Final Portfolio

So, I had a hard time keeping up with my blogging during classes but here's the final versions I turned in for my course.

The Jump

She surrendered to the dream

within a café and the hope

of once dying embers

expanded out.

Anticipation arrives as restless wind;

their future, vague,

yet full of trepidatious longing.

He has been gone all

of two weeks, and still

he appears on the train

at her door

with open arms

promising a life together, shouting

his words skyward:

I need you like air, nicotine,

and conflict. Three years

of heartache will endure…

She reaches to him

and touches his hand –

he is not yet there.

hot sauce

red stains on the wall,

a reminder of shattered glass,

kool-aid dripping to the floor.

stale whiskey on his breath,

spoiled hot sauce in the trash,

an unforgiveable offense.

the red stains weep

for the shattered girl upon the floor.

self loathing

droplets of blood welling up

in half-moon tears up and down her arms.

scar tissue gouged

in the depths of one too young to comprehend

that the horror he felt

for his deviant genetics was not

her fault.

when his own blood splattered

hotel walls, she understood,

her love could never save him from himself.

she commemorates with ink

‘Ruin is a gift’

where he’d left his mark

so many years before.

Seeking

My longing is a hole that is nothing

but what remains around it. Once,

I wanted to be the white wind. Once,

I wanted anyone to fill me. I reach

for anyone willing. A soldier buttons himself

back into khaki, he looks up at me

and rubs his eyes, but I

am not there. A strange lostness

bodily present, the same body

broken open. Tell me what you know

about a body, and I will tell you how

it turns against itself. Letting the space

I free up remain vacant, a room that

remains locked, pieces of the moon

leaving for an empty home.

Nobody loves this genius child.