Beautiful The Way

Standing here with me

I think that you are beautiful

I want time to stop

For just a moment

Long enough to catch my breath

So I can always remember you

Exactly as you are right now

You are beautiful

Is it strange to say that

About a man?

Well, you are beautiful

Beautiful the way

Rockets bursting across the sky

Over Fallujah are beautiful

Showers of heat and light and color

Lighting the faces of the whole platoon

Beautiful the way

Red is beautiful

Running as a bloody river

From the kisses of death on skin

My God, you are beautiful

Beautiful the way

Holes dug in earth are beautiful

To find a little peace on earth

From incoming fire

That never seems to end

Beautiful the way

Reunions are beautiful

When you clasp loved ones so tight

You forget to let them breathe

You are beautiful

Beautiful the way

Tattoos are beautiful

Etched across your skin

Both stories and scars

Words and faces and the Corps

Inked all over your body

You are so damn beautiful

Beautiful the way

Memories are beautiful

Phantoms are beautiful

When they come to haunt you

With a fury night and day

And finally just at night

Beautiful the way

Loyalty is beautiful

The kind that means you would kill

For your battle buddies

Here or across the ocean

Beautiful the way

Smiles for distant things

Others will never see are beautiful

And silence when you don’t fill the space

With stories too dark to share

You are heart-breakingly beautiful

Beautiful the way

Opening up about hard-lived days

And carrying all this with you is beautiful

Absolutely

Utterly

Wrenchingly

Beautiful

If I Could Build a Bridge

I'm awake in the darkness
by what I can't seem to mend
Words echoing back
the way we had to end
Pain is a patient homemaker
And I cannot pretend
I don't remember you
Oh and now you are gone my friend
If I could build a bridge
over the ocean and spend
the days to walk over the rend
I would cross it by will
and bring you back home again

That One Letter

Trembling fingers dial grimy numbers on a pay phone that has seen countless hands the same way before. Cradle to ear, tongue licks lips chapped with dozens of spent words. Angry words, bitter words, curses, pleas, and assurances. Hand runs through tangled hair only just pulled back into a braid, a let's-get-to-work kind of style.
Hands hesitate at first over the smudged numbers, pressed only from memory and not from sight. Fingers want to dial that Old Familiar number and fall into deep reassurances and dark memories that have wrapped around her tightly before.
But not this time.
Comfortable and Nice drove her around in old cars and went to pleasant movies and on long hikes. There was always something Comfortable and Nice in the cold beers and late-night movie marathons. And then she always had Support when things fell apart into too many pieces and she cut her hands trying to put them together again. Support always had bandages and gentle kisses on palms to take away the sting.
But battered thoughts stumbled into Fleeting Glances and swept her off her feet in moments stolen and unreal. Looming, always thoughts of leaving and knowing that she would never really know. Still, glancing back Old Familiar had a way of stealing new moments and she let down her hair because that was how it was.
She never expected to leave Old Familiar and fall into dark tattooed arms. Arms that beckoned and lips that promised to keep her warm at night for a while. It happened right after she tied off her braid and picked up her backpack, packed with resolve and an ipod of rock music that keeps her going when she runs. Heart hurt a little but was too jaded to cry about it.
Wooed by words Beautiful and Sexy and Capable, maps veer off in different directions when compass still points ever North. She always loved dark and dancing eyes.
Now braid is loose and tangled, hanging down her back like a defeated banner of war. Hand presses over face as ringing echoes in her ears, tenuous connection to the only one that remains.
She wants Daring Adventure she has only known over airwaves and penned phrases and who is now worlds away from her. He told her to keep in touch. And somewhere out in the wide world is that one letter she never knew if he received. And now he's left and she has only a few lines dashed hurriedly on a page to trace to him, like a line of string in a dark cave. She knows words will stack up in an empty mailbox forever, even if he does find his way home. Adventure is still and always will be eluding her, like trying to catch a moth in hands with no net.
Line cuts out with no connection and phone is back in cradle. Phone spits back unspent coins like mockery in her face and scarred and calloused hand slips them back in pocket.
Head against dirty pane of phone booth, she sighs. Head knows she shouldn't be surprised but heart can't fight it. Hope has a way of spearing into jaded thoughts like a dagger to flesh. A dangerous and painful feeling that sometimes can't get a foothold and fails again. But always reappears. She knows it will return again when the Next One comes around. Always she tries to push them away but finds painted lips agreeing to try again. Even if just to share warm comfort in hot mugs of coffee for a few hours.
Stepping out of the phone booth, arms wrapped tightly around her, eyes raise up to crying sky. And she thinks that somewhere out there or up there is Daring Adventure. Just maybe not the one she always imagined. And maybe not yet. But it will come. And it will be hers.

Ink

I write your name

on my palm

until it smears

into my skin

and I can’t see it anymore

So I pick up a pen

and write it again

hoping it will stay

in place

But it always fades

by the end of the day

I don’t know what

I keep writing it for

Ink stains my prints

like it’s a part of me

critical to my identity

but it should be

washed away

Black from the start

but as time drags on

slowly fades to gray

Morning comes

I think it’s gone

But then I can’t help it

Some things don’t change

I’ll keep writing your name

onto my heart and my skin

until I know

you’re not mine anymore

I don’t want to let go

don’t want the ink to fade

I don’t want to forget

seeing your name

maybe I’ll just

get a tattoo instead

White Scraps of Paper

She tangles her necklace around her fingers

And her heart on the cuff of her sleeve

Curling cold hands around warm mugs

Because she wants so badly to believe

In that moment when your face lights up

When your soldier surprises you coming home

And the wellspring inside can’t hold it back

And you voluntarily give up all the emotions you own

She wants to believe in sweet, innocent kisses

Stolen shyly in the pouring rain once years ago

She wants to believe in that true love first time feeling

And not be afraid to let those feelings show

She runs down long and winding back roads

Trying to outstrip some long-held fears

Running hands over a made-up face to feel

If it’s still wet from rain or from tears

She untangles words from clenched teeth

And unravels plans like spools of thin thread

Dresses in lace for no good reason, no one sees

Puckers lips for lipstick in shades of bright red

From these bright lips fly blessings and curses

Fingers retrace the outlines of old sunken scars

She wrestles for ownership of five years she lost

Even as she whispers, “Come back and touch my heart”

She makes plans with boys she will never love

And secretly wonders if he ever thinks about her

Closes her eyes and her mind to times slipped by

Slips her hand over the lace and wonders

She bites her tongue to hold back fears

Confessions, accusations, and secret thoughts

Written on endless scraps of white paper

Hidden in the days when she knows she can’t

Hear them, written longingly in the dark

In Hundreds of Shades

Eraser crumbs and faded pencil lines leave scars deep in the art. Painted over with bold bright strokes can't hide where they are or what she has changed.
Arm and mind tired of scrubbing the blunders from the paper. Crumpled towels stained with ink and paint and frustration where she tried to dab away the missed strokes and ugly lines. Eye sometimes deceived when she tried to envision art and write that vision onto a page. The colors didn't always mix well together and some of her lines were anything but straight. Brush stroke bleeds into pencil lines and make the picture murky, nothing like the masterpiece she began.
Nothing like she hoped it would be.
And in wiping redemption from the paper, she signed ruin on the art.
Dozens of answers to questions what should she do with it, all splattered onto page like a shattered color wheel slipped past its confines.
Wipes a bead of water from her face, smearing red in a bristled wound, hands dyed with the colors of her mistakes, scattered in brushes and tubes and pencils and charcoal on the floor. Some places worn so thin, a slight shift and they will tear the whole piece apart. Sigh escapes lips and fist closes over throat, eyes dart over the artwork in front of her, into which she has poured her whole life, painting hopes and fears and risks and dreams in hundreds of shades.
Pouring red in her anger on the canvas, weeping blue in her pain, dancing pinks and golds and greens in her joy and happiness, wisping white in her uncertainty and innocence, driving black in her darkness and depth.
Black and white fade to gray over time and sharp lines become blurred.
Now it is chaos.
Messy, imperfect, evolving.
Like her life.
All of it poured out onto a canvas, unfinished.
Takes step back, wipes hands on rag, skin freckled with colors sprung from her tools.
Standing back she sees it more clearly now.
Colors mixed all together make something whole and unique and different and beautiful. Scarred lines and erasers etch depth in the art and her heart. A liquid mosaic. Something chaotic, imperfect, evolving.
Something beautiful.
Like her life.

The Waiting Room: Part V

Heartbeat nearly rips hers right out of her chest and she begins to tremble. “Now?” she all but whispers, voice dissolving into her shock and fear that this cannot be real.

He raises a scarred hand and gently takes her face in it.  His eyes are sad and soft and hopeful. “Soon.”

Gaze follows gaze as door to the room opens slowly and press of noise from the waiting room snakes in, curling familiar coils around her wild heart. He holds her gaze and says firmly, “Very soon.”

The shuffling of papers and the calling of names. Fingers clench around token, cool weight assuring her it will not dissolve in her hands like all the others. The door is closed behind her, shutting out the half of her heart and the blood-bought life she leaves there with him. Because he promises he will take care of it. He promises her all the things she asked for. Yes, she will wait, but this token, her chance not gambled but hard-earned, is hers. Always hers.

Now she is in the line, shuffling along with the others, tokens, passes, and stamps all held close. All clinging to promises. The one a little ahead of her catches her eye and smiles. He has been waiting a long time too, she recognizes him from the waiting room, the room they will soon be leaving. No white fences, no letters in two languages to send home. Just flights of adventure. Maybe she will find in him a fellow seeker, lusting for adventure more than proof of existence.

Line moves towards the exit slowly, hands stamped and leave granted. Pats on the back and good luck wishes from the ones at the door send off the leavers. Her heart is racing as she draws closer. This is not her adventure, the sum of all her tears, but she is moving. She is getting there. She is strong. She is ready.

The one ahead of her clenches his pass, not a golden ticket but a stopover on the way to the adventure, and shakes their hands. It, like this waiting room, is part of the trip. Her next stop, too. One glance back, a nod and smile in her direction, and he disappears through the doorway.

Then it is her turn.

Hesitant, trembling fingers almost don’t let go. Then the token falls into outstretched hands and a ticket is hers. The murmur of the waiting room behind her presses against her heart and she looks back. Eager, expectant, and dejected faces all catch her gaze. Waiting, watching her go. Hopeful.

The smallest of smiles tips her lips. A reassurance because she, too, has sat in those hard plastic seats and swallowed disappointment as others left not an hour ago. They must be strong enough to trust the wait. Just as she is.

Heart racing and mind reeling, she steps out the door into the pouring rain.