How can so much pain

Fit into a single human being

Only yearning for love

And freedom

Scream

I never learned how to scream.

Whenever I want to

Whether in life or in dreams

My voice curls up in my throat

And it comes out as a weak, raspy thing

All the velvet in it gone

All the honey made into hard crystals

That bury themselves in my throat the more I try to scream

And no amount of muscle knowledge

Or voice coaching

Can make it come out

My loudest voice is a whisper

Low, soft, clear

But how I want to scream.

I never learned to scream

Because I was always afraid

Of what my voice could do.

Mother

When I was born

My mother cried instead of me

And that’s what’s remembered

Because her loud cries were always more important

Than my silent sobbing.

Waves

Your breathing in my ear

Sounds like the waves

The waxing and waning

Of the tempestuous tide

That inhabits your frail and beautiful body.

I could trace every surface route and invent some more

But I chose to lose myself in its depths instead

Navigating the calm surface

While yearning for the deepest abyss.

I’m not afraid of the dark.

Alive

My insatiable appettite for all living things

Will keep me alive

I have a hunger

To live

In spite of everything

I throw my head to the sky

I laugh at myself

Laugh at gods

Laugh at the absurdity of it all

The bravery and stupidity both

Of being alive

Release

Whenever I want to scream

My voice becomes a whisper

Whenever I want to hit someone

My punch becomes a caress

Am I this loving and caring?

Or am I just afraid of releasing

The beast within?

Starvation

I thought I’d starve myself for you

Shrink myself to accommodate you

But I ended up with a body

As loud, vast and soft

As my huge heart.

And if you couldn’t accept one

You could never accept the other.

The only thing I was starved of

Was love and affection

And this hunger

This primordial thirst

Was something you could never quench on empty promises

And fierce looks

And the more I shrunk

The tinier I got

The emptier I got

The hungrier I got

Speech

I couldn’t speak.

Sounds would come out

But they couldn’t be formed into words

And people weren’t patient enough

To wait for those sounds to become words

But still, I couldn’t stop speaking

I steeled my heart

Everytime I opened my mouth

I cried

When nobody wanted to listen

But I had something to say.

It was not courage that lead me to keep opening my mouth

It was not a choice I made

It was sheer, stupid impulsivity

It was my own life, pulsing so hard I had to act on it

I had to be part of it

And I had so much to say

So much to give

I had to speak.

I couldn’t speak

But I did it, anyway.

Space Storm

How many times

Have I lied here

Eyes closed, completely immobile

Except for that single shifting foot

Dancing to an urgent rhythm of its own

That slowly starts spreading to the leg

As the rhythm quickens

And the tension grows

How can I contain such an immeasurable cosmos inside

And not express it at any given time

Being a tapping foot,

Ten bitten nails

Or a thousand thoughts storming through my brain

Healing isn’t a linear stream

It’s a devastating space storm.

Slumber

My heavy eyelids wore down with sorrow

And a thousand words were being spelt in the darkness behind them

Over and over again

Making the room spin

The bed dance

Only I stood still, in a trance

Of inertia

Everything spun but I

A body full of lead

A heart full of sky

PTS III

Mother

Why do you cry?

Is it because I can’t make you not cry?

I can’t pull you from the floor

You’re too heavy

Your heart is too heavy

For you to carry it

And I can’t carry it either.

Mother

Why are you leaving?

I know you want to run away from yourself

But running away from myself

Will not accomplish it

Mother

Do you recognize me?

The gentle bosom that caresses you

And sings you to sleep

Is not that of your mother.

I am daughter

And mother both

And I have no bosom to lay on

Nor voice to sing me to sleep

Except my own.

PTS II

Your demands cut me in half

Into maiden and matron both

Condemning me into a half life

Where I’m neither one or the other.

I live at Twilight and at Dawn

I thrive in transient places

Between time and space

Where I can be simultaneously

Everything

And Nothing at all.

My Mother Is A Werewolf

My mother is a werewolf

She is sweet, caring and generous

Part human

Until she becomes aggressive and beast-like

Part wolf

She says she loves me in a minute

And in the next she’s baring her fangs

With blood in her eyes

Her screams muffled by howling

Leaving me bleeding helplessly in her maws

Like prey

My father is a vampire

I learned from him the ways of the world

How to read books, charm people

A thousand talents impossible to master in a single lifetime

But he ends up sucking people dry in order to survive

Including myself

I am daughter of both worlds

I am neither, I am both

I walk two planes at once

Both feet in different places

Trying to keep the balance

That they never managed to achieve.

Moonlight Girlfriend

The first time you kissed me

Was on the backseat of a car

After a gig.

Our friends were sleeping on the front seats

And we were on the backseat

Sharing a blanket

My blanket.

And that moment

Both of us, sharing a blanket in the backseat

In the dark, trying to sleep

Was the most beautiful thing I could ever have imagined.

We were intoxicated

From alcohol and dancing

The streetlights shined through the parking lot

And illuminated your sleeping face

That I couldn’t help keep staring at.

I loved your face.

I loved your sad eyes and your hands

And your mouth

More than I can possibly say.

I couldn’t tell you

I knew you could never feel the same way I did about you

I had heard the way you spoke about “girls like me”

Right next to me

As if to make sure I heard exactly what you thought of me.

And at that time

I thought you were right

I thought I wasn’t deserving of love

But I loved you, anyway

In ways I could never tell

And, despite that, there I was

Trying to sleep next to someone

Who said they despised people like me

But who in the few hours prior

Couldn’t keep their hands off me.

I was content

Just looking at you

And feeling you next to me.

But you had to do it.

You had to search for my hand

In the darkness, under the blanket

You had to touch it

Softly, slowly

As if feeling a new texture for the first time.

As your fingers moved slowly up my arm

I was completely frozen

I let it happen

I had to let it happen

I was confused, dumbfounded

I was used to suffering from desiring people

I wasn’t used to people desiring me and acting upon it

You moved slowly

And hungrily

In ways I wasn’t used to

But desperately wanted

When you kissed me

My lips were chapped

Hard and messy

From too much alcohol, anxiety and disbelief

But yours were soft and hungry

And wanted mine.

I caressed your face

You put your hand under my shirt

And as the tension grew between us

I found out the kind of hands you had

For someone as thoughtful and controlled as you were

You had wild, wandering hands

Touching and holding on into all kinds of places you didn’t want to want

And I realized the body you despised so

The tongue you said no man should ever kiss

Was making you very,

Very

Hard.

I didn’t know what to do anymore.

I bit you.

I bit your lower lip and sighed

And our lips parted ways.

You didn’t like that.

For a moment, I woke up from my dream-like state

I realized something was wrong

There was something else in your touch

Besides hunger and urgency

And that something

Was calculation.

You were still pretending to be asleep

Even in that state

You never opened your eyes, not once.

I caressed your face, once again

And you grabbed my hand

Not sweetly, no

You grabbed my hand like I had missed a clue

And you planted it

Right on top

Of your beautiful, glorious hard-on

A work of art of my own making.

But something was still wrong.

I grabbed your hand instead.

I held tight to it

And caressed it gently

As if saying

“I know. But no.”

You didn’t like that, also.

You jerked your hand off mine

An planted it

Right on top of my

Drenched underwear

For which you were solely responsible

Aggressively, assertively

As if I had the responsibility of accepting it

And letting it happen.

Once again I took your hand in mine

And caressed it

As if saying

“I want it, too. But no.”

I was naive at the time.

I thought someone who had the intimacy level of jamming his hand down my pants

Would also have the intimacy level of understanding that I might want something else.

So, you did resign yourself to your fate

Turning the other way

And leaving me facing your back

A little colder

A little confused.

I cuddled up against you

You barely acknowledging my presence

But I was still high

On the feeling

Of being loved by the person I loved

At long last.

I couldn’t sleep that night.

I lied awake, listening to you breathing

Looking at your shape in the golden lights

Wondering if you were actually sleeping or still pretending to sleep.

Morning came

Slowly and surely

And all my hope and happiness and yearning

Vanished with the morning light.

When you woke up

I could swear you were avoiding me

You were sitting next to me in the backseat

But at the same time

You were as far from me as humanly possible.

I wanted to talk with you about what had happened

You pretended to sleep, once again.

Everything you said to me

During that trip home

Was half a dozen knives

Dressed as words

Meant to put me in my place, once again.

Once we arrived at my door

I had to know

Where you stood in all this

So I asked you

If you remembered anything about last night at all

And

You answered me

That you had slept all night long

And remembered nothing

And that was all I needed to know

About the kind of person you were.

I decided, consciously

To believe your lie

Because I couldn’t forget it

And I spent the next few days in bed

Trying to believe the lies

Of a boy who just wanted to try out the girl he’d never introduce to his friends as his girlfriend

So he’d only love her in the dark

Where girls like her belong

His moonlight girlfriend.