SheDreamer

i. learning to love is

a          l     o     n     e     l     y          t     a     s     k


i am not 
loved like that

"no vacancy" hangs over my chest

"we have no room in this ghosttown for you"

ii. tempted
to trace hot lines of desire
streaking my sheets red
blistering beneath bluejeans

iii. you were made for labor, not for love.
i whisper, 
pulling compression socks over swollen toes.


you were made for labor, not for love.
i hum,
silence nestling herself into my ribcage.


not for love. not for love.
my mouth is empty.
the endless warehouse shelves vibrate from boxes running along the roller tables,
tumbling head-over-bubblewrap into a truck driver's delivery route.


the bowed steel groans crookedly, promising
only for labor. only for labor.


iv. i've dreamed of summer romance.

how fitting i spend my time in a box
taping boxes shut
sending taped boxes into larger boxes
leave in a wheeled box
to come to a box where somebody lives.

my body-box is damaged goods
where is my sell-by stamp?


v.  i cannot learn to love.
i am only fit for labor.

i set the table for three:
my body-box, loneliness, and silence.

i do not make dinner.

best to leave the table unsatiated.


-help wanted, apply within (no vacancies)


original by shedreamer

"How are you?" they ask, stroking your arm. 

They see the scars. They know why they're there. They don't like it any more than you do.

You shrug off the smiles and the questions. "I'm fine." A thousand other answers spring to your tongue, begging to leap out into the air. "I'm still hurting", "I need to know it's okay to cry", "I need to know why you say such cruel things about the man I love[d]", "I loved him once. And i still love him. And i will ALWAYS love him.", "What do you do, when you've found your happily ever after, but someone else slammed the door shut in your face?", but most pressing of all...

"Do you believe in life after love?" 

You stare into the mirror, when the guests have come and gone, the wine drunken, the bread broken. You stare at your eyes and your nose and your lips and remind yourself that someone once loved not just the body you wear, but also the mind and heart and spirit and soul inside. You stare at yourself and smile. You know the answer.

"There is no life after love. Love never leaves."

That moment when you realize.....

unholy f.cking sh.t. 

i'm fat.

sometimes, breathing hurts.


breathe in the pain. feel the secondhand smoke sear your lungs as your eyes water. feel the panic setting into your mind as you realize breathing hurts. feel the toxic air pervade your capillaries as it presses phantom butterfly kisses along your aching jaw line. breathe in the pain.

and know that you are alive.

sometimes it's in these moments when everything else fades away to a soft, fuzzy gray that you become the clearest. you're the sharpest thing in your life and you're not going down with out a fight. you've been here a hundred hundred times before, and everytime you've stood tall. you've allowed the pain to drive you to your knees with your forehead pressed against the wall, and gone from a woman breaking into girl-sized pieces. you've let your first love be the thing that shreds your will to exist, and still you're standing tall. 

come, my dear. breathe in the pain. and know that you are alive.

you've lost a few fights before, and you will lose a few fights again. you really can't win every time. you've never learned, have you? you've heard the phrase "no one loves a loser" too many times. but what you've failed to realize is that no one loves a loser because a loser has lost love. you're not a loser, darling. but you're not a winner, either. you're facing your worst fear: mediocrity. 

you're afraid of standing on the border between success and failure, because a feather-soft touch can knock you over the edge. you're afraid of what youv'e been doing your whole life, aren't you? 

every night, you walk the serrated-knife edge between failure and living. sometimes, you've tripped and you've caught yourself on your bleeding, blistered hands.

you thought you could climb up the sky, steal the sun, and capture it in a jar. but the sun is not made of fireflies, and every wish you've made on it can happen.

you just need to made them happen yourself. "the world is not a wish-granting factory", and neither is it truly what destroys our dreams. it pushes them and pushes them and waits for the dreams to push back.

breathe in the pain. breathe in your dreams. breathe in resolution. 

you are alive.

you are living.

you are dreaming.

The sad part....

I don't want to get better.

He doesn't want me anymore...
So I'm tearing myself apart.

And relishing every.

Last.


Moment.