Ballerina

Oh prima ballerina, why are you dancing so
spinning in your circles, putting on your show
for no one here is watching
the eyes they do digress
and the movement of your arms
flowing from your chest
seems all too lost in translation
with each turn of your dress

Breathe

She sat there mindlessly playing her matching game and could think of nothing other than him. “Why” she thought. “Why can’t I just let him go?” She pondered this for over an hour. She remembered all the good times, the phone calls, the poetry, the honesty. One day in particular came racing to her mind. He had called her, mid-afternoon as she was going to work and the excitement in his voice was uncontainable. He had just left counseling, and had the most amazing story to tell her. “So I was in counseling right, and you had sent me a message and I looked at it and sent you one back and when I was done, he looked at me and asked who that was. I told him it was you and he said ‘You better hang on to that one, your face lit up like a Christmas tree when you got that message.’ Isn’t that amazing?” Yea, she thought, it was awesome. Awesome, now there is a word he hates! She noticed recently that she didn’t use it any more; she lost the habit. He told her she was way too smart to use words as ambiguous and insipid an ‘awesome.’ She missed him. She felt her face warming and tears fighting her eyes. What happened? Things were so right this time, and then out of no where it was gone. She felt such a loss over him, unlike any other she knew and she did not know why. Did he feel it? she wondered. Did he miss her? Did he think of her often? She tried so hard to be ok without him, not to think of him; she tried to let him go. She knew that all things happened just as they were meant to, but she really wanted this to be the one. She couldn’t breathe without him.

Mirror Mirror

Mirror mirror on my vanity
Help me decipher all this insanity
For the tables have turned
And the mighty have fallen
And those who once left me
Are now the ones calling
Your confidants now confide in me
For your true colors they now see
And how funny I find it that they show their affection
Since now they’re alone and without your attention
I was here all along when your interest they wanted
But you tossed them aside and now they are haunted
You used them and left them alone by the sea
And just as I called it they ran back to me
And soon enough your small army will fall
Leaving you alone, once and for all

The Letter

She laid the letter on his desk, accompanied by his favorite sugar coated candies, and walked out. “He’ll be back” she said to herself, “they always come back.” It was true. Everyone who had ever hurt her, been dishonest, or left her life for any reason, all of them at some point had come back begging forgiveness and drenched in excuses. An email, a text message, a phone call, even a Facebook message; it was inevitable. Even people in high school who had stopped speaking to her at random had lost their ways in college and came crawling back. The message was always the same.
“Dear Friend, What an idiot I have been, your friendship was the best I ever had and times without you have been quite sad, please forgive my foolish ways, please remember the better days, I pledge to be a better friend, I pledge to tell the truth, I pledge that I am different, I swear I really need you.”
And she always forgave them. Her one vice was kindness; loyal to the point of liability, forgiving to a fault. She refused to see anything but the best in people and as such was often disappointed. She didn’t see people for who they were; she saw them for who she knew they would become; for who they could be. But that wasn’t who they were now, and to expect that of them was unfair. She was a pusher; she pushed people to their potential even when they didn’t want it, even when they could get there yet. She wanted everyone to be the absolute best they could be. It was because of this, that so many people came and went; the weak never made it. The strong ones saw this quality in her and thrived from it, always reaching for more. But the weak ones, they weren’t ready yet, not now, but they always came back. “He’ll be back” she told herself. “They always come back.”

One Stone at a Time

The red from the napkins stared her in the eyes as she diligently yet mindlessly rolled silverware. If he was half as special as she thought he was, then she had surely lost something great. When her alarm sounded in the morning, she merely laid there accepting the diatribe. She lost the will to move. She wanted to fall into the deep abyss of her pillows and never be found. She wanted to get so lost in her feelings that she might eventually become numb again for this pain was too much for her feeble heart to bear. Every ounce of her being ached. Her soul was screaming in agony yet few could hear her. Her eyes had lost the light that kept them alive. Her words were half hearted and whispered. Her smile was no where to be found. The world around her grew silent as she lost herself in the world of her broken spirit. She had never felt this kind of pain before. She felt as though she had lost part of herself. It was as if her legs had been removed yet she could still feel their pain as present as ever. She looked at the wreckage that had become her once organized life and fell apart. The ivory tower had crumbled beneath her and she stood amongst the rubble dumbfounded. To rebuild such a monument was impracticable and to forget it impossible. But how does one leave such a space empty? How does one start over from such a disaster? One stone at time, she told herself. You start one stone at a time until eventually you could start to rebuild. She reached down, with a slow and steady hand, and picked up a stone. She studied it, turned it over in her hand, closed her fist around it and felt its power. And so she began to clear the rubble, slowly but surely, one stone at a time.

Trophy Girl

Her eyes burned, her muscles hurt. It was five in the morning and she hadn’t slept that night. Thoughts of them kept her awake and she lay there crying. She couldn’t sleep knowing he was there, just one room away, hidden the silence of broken promises and shattered relationships. She was anxious, tense, almost manic at the moment. She wanted to get up and run, or scream or move. Anything to release what was welling up inside her. But she couldn't move. Every breathe she took was labored. Her body had no will left, no energy with which to continue running.
“I wouldn’t call it cheating; we’ll just say I was leading her on…” The song blared from the speakers and yet so eloquently reflected her life. He wanted his trophy girl and he got her. A shiny prize to place upon the mantel and show your friends. But like the trophy, she was beautiful and empty and so was the relationship they were staging. Empty. He couldn’t talk to her about politics or literature. She didn’t understand his poetry or prose. Their feelings for one another were shallow but easy and that’s just what they wanted. The McDonalds of relationships; fast, easy, cheap and ultimately something you regret buying later. It leaves you unsatisfied and longing for something substantial. I yearned for the day it would all fall apart, the day I could watch the stage lights dim and the actors take their final bows.

Dressed in Black

She was dressed in all black, as if there would be a funeral. Black shoes, black shirt, black pants. All black. Much like her life things seemed to come in darker shades these days. The people she thought were important had betrayed her; she was invisible to them now. A half smile, a fake wave; that’s what she was worth. She could trust no one. Everyone’s eyes were hiding something. Everyone’s words were insincere. In a way, her attire was quite appropriate. There would be a funeral. A funeral for all those she held dear who were no longer with her. They had replaced her with the fake illusions of a life they knew they didn’t want. But it was easier to have this fake life than to have a real one and risk part of themselves to be part of something greater. People didn’t want great things anymore. People wanted what was easy. But easy was fake and unrewarding; just like they were. Everyone was fake. She was alone in her own reality and suddenly realized why no one took the leap. It was lonely on the other side of things. Reality was a lonely place. So she sits in her reality looking attentively at all the faces once familiar to her, waiting, so patiently waiting, for the day someone would join her. But some how she knew that day would never come. They loved their fake lives, they were blind to their own true feelings and they always would be. She would spend eternity alone in her own reality; but at least it was honest here.