Pain is just another word for you

Grief is a synonym
for everything
that doesn't come back.
I'm made of waiting and
patience.
Or perhaps an aphasia
that doesn't last long.
A part of my life will
always be stuck with you.
You're my childhood.
My angst. My passion.
The beginning of me.
And I want you to be the end.
Grief is a synonym
for everything
that doesn't come back,
everything that
remains broken,
half-way, undone.
This orderly chaos is
how the world
spins around,
twirls like a toddler,
and falls to the ground
laughing.
Grief is what
I carry within.
Grief is what I see without.
I carry the world around
on my shoulders.
Take a peek.
Come, see us dance.

Once upon a time, a girl
fell down the stairs and never
got back up.
The hem of her pinafore
stuck under her own boots.
Her forehead bruised, her
elbow scarred.
She hears her mother crying
in a faraway room,
and music from another.
It's difficult to tell which is which.
The girl doesn't move.
Her prickly fingers run
over the dew drops settled
above the swell.
They pop without making
a sound.
It hurts, somewhere.
Abandoned in the middle
of the story,
her childhood leaving.
It hurts. Everywhere.
What comes next, you ask?
You.
You come next.
You're the writer now.
Fall down the stairs.
Laugh with the girl.
Cry. Give her
your hand.
Come back for her.
It's the only way to end a story.
Everything else is
false, and nothing
else matters.
Look at me,
Take over.

Love is just another word
for you / A letter lost
in the mail.
You once said that
hate might just be an excess
of love in the past.
And how you could never
hate me, over and over again.
All I hear now is how
your love could never
be an excess,
never more than enough.
Love is just another word
for you.
And there's so much of it.
The nailbed reeks of a stale tale,
smelling of all the displays of
affection that went unseen.
This pain has taken all of the
space in my body.
The scalpel traces a vein
and a wail oozes out.
There’s an invisible weight
on my chest that doesn’t
let me breathe.
A body floating under
a frozen lake.
Pain
is just another word
for you.
The distance between us, is the
exact distance between my
childhood and I.
Sometimes, you're the jasmine
that falls off a branch and
lands on my feet.
I pick it up and keep it
pressed inside a book so
it lives forever.
Or just some more.
How do I get rid of
this responsibility that
doesn't exist?
Distance
is just another word
for you.
And there’s so much of it.