As another year has ticked by,

                       This one was especially a blur,

And For a long stretch of it,

      The days passed like breaths in an

anxiety attack,

  Quick and sharp,

          With little lasting impact,

I realized recently how much of my last year was spent toiling. Giving myself fully to something in the hope of being better again.

                     Carrying my candle,

                     Trusting the process.

   In the end I’ve not a lot to show for it but **** did it feel good to feel a fire for something again. In some sort of roundabout way I ~Feel~ as though I’ve ~Felt~ very little at ~All~ this year. Which is a statement that marks this year as standing in stark contrast to the previous one, and is only true romantically.

I had a dream about cutting my hair,

And hating the results,

I googled the meaning and supposedly it can mean taking control of your life,

Or

Supposedly, that you’re having a hard time with a decision and your subconscious is telling you to think twice about it.

Among other, assumably equally applicable interpretations.

I think it’s because I have been thinking about cutting my hair a lot.

I’m not sure what the next year will hold,

I still warm my hands over the wick of my candle,

Hopeful as ever to see another year tick bye.

I used to write such beautiful things,

About such beautiful things,

On and on would go my enamored rambling,

Like the longest winded songbird on the years first Snowy morning,

My head would spin as I turned to take it all in,

The blur in my eyes as they dart from side to side could lead a Pagan to consider a God,

Each microsecond my eyes could process could’ve been framed and hung in a gallery,

Each with its own placard listing important details, noting the set and setting of each shock across the meat inside my skull,



I used to write such beautiful things,
About such beautiful things,

But a beautiful thing about those beautiful things,

Is that even if you close your eyes and do your best to ignore them,

Or lie to yourself and try to see them as ugly,

They are still there, waiting for you to peel your eyes back open,

And remind you how beautiful,

This whole thing is

It’s still such a conundrum,

The way it hurts to remember,

But to die at the the thought of forgetting

It’s been a long time,

And by now I’m mostly numb,

But still,

Watching you bleach the canvas,

Watching you clean all the stains,

Like a thief hiding every scrap of evidence,

Ridding your legacy of all our transgressions,

My throat tightens,

My eyes water,

My nose burns,



It’s fine,

Pinky promise,


I’ll keep my pieces safe for us,



Pinky promise.

Ive stopped making poems and art out of everyone I encounter beyond the surface.

I’ve stopped making myself a Martyr to my own feelings,

I’ve stopped forcing gorgeous jewels upon the crown of regular people.

Its been a year,

and what a year its been.

thinking back on it all, its a dream really.

The skies were clear, the clouds rolled bye slow,

aside from some squalls barely visible from shore,

the sea was calm.

Everything changed for me in the spring.

It was 4 months of the most painful growth I've ever known,

during the brief moments of reprieve Id lay in beds of clovers, the flowers and grass embracing me like old friends.

Then the summer came,
it was hot, and rainy, and the sweat burned my eyes,

The cicadas screamed into the evening as they felt the sun for the fist time all year.

I fell hard and let myself rest. The blood from my hands ran a deep red, a reminder I was only human and the proof I was still so alive.

Jolting awake in the quiet fall mornings felt like the end of a loud heavy metal song.
The sudden and sharp juxtoposition was an unexpected but welcomed moment of quiet.

those sunrises were, crisp and the clouds were nowhere to be found. as the temperatures dropped The world turned an odd cheap sepia hue, like one of those tacky old timey photos you get on a family vacation to tennessee.

Winter seemed to clear away the clutter of it all.

What was so seemingly right and seemingly wrong, crystallized over night, politely frozen in time for me to take careful note of.

The voices of people  I love swarmed my ears as the holidays rolled bye.

what a year its been,

my hair has grown so long,

my smile lines have grown deep,

I can hear the wind picking up outside,

my eyes are open wide,

facing forward, ready for the show,

as the storm rages on.

I’m just a symptom of your untreated ADHD,

You text me when you need a pick-me-up,

When you’ve hit another low,

When you decide not to take your adderal,

Those are the times I come to mind,

And the in the same breathe,

I’ve completely cleared from it,

The ups and downs give me vertigo,

Tummy twisters like I’d get as a kid,

And that same feeling of being adrift.

My sandpaper tongue,
How it chews like dried up fat,

The crystalline grass,
How it crunches underfoot,

The paper thin skin,
How it tears like it was pleated,

The rambunctious quiet soul,
And the storm cloud in its wake.

Its funny in the same moment I go from longing so deeply for the past, to stumbling upon a brand new beautiful angle of the shots and im overwhelmed with joy that I've lived the life I have.

Another gentle let down that feels like a meteor crashing into the earth,

All because I continue to let myself get so excited, and so hopeless.

Like leaning into the curves on a rollercoaster.

I tried to write about you,
And I couldn't.

As much as I thought of you,
No words came to mind.

I sat for a moment,
Mind as blank as the page before me.

I tried to force it,
Tried to reach and scrape for it.

In the end,
I was grasping at air.

The result,
Is Something im not proud of,

And a story,
With no hero, villain, or moral.

I don't have to make her into a poem,

Without a need for assistance,

She carries herself like Poes finest work,

Like a pristine Brontë.

She might be the life art imitates,

She is the tip of the flame,

At the tip of the match.

Healing has turned out to be such a long and painful process,

Like pulling out a hundred tiny splinters,

The immense relief you feel as they slide from your skin after a moment of struggle,

The occasional mark left behind,

The hundreds more you'll discover hiding in your hands,

As you drag them along the walls through your days.

I'm sure he'll treat her just as well,

in the end she'll leave him behind,

The way the ocean does a shell.

Everything changed for me in the spring.

It was 4 months of the most painful growth I've known. I lay in beds of clovers, and flowers, they embraced me warmly like new friends.

Then the summer came, it was hot and rainy and my sweat burned my eyes. The blood from my hands was a deep red, the proof I was still so alive.

Now we've entered the fall, the mornings are crisp and the skys are clear. It hasn't rained in weeks and my hair has grown so long.
My sleepy eyes are open wide,  ready to accept the beauty of winter.

There are still so many strings attaching me to my old life,

I've been writhing and struggling to create enough distance that they finally snap.

Every day there are handful of things, some of them are habits I perpetuate,

That send me straight back down those darkest of mental corridors.

I do everything I can to widen the gap,
But like a piece of gum under a shoe,

The strings just stretch on through the stress.
And leave messes where I walk.

Your cat, she missed me,

You though, clearly much less so,

Good to see you both.

We used to agree,

We were probably lovers in past lives,

Who knew we would make that a reality

Its been raining for days,

The clouds seem spiteful,

Like they've held it in for too long,

And now they're lashing out,

Seething,

Bursting,

The ground around me,

Oversaturated into a swampy muck,

Each step I take,

Leaves the mud gasping in my footprints.

And just like that,

almost as if on cue,

The sun is out, shining bright,

The storm clouds, for now,

Are tucked safely into the wings,

Of someone else's scene,

In someone else's play.

Cold stella Artois

Triggers warm thoughts of your face,

How was your cats day?

The hot days of summer drone on like the cicadas at dusk,
The cool nights trickle bye,
Each moment,
Sweet like honeysuckle nectar,
every minute we trudge through,
Good enough to die for.

The time will come when it will all make sense, and the picture will be clearer.
Till then sit tight, breathe deep and keep your  limbs inside the ride.

Its wild to think that, some years back, a large amount of days and hours ago, a version of me that understood even less about the world than he does now, left his house for the last time.

I barely remember that summer, there had a been a scary storm right before Katrina that we half assed evacuated for but it ended up missing us. I was starting 3rd grade and had just learned the word "mathematician". I don't remember what my classroom looked like but I do remember the agendas and journals they gave us that I only got to use for about 2 weeks. They were white with doodled children all over the top, and said "Westwego Elementary 3rd grade".
I remember feeling like I was finally a big kid at school. My classrooms were finally upstairs with the big kids and the world was so big and bright, and we were so curious all we wanted to do was see it all. Like there was a projector sat between us and the coolest thing we had ever seen and all we could do was try to see passed the light.
     I Don't remember leaving, I remember driving, I remember going back for the last time to get our stuff from the house. I remember starting over and joining a new school with 200 other kids from my city. I remember living at my aunts house with most of my family. I remember wondering about my old friends and how they were. I remember one time we were at Walmart and I was buying halo 2 and my neighbor/best friend from back home just happened to be there too, completely out of the blue. The first time I had seen them since the storm at all.

I haven't seen them since, and its been 16 years. I hope they're fine. I drive by that old house pretty often and I never cease to wonder if the kids living in it now are ok. If they live a life anything like my life was in that house. If they have a trampoline in the backyard or if they sometimes walk too far down the street alone and get in trouble.

Its crazy how life happens. There's no plotting the course. There's no hedging your bets. You can only weather the storm.

Whatever they say about loving stuff and letting it go is wildly subjective and skewed into the letting-goers' favor.
      
      When someone's love and the love you have for them is your world, and they simply let you go, how can you ever come back?

Still I agree though, with what they say about living and loving. Life will have hard times regardless, so fill the other times with love. It will always be better to have lived and loved than to not have, no matter how vulnerable it leaves you each and every time.

This year of my life has provided me a bountiful lemon harvest,

My friends and I have gathered the fruit dutifully for the passed few months

I'm proud of the lemonade we've made of them.

From here on out Lemonade will always remind me of these days, scorching hot and full of struggle.

The sweet sensation of quenching your thirst with the fruits of your strife.

I moved back home to my hometown this year.

I hadn't realized how long it had been since I could look at the night sky and see the stars so clearly.

Somewhere in there thats the metaphor isn't it, that it took me coming home to navigate these dark times in my life with the clarity I need.

How easily I swell and deflate,
Like the paper bag you breathe in when you start to hyperventilate,

From your touch I catch fire,
From your glance I freeze over,

I should've tried harder,
To keep my composure.

Somehow we did it,
We carved out a day, a few moments where it felt like nothing mattered except us, at least to me.
Like time wasn't running out and we weren't 25 year olds and the only thing of any importance was what the other had to say next, at least to me.
Laying in your bed we felt like two grains of sand brought together as they were squeezed through the eye of an hourglass, at least to me.
I don't know how we did it but God I would give anything to do it again.

I wonder what it is to you, just a way to pass the time?

Its a perfect daydream for me.


You lay there asleep, golden in the morning light that was pouring through your windows.

You seemed so Perfect in that moment. I never wanted to look away.

However this goes you should know you've given me peace in ways I could never express.

Caught up in the fever you gave me,


I'm no good at playing it cool,



Maybe you could teach me?