We were emergencies. We still are.

WE WERE EMERGENCIES

Buddy Wakefield

A poet

can stick anything into the fog and make it look like a ghost.

But tonight let us not become tragedies.

We are not funeral homes

with propane tanks in our windows

lookin’ like cemeteries.

Cemeteries are just the Earth’s way of not letting go.

Let go.

Tonight, Poets, let’s turn our wrists so far backwards

the razor blades in our pencil tips

can’t get a good angle on all that beauty inside.

Step into this

with your airplane parts

and repeat after me with your heart:

I no longer need you to fuck me as hard as I hate myself.

Make love to me

like you know I am better than the worst thing I ever did.

Go slow.

I’m new to this

but  I have seen nearly every city from a rooftop without jumping.

I have realized the moon did not have to be full for us to love it.

We are not tragedies

stranded here beneath it.

If my heart really broke every time I fell from love

I’d be able to offer you confetti by now

but hearts don’t break, y’all,

they bruise and get better.

We were never tragedies.

We were emergencies.

You call 9 – 1 – 1.

Tell them I’m havin’ a fantastic time.

Dreaming of an author

I dreamed I could play the piano. That I sat down and laid my fingers on the keys and made up a song. People stopped and listened. You came up behind me, and with a smile laid you hand on my elbow. When I turned to leave, you hugged me. You smiled, looked at me with a simple fondness I haven't seen in years. You were there behind me, hand in mine, supporting me, grounding me, as I faced down uncertainties and triggers. You understood, and silently, with a touch of your skin to mine, you were my reassurance.

I miss you. And maybe part of what I miss is a memory. But I know you're still her, in all the ways that matter. I'm still me. I think, just maybe, we could still be us. But maybe not. Maybe all it is is nostalgia. Melancholy yearning for an imagined past.

It's not fair, the way my mind plays tricks with me. If only a time-traveller could document my memories, make a timeline of my heart and yours, take statements and accounts that could be analysed and understood, and write a history of how we got from there to here. If only someone had been watching, and could explain to me everything I have forgotten and distorted and dreamed into a facsimile of reality. Then they could write me like a character in a book, with motivations and reliable narration and emotional development. They could show me how I feel, and why. They could show me what I should do. They could write my life for me, because all the drafts I can manage would end up in the editor's shredder.

Unjinxing myself

It's been three days. I'm doing okay. I'm really doing okay. I pray it lasts. It's so hard to remember, when I'm bad, that things can feel so okay. If only I can remember this, how I feel now, maybe I'll remember that I can do this.


A song that calms my head, sometimes.

Dear you (plural)

Dear you,
I would tell you, I swear I would, if my problems didn't feel so insignificant compared to what you deal with on a daily basis. One of my greatest communication fears is that I will be told my problems are as small and petty as I tell myself they are. Of course, the other of my greatest fears is that I will be told the opposite, because then I would have to accept that there is legitimately something wrong.


Dear you,
I know you have a lot going on right now, and I know you definitely don't think of me anywhere near as much as I think about you, but I just want to see you some time. I just want to hang out with you. I have dreams about looking at you and smiling. Just smiling. That's all I want. Just to smile at you and flirt with you and laugh at your inane awesomeness. You gave me hope, you know, and even if all my instincts tell me to stay back, because you don't want me, because you deserve so much better, because I just screw everything up... I just want to see you. Bump into me in the street, eh?

Dear you,
I'm sorry I never pick up the phone when you call, but honestly, I look at it ringing and I just don't have the energy. All my conversations with you feel like lies, because I don't trust you enough to tell you how I'm really feeling. There's so much about me that you don't understand. And I don't see that changing. You brought me into this world but we've been growing apart ever since.

Dear you,
I really hope you don't think you've done something wrong. You haven't. The gaps between our conversations get longer and longer. I just... can't. All I see when I think of you is how much I have screwed you over. All the pain I've caused you. All the secrets I've kept, all the truths I've told. Everything. You, who I loved more than anything. I hope you don't miss me. I hope you don't feel like you need me, because you don't. I am a dagger in your back. I am a weight around your neck. You may have forgiven me, you may even think there's nothing to forgive, but I know better. I know the extent of my guilt, and I will never, ever forgive myself. I know I'm hurting you even more with every day I don't talk to you, but I just can't. Everything I do makes everything worse.

Dear you,
You're a great friend and I love you a lot, but sometimes the gap between us just seems so large. I mean, how can you not know the difference between a clitoris and a cervix?

Dear you,
I wonder if you hear me through the walls sometimes. I hear you playing the flute. Do you ever hear me crying? I hope not. I already feel too much of an inconvenience in my own house.

Dear you,
Help. I'm not fine. It hurts. Again. Talk to me?

Week by weak by week

I do so well, and then I don't. Usually I manage about a week of success, and I feel fantastic, and I hope, and it all feels so good... and then something goes wrong, and all of a sudden I'm back to square one: unable to leave my room, shaking, crying, feeling so fucking filthy all over that I want to scratch my skin away and crawl out from inside this hideous waste of flesh. Nothing even happened. I'm ill, so I feel like crap. I have to give a presentation tomorrow, so I'm having a fucking panic attack every time I think about it. I'm desperate to just hang out with my friends and laugh and forget everything, but I'm suffocating under the terrible feeling that I'm an inconvenience and a nuisance and a fucking burden to everyone around me. What the fuck is wrong with me what the fuck is wrong with me what the fuck is wrong with me. And how will I ever get help when all I can think is that I don't deserve it.