I rise as no giant. This blood-thirsty heart, these tumbleweed bones. I recall with some fondness the day those beliefs fell, crumbling. Ashes to ashes and dust to dust to tiny particles inhaled with each blessed breath.

It was the year of erasing words from my vocabulary.

There are Weights who never disappear [completely]. Some days we press our fingers to the wound, not wanting to heal, but instead, attempting to gauge its depth. I find that when I run my hardest, I am most conscious of the mad beating in my chest. Do you imagine, sometimes, in the quiet of your body, that you feel a sort of detonation? I had a sad, sickly love once, and it ached between my lungs for months.

{He was a dark, sullen boy. He lacked roots [the pair of them].
This unfinished part, this liquid soul. I lusted after a man with no mother [broke off bits], completed his thoughts. You were raised from the very core of the Earth /came to her aid. Like a heavy angel he tumbled to pieces. It was always our fate/our faith to fall [we fell].

Once, there was someone like the sea. He was an entire herd of wild horses. Trampled, lean: a fit like careworn gloves [only to weep at night over the loss of it all]. Opened her up and turned her pages (in despair). He turned around in the road and tried (to change his mind.) [[We would not mend for the want of a father's love.]] [Quant'e' bella giovinezza /Che si fugge tuttavia!] We were very brave, and in those days chose to make nothingness out of the vast somethingness we were given.

And there were others: the ones who widened the veins and raced around the bloodstream. They closed up their own boxes long ago and made no grand to-do about the departure. Gave me up for all the tea in China. (Still to dream about clove cigarettes and peaches. There are times when even the musty smell of the attic brings my stomach up to my mouth. Sticky, wet thoughts & damp with condensation. A turnstile in the mind, all mildew and/or rust.)

We held our own dead bodies, open like drawers. [sent you diseases in each letter.] This infectiousness & these felicitations / to climb your trellis. Gape heaving raw, clawing at. Relegated to deeper depths. He got under my skin/peeled apart [the ever-exploding man]. He was a little boy when he knew her, and in many ways, there remains a fleeting glimpse in every batted lash. I saw these corpses in a row and counted my blessings and fears on each. Some are even quite rational. (A small thing, a Soul.) I tend to capitalize on your superlatives. Cleverness escaped from the tips of their tongues/ it was the very guise that bound them together. Adam and Eve preferred to be naked, after all.}

This part of my life is where I remember to forget. Those few who lived in/were part of this life: I have nearly lost them [to lose trust like some careless child / mistrust like any bad archer]. You, a wooden nickel of a girl, who races for everything. Tempted to tempt the Lord thy God. I still haven't decided which shelf to place you on.

The next nest will have stronger walls/making everyone an unwelcomed guest. [Mankind, the biggest liars of creation!] What fine strands connect us to each other are sliced [as easily as ___]. I am trying to learn the difference between WANT and NEED.

Ask and ye shall receive, not what you wanted, or even what you thought you wanted, but that which you lacked the wisdom to know you needed, and that which all those vain enemies tried to keep you from knowing you could have, and that tiny, fleeting thing shall be heaped upon you with guilt, and pride, and pity, and some condescension, and thou shalt weep for the shame of getting what thou did not ask for and everyone goes home in the end.

If I were to create a self-portrait for every day of the year, I would paint closed eyes on every even day and open eyes on every odd day, and when I finished, I would flip through this blinking book of my own wondrous creation and feel very, very tired.

Resolution:
Reclaim thyself.

More than knowing thyself, more than loving thyself, accepting thyself, or bearing thyself. Resolve to reclaim the self we had and the self we were becoming.

I hereby re-plant myself, inside of these words and within this skin and without these walls.
I am a product of the most supernatural selection,
and I am growing into a very. mighty. oak.