I've been making changes everyday
Since I decided I didn't like the way
I felt and thought
And I only realized today
Seeing myself in the mirror, that I'm different
I speak different now
I smile different now
I think different now
I'm different

It's like, I'm different
But exactly the same
It's hard to describe
It's just I have so much less pain
Before i was stressed and
Hurting
Always disconcerted
But now that's lifted,
I feel loved, light, gifted

This is for all the hopeless, that see no point in
Continuing on in their transient misery
Well, this is my testimony
And I hope you take it to heart
And treasure it as a keepsake,
It serving to remind you and convince you
That your ailing heart
Won't ail forever
Things change, life gets better.

from sun bleached strawberry blond
to a slow grey
changes in skin tone to match the years
and the not so taking everything SO serious
the heart that shines with life
- a freedom to die for (slowly)

I'll write you a poem
sing you a tune
you'll hang on my words
while I,
on the moon

Tell me a story
I'll bleed words for you
indigo ink,
a dark streaking blue

I uncouple the pin
to a fast moving train
release all your sin
and unending pain

I love you tonight
and more so tomorrow
  I'm taking you there
with time that I borrow

My love is bewitching
  I'm casting a spell
the way to your heart
  though I'll never tell

You know I'm said gypsy
  a magical power
leaving you drunken
& wild like flowers

Waiting to seal this
with one planted kiss
Not really foreboding
  but more than a wish

As I think about you
I'm drawing you near
Here to my safe place
  come soon my dear

Though some say a witch
  I'm really quite sweet
you'll feel like your rich
   'neath these linen sheets

I'm laying my heart
upon my duvet
& hanging on every
word that you say

I keep on courting
the date that I plan
on walking with you &
...embracing your hand.

Cherie Nolan *© 2016

If only I could
Radiate as the sky,
I’d express this
Inexpressible adoration
Welling inside.
But I am not the sky,
I am every crevice in between;
For behind my fragile frame, I
Am most often unseen.

On the living room couch,
I asked my phone a verbal question:
"What is an albatross?"

And before it could answer,
my father began his reply
from the kitchen counter--

To be cut short by my phone who had finished thinking,
the screen flashing a series of definitions for "albatross"
and reading them aloud to me.

My father stopped, and looked at me forlornly.

I daren't look back--
And the sound of a heart breaking,
whether mine or his,
and the silence it engulfed,
was hidden under the blanket of the contraption's monotone voice.

A little more humanity was lost today,
and my father yet again was faced with the reality that
even if he had all the answers,
as he had in my inquisitive childhood--

No one was left to ask him the questions.