I should write about the sea, speckled with white foam from the northern winds

and how I am watching it reel past my window in clear skies scrubbed clean by last night's downpour.

It was different then (speeding down the edge of a continent) in blinding rain,

mouth slightly open from the concentration and strain of keeping my wheel straight at 80 mph in a windstorm.

Later that night when the gusts blew the stars in and the guests were stumbling around and

suddenly, it was overwhelmingly clear. So I kept a smile and pictured you playing pool in a musty room, armed with your ego.

That night I scrubbed away the rest of our veneer.

My words were dry and shattering, brittle in cold air.

I am crumbling with the force of your grip, chasing some teenage fantasy.

I am wide eyed, open mouth panting over your shoulder.

You think that I am boring and you've skimmed right through me, reciting predictable plot lines.

You cannot see the tenderness with which I am written, the thin font that carries me from one mistake to the next.

You do not understand that I am foolish and only interested in the unattainable.

That I cower in the hands of commitment, as I do when I catch you watching me

from across the room.

I should purge myself of everything vile, everything I don't like or understand.

I should move only with the intention of traveling somewhere new and never use people as modes of transportation.

I want to be young again, instead

I feel like something has broken deep inside me and I am waiting for the symptoms to set in.

Still I find solace

In the way things fall apart

The glass sticking in my fingerprints