Everyone in Vienna is so quiet

it's like the entire city is a library

on the tram

no one speaks to each other

every one cool calm and collected

moving through in their own private pierced 

world, with a Freitag bag on their shoulder,

and a beer or a cigarette on their lips,

these beautiful people stand by the side of the Donau

and they are not ashamed of their nudity

(why would they be? they are beautiful.)

Seeing my name written in another’s hand

is a kind of strange intimacy

I don’t think I’ll ever fully understand

I want to be loved I want to comprehend

How I felt from the beginning all the way to the end

Opened my chest like the cardboard box I keep

In my parents house on the top shelf I can't reach

Books, pictures, notes, folded memories

Black t-shirt on his white neck 

Reminds me of you 

And all the love I’m searching for

I could turn blue

Holding my breath

Standing at the door

Every gain I lose a little more

What remains?

What to live for?

I always thought you made my world divide

Parallel universes multiply

I lost you in one in all of them

I was too good at hiding

My fatal flaw is never deciding

What I should do

With all the love I have to give

I could turn blue

Standing here

Fingers like a sieve

Every day I have to live

What can I say?

What can you forgive?

tonight I remember listening to your heart as you fell asleep

you the first person I ever saw jolt into it

the intimacy of that transition

mine and new.

I poke myself until I cry,

over and over,

and yet there is so much

to cry about.

I want to hold things that you have held. I want to touch your letters on the page. I want to feel the depth of the love and the pain, something that was everything our relationship represented, that drove me to eventual exhaustion, that made me have to turn away. Am I stronger now? Am I far enough away to bear it? You would have killed me I think had I let you, but I could not let you.

 I'm scared, I'm scared, I'm scared

I repeat it to myself like a mantra

the words like beads over and over again in my mouth

I text them I tattoo them on my body I yell them I etch them in the white stone of the bathtub

anything to get them out to keep the current flowing

to not sit in the stillness that is a balm and a fire that allows for the space of an answer

I ask her a question I already know the answer to because it is the only way to get from where I am to somewhere new

I'm a big girl I can answer it myself:

Something is wrong.

sometimes humor is the only way to deal with sadness

sometimes you need to shut your sadness in a drawer. lock it. throw away the key. claw at the opening.

I am putting myself in the space between knowing and not knowing.

Wrapping myself here as though I could ever be ready to receive the news I most fear.

To hear from her is alarming he says and you can think of no better word

alarming

he has a way of making the whole world end and he always did

 you always ke(e)p(t) me suspended

dancing in honey

turning like a bug

and I wanted to

to twirl for you

we were young and we were foolish

and we loved each other and how could we not

I was always under your thumb

even as I wriggled out

even the strong woman I've become

can be tended by the memory of your hands

things we remember that no one understands.

.)

some things break your heart all the time

over and over again 

like hail hitting the pavement or the steady click of a clock that ticks only when 

some thing some where is cracking in two.

more than a dull ache, the hitting of your head against a wall

repetitive and methodical

the rituals that allow us to embody the hurting

the choice we have to make 

(to step away

from things that we can't fix