In the face of anxiety.

Written in Gaming House, Lawrence University. October 25, 2013.

I've never seen glasses with rose-colored lenses.

For Ashleigh

Throw out the metaphors.
Send them through your shredder and toss them in the trash.
Repeat them like the word "apple" or "door-frame" or "love"
until you forget what they mean.
Your heart
is not an animal or the pound of the tide or a half
of a whole, it's
a muscle
beating hard and sending blood through your body and when it feels
like it's breaking--well,
I promise you it's not
because you are still around to feel it.

His hands
were never fire and smoke, never
sledgehammers on stained glass. They
were hands.
Human hands
that sometimes touched you so kindly, you cried.
Hands that had bitten nails and callouses and sometimes
shook when the world was too, too much.
Hands that held too tightly
and sometimes
hit
too hard.

Your lips are not poison and your words
are not holy water.
You do not build and break with sound alone.
You have in your throat
the incredible power
to say what you mean
and nothing more.
Your voice echoes in an empty room
just the same as it always has.

Love is not a red string that cannot fray, not
puzzle pieces
made to fit together.
Life is not a merry-go-round, a dance, a
masquerade.
It is chaos and heartache.
It is hard work and boredom so strong
you lose sight of what it means to feel anything else.
But it is not fiction, not
words spun into something beautiful and hollow.
Your world is not a snow globe,
and it cannot break.

Your lover is not a miracle.
She is you,
and she is not. She is fragile
and strong,
and the muscle of her heart pushes blood through her veins
and sometimes feels like it's breaking.
But it is not.
It's only hurting and beating
and keeping her alive
to be with you--
or not to.
Her heart is not a compass,
and you are not true north.

Take your metaphors and burn them.
Erase them until all you can see is real,
and harsh,
and much too bright.
See the world the way it is,
and love it
even so.