I'm doing my best
to keep it all hidden inside
and I do it for you.
So you don't have to see the scary parts
the parts that are twisted and terrifying
so you only see the bright
and shiny exterior.
I'm trying to protect you
I think
or maybe I'm only protecting myself

Work your magic across the sky
Midnight Moon, pearlescent queen
To your smile, my spirit flies
Through the clouds and mists pristine.

Drawn by your hypnotic glare
Proud Selene, eternally
Captured by your silver stare
And the spell you've put on me.

Pearly mistress, guide me home
To my castle by the sea
Blessed, these miles that I roam
Neath your shining mystery.

From the fires in my heart
With rhyming verse, I honor thee
Before the morning makes its start
Thou blazing orb of poetry.

We cannot write silence.
The beats.
The pause.
The breath.
The way it aches
and persists

and begs that,

if only for a moment,

our consciousness is only a whisper.
our bodies,
our lips,
the air that passes through falling chests
and stillness.

A melody of emotion.
Sleeping in the quiet of a heartbeat skipped
a word lost to the wind.

The wickedness of reticence
Encapsulated in air and time.

The moment stretched too long.
Hesitation perpetuated in the grip of fingernails
pressed into palms.

We cannot write silence,
but we can try.

to find a way to immortalize emotion
to create space
in the ceaseless drone of words that speak and spin.

I cannot write silence. But I can write
tears and years
and the burn of long-stretched lies.

I can write goodbyes and hellos
And dozen ways to say
I love to hate you
Or
I hate to love you
and sometimes
I cannot tell the difference.
Silence.
The space I have upheld for myself.

I love to hate you
Heart.

I hate to love you too.

I cannot write silence.
But I know it.
and I have held it in my hand.

Lately
I don’t feel close
to poetry.

It feels elusive.
Unfamiliar.
Once it spoke to me.
But now it’s mute.

It sits back
and doesn’t look
at me.

If I call out
it doesn’t hear.

Lately poetry is
like that demon
I used to want
to reappear.

I dreamed again
and you were there,
the dark silk of your crown
tousled from sleep,
standing in the open doorway
of a house in the middle of
a beautiful and wasted land
and leaning against the frame,
waiting for me to come back
from wherever I had been.
You smiled at my approach
and pulled me in.
I placed my hands at
the small of your back
and woke up
and now I'm sad.

It was something small. In an effort to persuade me you said:
“I barely ever ask you for anything!”
Later you revealed that you felt bad, and that you didn’t mean it threateningly.
I chose my words carefully in my reply.
“I know you didn’t mean it that way.”
Because you didn’t. You never do. But it happens anyways. You are unaware of it, I think.
You’re unaware of how much you ask of me everyday.
Just by being you. Just by being us.
In every stinging word, you ask of me to ignore the hurt, because that’s easier than changing.
In asking me to bear the weight of who you are, and what you plan to do with yourself.
By asking me to be someone I’m not, to be someone that fits you.
“I barely ever ask you for anything.”
Not intentionally, lover, but in my life I’ve never felt so obligated.