unsent letters

unsent letter #191

today I wish
I never met you
never heard you talking
about my amazing eyes
today I wish
I never knew your name
asked for your phone number
fourteen months ago
in winter
I wish I’d never heard your voice
the way you sing
or say my name
wish I never heard you laugh
tell a joke
say you love me
made me believe it
today I wish I never got to know
your mother
her beautiful spirit
her beautiful soul
and way of making me feel
like a daughter should
I wish I’d never sent you
Michael Jordan valentines
or lemonade
mardi gras beads
wish I hadn’t written you hundreds of poems
too many songs
wish I never let you send presents
to my kids
let them love you
today I wish I could forget your
phone number
your face
your lies and anger
I wish I could forget
how you made me feel
like the only one who mattered
or in the end
how I meant nothing
how I brought you down
tore you apart
made your life hell
how loving me was a mistake
I wish I had never dedicated my book of poetry
to you
given you the first copy
wish I never planned my future with you
shared my circle house
let you put your fishtanks in
because now fish tanks
will always remind me of you
basketball will always remind me of you
the whole continent of Australia and everything on it
will always remind me of you
metal will always remind me of you
church will always remind me of you
even

the simple act

of waking up

is a reminder

of what’s not there

the silence in the air

today, more than ever

I wish I never met you

unsent letter #190


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

dear ____,

was just driving around
at lunch
in a borrowed car
thinking of all the things
we take that aren’t ours
thinking of your eyes
and how they shine
when you smile
not that I would know
its just something I can feel

blank lines fill my notebooks
empty spaces on my shelves
that I used to imagine
full of our things
a marriage of mixed up
mirages
and trinkets of two
lives tied together

my guitar gathers dust in
the corner
I used to beg my fingers
to learn how to lick the strings
into songs
that would tell you
all the things
my trembling heart
could not

these days
the telephone is a stranger
I walk down the greeting card aisle
and buy all the cards that
make me think of you
even though I know
I can’t send them

I listen to that one message
still on my machine
“Hey its me…
I love you very much.”
I play it like a prayer
and my heart crumples into
its paperprison
words
and words
and words I cannot say
words you never said
words we never meant
and all the ones we did
and now

I’m alone

with no way
to tell the difference.

drunken unsent blah blah blah # 188

karma apples
still bleed red on my
rainbow tongue
i siltshine in the river
bottom i am a snake
tonight and these
licked open wounds
are white with venom
with blinking blue like skies
that don't quite know what to do
fuck everysingleone that says
i should get over you
caterpillar dreams filtering
through these invisible smoke
screens
i know what it means
when you hide
i know you have nothing
left to save but other people's
money and your polished pride

if you want to come see me
i'm sure someone would give you
a ride

camel dry comraderie gets me by
in the desert of cactus corruption
where your words are still hanging to dry
i hate the way i dream of you
i hate the way everyone keeps asking me why

she is the wilderness in wicked tales
she blacks out the sun like an eclipse
swallows me like a whale
and i learn to live in the ribcage of
a livingbreathing hell

i learn to love you
and leave you
so well

and pretend i'm not under your spell

gravity speaks in decibles
destroyed between hand and fist
if i knew it would come to this
i would have tried harder
or at least
pretended
to resist

unsent letter #?

they think i am so anonymous
but little do they know
how you hide in corners
and whisper with a voice
that sounds like
rainsound on shingles
that you never make sense
or give a straight answer
and its this blessing and curse
that i know you this well
and she thinks she has
the inside story
but i made it my life to know
every slight inflection
of your well trained voice and
it always shocked you
that i could tell
when you'd been awake too long
or just come from the shower
or crying the night before
when you said hello
but i had a dangerous mother
and her addictions left her loaded
like a weapon
and i was a little girl barometer
of the pressure in the air
my skin was the breathalizer test
when she kissed me
of the alcohol content
in her blood
and i needed to know
just like with you
i broke open the barricades
to let you in
and walled you inside

and watched you
walk away
listened to you tell me
how the lies were for
my own good
how i couldn't handle the
truth
because i never can
because i'm fragile

and i raged and rocked myself to sleep
i drove to
the river's edge
with pockets of poison
and precious promises
entwined in worthless
strings
handcuffed to the emptiness
of the space where
i thought you'd always be

i listened her voice
in the background
did you know i could hear
and the tap tap tapping
of your nervous explanations
the weakness you could never
show me
and you could not answer
when i asked your heart
the question
but the silence told a story
all its own...

unsent letter #147

dear you

I guess sometimes I’m too poetic for my own good
and no one knows what I’m talking about
today I almost cried at the orange on the glass
of a nearby building
I almost cried
when the cold air of February
hit my face
I found a familiar taxi driver
and told him to take me
to you
but he heard me say
621 South Pierce Street
instead
and got lost just going there
I ate a lunch of lies
the kind I tell myself
the kind I wear inside my shoes
the kind I curl up next to
when even sleep seems like
a punishment
people say I sound sad these days
I almost argue
I watched you laughing
from across the street
I thought of saying something
but these days
I’m not so bold
not so tied down by
the strings of a heliumheart
these days my dreams are more like memories
and my memories are more like wishes
that I keep paying for
with pennies polished
because every fountain
haunts me
and because

you

not loving me

was the hardest thing

I ever had to face
in my whole entire
drugaddictedfracturedskullmother
childmolestingstepfather
fosterfamilyonmyownsince15
torturedtragiclife

and even the times
I cut myself
for a sense of something real

the shameful scars
the abandoned dreams
the nightmare gunshots

nothing could ever
will ever hurt

like losing you

from between my fingers
as I watch your smile
as a stranger
now

and everything I never wanted to believe in
planted in this careful garden
so that even when you left
I’m stuck
with the aftermath
blooming like a jungle
a feeling of forever
fatefully furrowed
at my feet

(not a valentine) unsent letter #148

i was gonna
get drunk and write you a letter
a winesoaked valentine
that would make you love me again
or make me realize
you already do
maybe even make her realize it too
i've been so good
everyone's proud
the way i sent her that letter
asking for forgiveness
for stealing you away
when i was picking up the pieces
of another broken promise
and i gave you what you needed
some solace from the sun
the way your skin burns
from the places
unprotected
splashing black paint
around your room
tracking black footprints across your
carpet
and your mum smiles
in exasperation
and puts her arms around her
shadow daughter
and i look into the eyes
of my makeshift mother
but i don't have any liquor
and that other boy
is on his way
with his grey horse
and almostcompliments
you stand nightmarestill
not sure how to make
the world stop spinning
from your side
knowing all that stands between us
and how your voice gets lost
between the dying clicks
of telephone time
and morning measures
of eyelashgirls
batting their way
between your oversize fingers
so this is not a valentine
or even an appropriate response
to your lazy
lastnight hello
i could smell your curls
and conjure the warmth of
your justwoke chest
under my heartbroke hands
you kissed me imperceptibly
with playful words
with the way
you almost
didn't let me
go...

unsent letter #144

maybe once it mattered
but I don’t think it ever did
under the fear and loneliness
how much you loved me
how much we talked
how often you said the things
I needed to hear
or apologized
or let me cry
or made me laugh
I don’t think it ever really mattered when you
look at the big picture
of me and you
and where we were
and where we went
and how we are now
so far apart from each other
but I can still look across
my horizon
and see a silhouette of you
I can still feel your fingerprints
on my heart
and dream you next to me
I still keep a box in my heart
of all the gifts you gave to me
love, faith, hope and believing
in things I could not see
and here you are this new version
of the boy I loved so desperately
I wonder if you see the new me
how our hands would still fit together
perfectly

unsent letter #145

on a plate
the world
broken in two
i would give to you
cracked open
over easy
like lava
like love
i would spend my bus money
to buy you
some gum
pink
pushing
of your tongue
reminds me
just now
of all the things
i never gave you
but i would
hock my grandma's
wedding ring
to buy you
some medicine to stop your runny nose
or buy your dog a flea collar
then wrangle up
another dollar
to picture booth
your smile
keep it in my back pocket
foreverawhile
collect tin cans
for nickels
i could dump by handfuls
into fountains
wishedup little
kisses
and i would rob my piggybank
to send you to china
for wonton soup
i've been saving since i was 5
for something big...

unsent letter #139

thunder
lightning
twintwisted
into irony
I blankblink
the sky
turns
W H I T E
where are you now
we could slip into
this moment or…
something

more

comfortable
I have no end of pages
to put you on
if they
tell me
one more time
how I’m only in love
with the idea
I’ll throw myself
off the Sydney Harbor Bridge
and see how long it takes
for me to drown
see if the idea
of ice blue
smacks into my empty chest
as hard
as the

I d e a

of losing yoou

see if the idea of being
saved
crosses my imaginary mind

what a pretty flailing picture
of me
to add to your collection
(correction)
IMAGINED collection

see if I still believe in the miracle
of resurrection…

or maybe that’s just another
idea
that’s lost its unspoken attraction…

unsent letter #133

i guess its ironic
if you could call it that
how the less i have to say
the more words come
and these days
i
don't even know how to make my fingers move
the keys press themselves like a player piano and i can only watch
in slow motion
as you move
farther away
or sometimes
it seems you're closing in
and my belljar screams
like a wetfinger being
slid along its
edge
and its february almost
the fourteenth
and everyone else has it
holds it
plays with it
writes about it
sings about it
hallmark has a whole aisle for it
candy hearts declare it
and i am
alone
with half of it
missing
the piece that makes me whole
when i was with you
i was missing so many pieces
that you tried to make yourself
enough to fill every one
and finally gave up trying
and let me fall
i dropped
so far
and sunk so deep
before i hit the bottom
of that well
and picked up my shatter
cradled
in this nest
of forgiveness
for myself
for hurting you
(it wasn't big enough)
and i learned to find the pieces to make me whole
and one at a time
i slid them into place
until i was almost picture perfect

(everyone thinks i'm perfect
because they don't see the hole inside
in the shape of you)

unsent letter #124

i was never ready
to not be in love with you
to spill over
with emptiness
and apathy
i was never ready
to walk away
without a fight
its just not how i was made
i'll never be ready
to hand you over
no strings attached
to someone else
who will never hit
that depth of you
that i swam in
every night
i was never ready
to hear the truth
about this
one-sided love affair
just as much
as you were
never ready
to let your mouth
make those words

unsent letter #123

monday on my mind
all the things
i've left behind

and you becoming
a ghost
i guess that's what i needed
some distance
to numb my heart
to you
to her
and now what
and now what

"you can't see when all your dreams are coming true..."

"i had to let you go..."

and time can't heal this wound
but it can hide it from me
under layers of new skin
i've been pouring my heart out all along
no wonder then
i have this hard won piece
(peace)
and you are tangled in loose ends
waiting to say
what needs to be said
waiting to be invited
back into my bed
i guess i still love you
or at least the you i knew
but now i know
you weren't the person i thought you were
and that leaves me to question everything
and those answers leave holes in my tongue
i found the first signs
i'm no longer young

i'm finally

finally

done.