in these hastily written odes to her, to life, to depression, to home, to loss, to pain, to tender refrain, to bloody knuckles, to jazz, to music, to muses, to ruses, to rhyme

in tanka, in haiku, of sonnets, of soliloquies, free form, rigid structure, dialogues and diatribes

this is a dedication to you, i’m dedicated to you, i’m torn in two because of you, writing this because of you, to every single one of you, the yous i’ve used, the yous i’ve been abused by, the you i yearned to stand by, the you i stood by and watched die, the you i couldn’t stand to see cry, the you i couldn’t understand why

this goes out to you, with your hand on the frame, wish i remembered your name

and to you with knife in your hand, the one who stabbed me and then apologized and ran

it goes out to you, when you snapped my wrist in another fit of anger, unfit to mother, unfit to nurture, resist your nature

to the marks of your hate on my arms, to initial orgasmic self harm, to the residual fear and the instinctual need to hide under the table from your barbs, from the unspoken anger that triggers alarms

it goes to you with your smile and promise of more, it goes to you with the tongue of an angel in the mouth of a whore

it goes to you two beings of perfection, the two i seldom mention, for fear of unwanted attention, my suicidal thought prevention

to you in the ground long buried, to the one that i nearly married, to the one i had to divorce, and to all of my true friends of course

to the sea and the waters of sorrow, to yesterday and my dreams for tomorrow, to the sun and the moon and the stars, to the rain and the snow and the scars

to my father gone too soon, to hades i’ve inscribed your rune, to the ones over tears i have shed, to the one who sings on in my head

it goes to the wildflowers that haunt my dreams, to the ones who keep me going behind the scenes, to the grass of the hill where i’m laying, to those of you who get what i’m saying

to my fear of capitalization, my infrequent use of punctuation, my hatred of the oxford comma, my love of unfair melodrama

to sarcasm and cutting words spoken, to the fact i won’t let a promise be broken, to the urge to lasso the sun, how i’ll curse and i’ll spit til i’m done

it goes to all of this and to none of it, to breaking uncomfortable silences with the inappropriate

to the rise and the fall of my mania, to things that sound insane to you, to the opposing point of view, to the immature kid in all of you

it’s a dedication, a dead incarnation, a vase of carnations and baby breath arraignments

it’s my way of saying thank you, it’s my way of hinting at fuck you, it’s a roundabout way to lighten the day and compound i’ve less sense than virtue

it’s who i was made to be more than chose, it’s the delicate fragrance of rose, it’s your perfume caught in my nose, it’s to hide what i’ll never expose

it’s for you

all of it