playing catch with conversations
passing our thoughts
on the taste of the sea
and the way things glisten
under the glow of hindsight
this rain, feels all too maroon
and the roads, like veins
carry forward the spring gloom
I dusted off my shoulders
Just for this today
so, we could sit in the presence
of silence, and a quiet peace
with the pattering of a gentle storm
in between each heartbeat
bouncing between words and worlds
throwing out into the wide open
how we feel about time
just as it passes us by

Last time when the dust turned blue
a new kind of rain erupted
like pellets bouncing off the ground
realizations poured over our heads
last time I laid flat on a road
and challenged the force of decisional wind
protesting the passage of time
swallowing images of mountain range
from the highest point in the city
last time I felt so dearly in love
with the color of the sky
with the way things go,
with the touch of new life
last time I got to know my own breathing
was when, just like this,
in seasonal change, fragments of old self
came to accompany on a journey
through a new day

Someone used to say
That spring begins and ends
Like a transient midday breeze

When the colour of the tulip fades
To an old pale yellow
You, grown out of your sorrow
Will stand ahead of the horizon
Ready to live, ready to breathe

up and over hills
we go, we go
but on the drive in
those hills
those wonderful hills
the ones that catch my breath
and lock it in their grass roots
the impossible to climb
but on the drive in
so wonderful to see

Branched between two oaks
I took it all in
the water, the open breeze
blended it all together
with the feeling of emptiness
and poured it into the ground
where the sun never goes
where things never grow
where the earth is barren
until something splits wide open
maybe it's the ground
or a feeling of living

In one split moment, my mother had sliced open grief right in front of me, an afternoon snack she called it. She sprinkled it with salt and pepper, plating it beside the apples that were going bad. We sat on the couch, the plate between us. Someday you’ll remember me, someday you will remember the taste of peculiar things. Like the burn of the pepper when it’s paired with something sweet and ****, and you will sit in that feeling, she warned, as I am today. I ask her to tell me something interesting, to which she would laugh and say, you’re the one who leaves every day, you must have something better to share than I do. All I had was something about walking the lines of the world, with my head down. I don’t have much to fill our silences with, except that I take her soft hands, and in them are stories, many pasts, many feelings, and I hold them. Someday you’ll remember me, and on that day, you’ll split open grief, pour it into your glass of half empty and half full, burning through the day, with the taste of pepper on your tongue.

with frayed edges
a little realization sits in the midst
of the ripples in the river
floating toward the unsuspecting  
like us, when we are caught up
in our best moments
until those frayed edges
momentarily
barely brushing against our skin
leaving each hair standing straight
and the absence of being
the absence of existing
and the absence of those
now far gone
sits with us, here,
with frayed edges