Artemis

Finally...

A chill in the air. 

The temperature has shifted. 

I am in two places at once. 

Holding you, 

And Holding him. 

I do not want to eat, but luckily, 

He feeds me. 

I do not know where you have gone...but luckily, 

He is here. 

I am draped with the burdens he knows well and bares...

Couched by them. 

Inhaling the demons that peer behind my mothers eyes, 

As she leans on me, 

Til once I was crushed, 

Time 

And time again. 

The karma is weighted, pitted against our future, like we are ever walking forwards on an escalator going up. 

I have endured the motherlessness...

The betrayal, the use

Under the cerebral palsy of narcissism; 

Against the demonic shell that took over 

That woman's psyche long ago. 

As I endure much. 

The words of his Step-mother beseech a wrath in me, I have til now, kept at bay. 

The other cheek, I would turn with the underlying shock of the audacity that would come out of that woman's mouth. 

She reminds me of my mother. 

She reminds me of the girls' mother, 

Whom no longer do I speak to. 

She reminds me of the "friends" that judged, 

Instead of being a safe place to heal in the heart of. 

I am not perfect...but why are they so unwise, these people around us? 

Why has he gone? 

Our Sweet Artemis. 

Now the prayers must never cease. 

Now the love must always flow. 

Now I must continue to be the bigger person against all these perpetrations 

Against us. 

With what energy I have, I have done what I can. 

And I will do more. 

I have nothing to be sorry for. 

I kept myself alive. 

And I keep getting out of bed to face each day. 

Where has he gone, our love? 

I wonder, if ever, he might return. 

Old Friends

You stopped being somebody 

 I could sit next to. 

I began to feel the weight on my chest 

 Under your babbling and tone deaf centeredness. 

My air was heavy, and you had moved beyond it. 

It was always lonely, carrying so much weight, 

Living in a world where friends would move on.  

I was left to the burdens in this life I had never asked for- always dense and sunken with the weight I carried along on my back. 

My headaches would ravage me, and sink me down into bedsheets.

My nerves would turn on me, as I begged for death. The pain became so 

Physiological...

And so many, too many whom I called friends, 

Had left me baring the weight on my own. 

Maybe not that I should even fault them, but what then, was ever a friend?

And if we thrive in light, 

 Then I have died a slow death in darkness, sealed only more 

By the tomb of my truth that I chose to bare 

For myself, and the world. 

And maybe to them, I had nothing left to offer, 

 Like the ones I'd shunned, for their own and obvious defaults. 

I know I have carved this life out, just as the loneliness was always destined to bond to it. 

And still of course it hurts. Hurts to love. Hurts to be denied because of who you are. 

And perhaps the blame was always mine. 

And not THEIR burden to bare. 

The Box

 Your words were sent to me on a box. 

Plain. White thin cardboard. Wrapped in red ribbon, so that a line parallels each square, 

Wrapping the heaven and earth quadrants 

Into four. 

I knew it was real, 

As empty as it was, 

And now they are above me, your mind as thoughts

In my astral body 

Hovering, 

Fluttering, 

Like beautifully buzzing butterflies 

That just won't go away. 

Every aspect of it was real; 

The games were the other side of a coin. 

The possession intended. 

The challenges accepted. 

The torment, meant, 

To be everlasting....because those were the promises we made. 

I loved you. 

And I always will love you. 

And there is a deep peace in that...

The empty box, 

So full of words 

And all that will always 

Remain there.