One grave to be opened up.
Two urns to be placed inside.
Three remnants of loved ones to forever rest.

One headstone to be adorned with three inscriptions,
Engraved words on stone as cold as the chills of death;
Names that can't be whispered without feeling the heart ache
With the hollow pit of loss, a black hole of despair.

Two family members following Death in quick succession,
As if they had already decided not to separate from each other.
Yet the comfort those thoughts bring to the living
Fall short, blocked out by the deeply-felt loss.

Three loved ones now eternally together;
Two vulnerable daughters and their ever-loving mother.

you lit up my
fragile heart
with
bursting vibrant
rubies through
your delicate
words
                           you spin me
                           around in a gentle
                           waltz, a secret dance
                           that only the
                           two of
                           us could
                           carry through
                                                           you charred my
                                                           skin where
                                                           your
                                                           fingers used to
                                                           touch, aching for
                                                           more flames
                                                                                                your cries are
                                                                                                the sound
                                                                                                of a forest
                                                                                                fire, searing
                                                                                                through my ears
                                                                                                all the way
                                                                                                into my
                                                                                                heart

Tell me am I love
or am I suffering
Am I stepping into the black
or into purity
So purity is white
and white is purity
Am I noticed for love
or projecting my suffering
hoping to be on stage
for all to see
Love is pure
Suffering is pure
Love is marred
as are flecks
pitting the whole
of suffering

Air is always crisp, no
matter where I am

Cool air swirls into my lungs
I think, I think and I think
I'd like to shut off this part of me
that over-analyzes
Because I have this feeling
that if I just quiet my mind
I'll experience such profound insight
like never before
It sounds counter intuitive,
But ceasing to verbalize
just may be the gateway to
most of our solutions

When I dream
I go places or do things unfathomable
I use to live quite an unfathomable life
Even though back then I was really depressed
and disassociated
When I look back, it's weird
Because it seems to me like
I should have been having the best times of my life
But really I was just in situations
That looked fun and thrilling
But I was just so perturbed back then
I lived as wildly as Hunter S Thompson back then
Or maybe I was like Jack Kerouac,
On The Road
It sounds fun
But I was just always on the run
Always trying to escape to the point
of escaping my own mind by dissociating
Looking into the mirror and feeling so distant
from the reflected image
Taking dangerous concoctions of alcohol and drugs
And not a moment of my waking life
was their a point where I wasn't high on ****
Making that Mary Jane be my codependent lover
One I couldn't live without
Even with the paranoia and the panic attacks...

Last night I had a dream
that I smoked **** again
And my throat closed up
and I started choking...
In that dream I remember what it was like
Back in my senior year of high school
I can barely remember
It was all just an excruciatingly painful blur
I wake up to my reality,
and although it's not all I want it to be
I couldn't be more grateful
That I'm out of the self sabotage
With a healthier personality
It's weird to think of who I used to be
Because of how much I've changed
I can't believe that was who I used to be
Radically reformed is my identity
It's just really weird, you see
It's beyond human reason
to understand this change
that has happened in me.

She captures autumn
in a jar
reads the moon's straying
through leaf and branch

Always in love
with love
and always reeling
from the loss

What wave tossed this refugee
ashore?
What alignment
of stars and planets
of uncountable galaxies
brought this woman
to this world and not another?

A simple truth will tell.
The moon at high tide
hides beneath her skirts.
A slight disturbance
in the silken fabric
of space and time
and all is lost
all is born.

I hold my hands out
palms up
in prayer and thanks
every day
to mark the blessing
to place a peg
in the whole.

Given to all
denied to none
and mysterious to most

Life pours out of
a hole in the sea
leaves nothing
and everything
to chance.

This blessed world.