To feel or exist
is to know without a doubt
that you're in the depths.

There’s a billion stars in the sky
And only one moon.
It’s a gift to be alone,
But a price for solitude.

Prized is a blade of grass in a Dust Bowl,
I found it a fitting fame,
For raindrops love to kiss me
And leave me wondering my name.

I sowed your seed of adoration
To remove traces of ash,
I bit into you as a starving leech
When you tried to snap my neck.

You promised to always be there
Should chlorophyll reflect blue,
But what I’ve come to uncover
Is in the dust, not much remains true.

Reliance I’d learned to master,
You as my water source.
In our barren desert
Water is found, not searched for.

When rain left me parched,
And stars retreated to clouds,
I turned to you for a saving hand
And into the dust I fell.

I searched for your promised saving,
But found you turned to dust
And now all the dust had turned to rust
And clotted inside my lungs.

Black particles choke me,
I see you leave,
You run, embracing the Sun’s neck,
And I’m alone with lifeless dust,
My broken arms longing
For warmth to melt their cuffs.

There’s a billion stars,
And only one moon,
But that’s not the entity
I long to speak to.

The people in my class analyzed poetry
With finely sharpened pencils
And color coordinated pens.
                          I don’t understand.
                                          I thought poetry spewed from within,
                                          Without care,
                                          Out of necessity,
                                          Out of the need to rip the bullet from
                                          One’s heart,
                          Out of the need to
                          Save oneself.

Upon birth, a seed of thought is planted
And smothered in soil
Until its cultivators find
That they’re ready to water it,
That it’s time to dictate its growth.

Once it emerges from the protective seed coat,
Nurture overruns nature,
And it takes in the nutrients bestowed upon it
To become the thing
That it’s supposed to be.

It grows on its own, away from the home,
Expected to be a tree
With a wide canopy of varying leaves
Of knowledge
That can be trimmed down if need be.

Society tracks its progress,
Ensuring that it grows as strong as possible,
A novice to be molded to its full potential,
Within the limits set,
Maybe a little more, nothing less.

A leaf can be removed if it learns one too many,
A branch torn down if it’s set too low,
Flowers modified when colors shall change.
A tree should know that all it should know
Stems from the water fed from an unknown source below.

Spoon-fed knowledge can’t account for experience.
They’ve forgotten the impacts of seasons,
Hurricane force winds,
Harmful bacteria contained within,
Invasive species,
Weathering after storms,
They’ve forgotten to account for the things
That can’t be controlled.

Nutrients can be given
And leaves can be pruned
But knowledge won’t be confined
To shining small jewels.
We don’t know a thing
So they teach what they choose
But at the end of the day
We don’t know if that’s true.

We take what we’re given
And search for much more,
But our intuition can’t be taken
And won’t be ignored.

A rose by any other name
Has thorns that are just as sharp.
An ocean in any other day
Will drown you if you try to run.

A bridge as delicate as ours
Can burn at the smallest degree.
A mirror as revealing as this
Will show that what I fear isn’t me.

A garden under harsh pouring rain
Has flowers that will wilt and then weep.
A sword in your hands or mine
Enters flesh with its blade’s fierce heat.

A love that’s poison like ours
Will leave you walking
And me on my knees.
A love that glimmers like ours
Will leave me bleeding
And you scathe-free.

You hold my hands
Wrap the gauze around my bruised knuckles,
Whisper me pieces of words
For my mind to create
Into stained-glass portraits.
My love, I trust
That your strong vines
Will grow into roses
Not torn by the sharpest of thorns
Or the purest of shards.

You promised me a crystal lake,
Said if I were to be a fallen star
I’d land in a place to call home,
Enveloped in the sepal
Of your cold embrace.
A brick house
In a dying meadow
Where you promised
The grass would grow greener
If I believed it so.

You gifted me a diamond necklace
On a gold chain
That tightened around my neck
With each passing day as
Love’s most exquisite noose.
I wore your broken jewels,
Let them jab into my bones,
And you wiped away the blood
As you braided rose petals
Amidst my sun-drenched locks.

Grass dies as the rose petals
In my heart collect frost,
Leaving me numb as the thorns
Embed themselves
In the bone, leaving scars,
As do you, snapping
Your vines with your
Crystal-crafted knife
From the mirror in which
You looked twice,
And I, once.

Glass is sturdy, but fragile,
And flowers burn
When stars fall without grace,
When they are expelled from the hearth
Of their love.
I watched you set our bridge aflame,
And my portrait’s glass
melted to raindrops,
turning glass petals damp with regret.

My love, you lie
As skin does when its
Elasticity suggests refusal to break,
And your vines snapped
Under grief’s crushing weight.
Bones snap and veins shred
As I land ******* the ashen stone
You called our home
And to you,
I was never a star.

Fire runs wild when
You don’t control it,
Scorching those for which
Weeping won’t bring coolness,
Freezing those for which
Love doesn’t warm them.
Your glass digs in whenever
It’s told to, oh my love,
To you,
I’ve grown cold to.

For your promises were as empty
As the glass from which I drank them.