grace mariner Poems

It's strange that you do not live in my waking hours anymore.
It's not that you aren't always lurking in the shadows,
ready to strike at my most disadvantaged parts,
my most disadvantaged thoughts.
...

There is a decaying mansion inside of my head.
Within dwell the demons, caretakers of the ghosts of all I've lost.
They are fed on pieces of my fragmented ego, jagged and splintered like bones baked in the sun.
But no sun shines here now, so their brittle nature comes from the careful nurturing of a damaged self...
...

I can't see you anymore.
I can feel you only in those deeper, darker moments spent in solitary.
The emotion, the intensity left when you crept to safety,
leaving me alone in the lions den.
...

Have you ever wanted something?
Oh not your usual desires...a pony for your birthday,
to marry Bruce Springsteen, to own a classic Mustang.
I have been looking for something my whole life but it's never been clear
...

You gave me bad directions.
I think it was intentional.
I could be wrong I suppose,
but doubtful.
...

I'm glad you're escaping this tomb I've kept you in,
though my current state would not make it seem so.
When the elder left it didn't seem so bad.
I realize now that was because of you.
...

Do the words we speak hover above us and descend to kiss or scratch our ear
in our moments of vulnerability?
Jumbled, does all that is spoken, throughout the vastness, arc
and follow the curvature of its horizon?
...

And she built her wall.
Each brick crafted from the atrocities and losses that dominated her existence.
The mortar, her tears and blood created to seal that sanctuary,
that place of escape,
...

The power of a child is immeasurable.
They can make the strongest of us melt with their happiness
or rage at their pain.
Never do we become more vulnerable than when we must decide against ourself
...

There is a condemned museum.
It exists in the mind shaft of my once brilliant mind.
It's hours of operation vary upon the maudlin nature of my character.
Contrary to everyone's belief, I don't like my existence in these dark dungeons,
...