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Genevieve Jan 2017
Something about this city,
Like amnesia,
You forget me here.
Perhaps it's all the distractions?
Genevieve Jan 2017
"I'm happy for you."
But I'm not.

Okay, maybe that's not really true.
I'm happy you can wake up each morning
Warm, not alone, safe,
Smiling.
I'm glad that you have someone to go home to,
Someone to sit beside at the bar,
Someone to get brunch with,
Someone to go vegan for,
But I'm not happy it's her.

Something in the way she looks at me
And what she says about me when drunk
Something about her fake glasses
And her fake hair,
And, apparently, her fake smile,
Makes me worry about you,
About our friendship.

When the time comes,
When she asks you to choose,
What's going to happen then?
Genevieve Jan 2017
Because when "someday" becomes "never," you'll keep wishing on stars
Genevieve Dec 2016
Like her mother,
Her desires before her children.

It continues.
And so the cycle repeats. Break the cycle. Please.
Genevieve Dec 2016
We like to say that stillness comes with night
That on hot summer evenings we can hear God breathe
But I disagree.

Summer nights, beautiful as they come,
Are filled with crickets, cicadas, birds of prey, and the sound of growing
They smell of burnt marshmallows and laughter
Bursting with life,
Loud and exuberant.
No, summer nights are not still.

It is in winter,
When death and slumber rule the woods,
Where even our breath is muffled by the cold,
Frozen into puffs of clouds.
The night does not sing as summer,
Cicadas and crickets and owls and coyotes
Calling out in the heat.
No.
Silence basks in moonlight on a bed of leaves
That tucked the summer away in their fall.

It is here that we find the still in the night
The quiet so deep we must look inward for sound
Heartbeats and whispers of breath,
Memories filling our inner ear,
Unable to keep the quiet.
But when calmed,
When frozen still by the cold,
You can hear it,
The throbbing in the dirt,
The heartbeat of the earth,
The subtle zephyrs through naked trees
The breath of gods.

Here,
We find the still in the night.
Genevieve Dec 2016
Strange, the place you've taken us,
Stranger, features once familiar turned vague
Darkness behind eyes once effervescent
Well-meaning lies
To cover up the scent of drowning

You're falling,
And it's not with love.
It's with fear, and chains,
Suffocation and denial.
Not only are you sinking,
A hole in your hull the size of your need for a bottle,
You refuse rescue.

Like sitting on the edge of a wishing well,
The fountain water sprinkling my face,
And there you are,
The penny flipping end over end
About to hit rock bottom.

And no matter how I try,
You keep slipping through my fingers.
How am I here once more?
Genevieve Dec 2016
Potential.
Enough to graze your fingertips across
The kind that enduces goosebumps
A soft weight dangling from your limbs
A nauseousness pumping adrenaline into your circuits
The Almost.

And now it's over.
The precipice,
The "one ill-timed-slip" into seduction,
The conscious choice to stay on the cliff
To not tumble into selfish indulgence,
This once-favored hang out, gone.
Nothing but a meadow,
Grassy, blooming, safe.

The adrenaline, the temptation, the choice
Vanished.
Nothing but a humid breeze to imply movement
A hint that something was once here, before.

And now, just another memory.
Another secret.
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