Six-and-a-half.

When my patients answer the question:
"So I can best evaluate the effectiveness of the pain medication I am about to administer: how would you rate your pain, from a zero to a ten -
zero being no pain,
and ten being the worst pain ever ever"
-with-
"Ten."
I think: you haven't met my father.  You have no idea what a "Ten" is.
He eats pain for breakfast, and smiles back.
Talk to me after you've fractured a femur.
Let alone both.
At least, talk to me after you've experienced true bone pain.
Talk to me after you've had that baby,  (but also after you've given it up to someone else so as to also have to have given up the wonderfully healing effects of oxytocin...)
Come to me after you have buried a child,
After you have watched a good man die.
Or left your dignity in the dust for naught but Love,
and while, in the meantime, I won't withhold medication or treat you any different on the surface...
Talk to me then,
And I won't judge you.
I am thankful every day that I don't know what "Ten." feels like.
But the days I see what it looks like,
I am thankful for you.
For your ignorance,
For my forgiveness.
For our shared understanding that you're afraid and so am I,
But that neither of us
Really know.

Black-and-Blue

I don't want your future,
No, I don't need your past
I'll just take you here
And now and maybe it will last
Forever
And maybe we will turn and walk away.

But know in this that I still need you
Here and now that I still want you
Lift your eyes, boy
The light still shines through
I always have and do still love you.

In the arms of the ocean.

"No need to pray, no need to speak...
Though the pressure is hard to take
It's the only way I can escape
It seems a heavy choice to make..."

"I'm not giving up,
I'm just giving in."

Wish for the stars.

"I love the stars," you said.
I loved you for that.
That and the sparks in your eyes,
The books you read and
The secret smile we shared.

I reach and grasp at straw
At the sharp grass blades outside
My door.
A present, here,
A fantasy world I'm not sure I ever wanted
Real.
Yes or no,
To commit or back down
To go through
Or be true?
Truth is, I'm just not there.
And I don't know if I'll ever be
But I'll do it anyway because
You want me to.

"I wish," you said
Or at least I saw it in your eyes
I wish too,
I wish lots of things,
That I could give up wandering nights
By the river,
Over a freeway-
L' appel du vide
Singing in my every step.

Cold.

I used to be good at everything.
I used to be that girl,
Perfect body, perfect husband, perfect life.
I could teach it all
I knew it all and could do it better than you.
Trying to love an evolution
I thought I had it,
I thought I had figured it all out
All about choice and blame and responsibility
About love, forgiveness, all those things that matter.
Fleeting inspiration, gone now with the last rays of summer
Flakes away with the last layers of Joy, Truth, and Clarity.
Holes burning bigger through the flag I carried home
Leave me standing in the snow,
Staring at my footsteps.

Out of focus.

"I never knew daylight could be so violent"
I eat, sleep, and breathe the dark.
'Do you still?'
Every day.
I want a revolution
Some kind of resolution
I feel it screaming through my
Breaking and flowing through my
Fast as the water holds me
Takes everything I have just not to.
Everything I hold and want and need just not to.
Feel like I can't hang on to anything.

Side effect.

I'm tired of dreamland.
Never know when it's gonna take me by
Surprise.
Suddenly swimming in pudding,
Breathing in mud
And screaming in little paper pieces that just
Fall to the ground.
Too dizzy to think,
Too well to let go,
I push the trees back out the window,
And the ghosts from the door
I go back to my work
Keeping this place to myself.
And through it,
Through and through
A small and perfect clarity
I know what's missing, here
Which makes me want it so much more.