fall and fall and fall.

And I let them.

I watch as my face becomes

something it’s not,

something you made instead of

something that exists.

I cry,

the loss sweeping onto the floor,

raining sorrow made of empty letters,

and that’s when I know

you’re never coming back.

~Patience

Destroy the Ache

I destroy all of this ache,

this infinite pain wedged inside my bones.

I kill this agony,

this vast hurt rolled up under my skin.

I end all of this yearning,

this deep cavern of empty hiding in my heart.

I demolish this longing,

this hungry predator sleeping in my eyes.

Instead

I build this body,

this shining tower of strength and grit buried in my soul.

I bolster this spirt,

this fierce warrior crouching in my shadows.

I lift up this hope,

this bursting flame igniting my dreams.

I uplift this life,

this joyous journey of living.

~Patience

Twelve Pounds

The weight of it.

A building so tall

it topples the mountains surrounding

the heavy inside it.

Magnitude resting in tiny hands

inside stranger’s hands

inside a room so large

it crushes every heart inside.

The mass of this ache

balloons to huge,

the volume expanding to infinite

all while staring at something

so small

it’s likely to disappear

while leaving

a mark so dark that

it lights up universes

in its path.

The weight if it.

The unbearable,

incontainable,

insurmountable

weight of

twelve tiny pounds.

~Patience

Supposed To

I don’t know if I was meant to love you

but I do.

I don’t know if we were supposed to be

but we were

and now I don’t know

how to move beyond “supposed to.”

I don’t know

how to end the ache of you

when I hear your name

or remember your touch.

I don’t understand

how I’m supposed to live without you

when I see you in every inch of her face.

I’m not sure

how I’m supposed to say goodbye

to something I never really had

because I wasn’t supposed to have you

to begin with.

I wasn’t supposed to want you,

to need you,

but I do

and it’s so exhausting

to want something that’s vanished,

something that was only a figment,

a flash of what life could have been

if only I wasn’t

so old,

so tired,

so broken.

~Patience

Visions

My dreams brim with your voice,

the sad eyes she now looks at me with,

and I wonder if it was ever real.

If you were there

or if you were just this hot vision

spilling fantasy I deemed reality.

I can still feel your lips on my neck,

your fingers wrapped in my hair.

I can still hear your voice saying my name,

telling me you’d never leave,

yet here I am alone,

dreaming instead of living.

~Patience

Me Again

It’s the whispers of loneliness,

the incessant images of your sad eyes

in every turn of the clock,

and each moment is new and old

all at once,

so curved and sharp

with jagged edges disguised at soft.

And all I can see is the past,

a road that never really was,

a place I never lived

even though I woke up there every day.

We drove in the dark,

the unknown places suddenly showing,

so achingly aware of each other’s skin,

the vibrations humming below.

Dash lights outlined your face in blues

while faded music danced in the air.

I can still feel your hand on my cheek

as you reached for something more.

You searched for quiet

while I fumbled with loud steps,

yet you saw me.

For a minute,

I was me again,

sparkling white flames

burning through the atmosphere

of you.

That was real.

That was hope.

That was me

when I was with you.

~Patience

Losing Language

Here I am again,

the blocks pummeling me

in silence,

in wordless whispers that wilt

on the screen.

I try to say the ways it aches

but the wind rips the language

from my tongue

and buries it

under miles of sadness.

Each step away

only brings me

more wanting,

more agony of gone,

of alone,

of missing

when you weren’t even there to begin with,

when I believed broken could heal.

You walk through my dreams

on wings of disaster,

stomping your way through my heart,

and I let you.

I crawl back into sleep

hoping to see your sad eyes

look at me like I’m magic,

and it’s all so hopelessly

pathetic,

silly,

stupid,

and so true.

This ache is blind

and it ties my words

into shitty knots of longing

that will never be undone

because I am undone,

always a mess of tangles

in your hands.

Forever entwined

in your fingertips,

a ball of pain you made.

~Patience

Again

It aches.

But doesn’t it always?

Doesn’t it hurt so much

you feel like fire

might shoot from your pores,

heat might fly from your feet

and send you into spaces lined with the dead?

Places plagued with all the pain

you’ve balled up inside?

Doesn’t it ache the same way it did before?

The way you remember

unraveling that cord of agony,

yet this time spikes permeate the wire

and gouge on their way by,

slice you up into a bloody disaster,

as if you weren’t already there,

as if you weren’t already frozen

on the floor,

bleeding out

as he walks by,

as he steps on your fingers

like they are puddles to splash in

and leaves you wounded

like you’ve always been.

~Patience

Summer Days

We can’t go back.

Of course,
I know this but

the heat of those summer days
where the blue burned our eyes
and the grass,
hot needles to our feet.
The concrete bold
in its desire to burn
yet beckoning anyway.

Those wood-paneled walls
and ancient air conditioner
dying
with every weak gust of cool wind,
but we paid no mind to any of it,

the cool,
the hot.

Because no air escaped
from between our skin,
no breath lost amongst our mouths,

the sharp ecstasy of it all,

the blatant glory
of us
combined
in that hot room aching with desire
to be just
one
moment
more.

~Patience