1.
Walking with your fevered footsteps falling soft.
I am nothing,
the sum of your somethings,
none of your everythings.

I wanted to be something.

Something beyond your eyelashes curl gently
upon swell of smooth cheek,
beyond those floorboards creaking -
dried wax old and curling -
and your feet were dark, cracked,
yellow-dirt testaments
written with your well-intentioned footfalls,
as my voice called somewhere behind lost,
looking for something I had never possessed.

2.
I saw yesterday through your stained glass mirrors,
through my rose colored deceptions,
through the concrete,
quick-sand,
reflecting waters of what had once been so certain
and was now so scattered.
Dust on old tabletops and knick-knacks,
and the fan spins gently,
stirring it up,
blinding us both.

Yesterday, you were sure you knew me,
and I looked back to see
and wanted your certainties,
but the mirrors were smooth
and the colors were wrong.
I was being pulled under,
but the reflection wasn't me,
and I realized that nothing of my yesterdays
was ever truly mine,
and you had never really wanted to see from the start.

3.
You are the void of everyone,
of no one,
of me pulling in upon myself.
All those voices who rose so softly
singing of an end,
but there were pauses between the verse,
silences in your singing,
and I should have heard the quiet seeping in,
telling of false security
and too many trusted assurances.

I see your face in everything no longer,
I think.
I want to look past the void of voices,
intentions, assurances I used to want to hear -
to see the silence creeping,
to know where the vines grow up in soft tendrils
sealing out the sound,
even if it means all I can ever know again
is quiet.

4.
Floating,
 
I was above myself,
wondering and foreign.
She, he, they, you were beside me but not,
seeing something I couldn't,
but tried,
as I flashed back in and was myself again -
the being of flesh and eyes and a voice that was
mine and not distant.
But the respite is always temporary,
and someday soon I'll stand again
on the front steps waiting
while the vision takes me,
and the cold air is nothing on my lips.
The screen door bangs shut behind someone else,
even though I am alone,
and all that I once was is below and strange
and frighteningly not me.
I will be waiting for your voice, then,
startling,
to draw me once again towards the night air,
the cold and real and stinging,
welcoming the frost.

5.
I think, sometimes, that there is nothing but my hope here.
The grass murmurs, secrets of earth beneath my feet.
The air tastes of a million plus people who breathe and sigh,
and it is all very real and sharp and vivid for me then.

Standing in weird clarity,
I breathe deep,
a car passes,
the lights blink.
I hear everything -
those trees, these voices,
the night and air and humming.
It is real there in that diamond-cut moment,
and I stop,
listen,
remember;
because I live for this moment -
these gathered shards -
when all I know is everything,
and I can feel my lungs expand,
knowing they are mine,
dreading when the moment will pass.
Crystallizing amber - hard and opaque.

6.
There are times when
yesterday sleeps in quiet, safe slumber -
not drugged or subdued,
but somehow releasing the moment.
There are times when
I don't remind myself to breathe,
when you are around me,
my reality,
and I click the shutter shut,
preserving the peace.

Someday…
I want to live where yesterday is always resting,
where I don't need your perceptions to see the road ahead,
where silence is comfort even though the voices still sing,
and I am never,
ever,
never left above myself and waiting.
I want to live in the world of clear eyes
and true possessions,
where I sing lullabies to my what-have-beens,
and my warm lips plant soft kisses
sealing their eyelids shut in fond farewell.