I garnered the strength
To ask thou how thee felt
Inquire as to what it’d take
For thou to love me as myself
But it was never meant to be
And so I rested and remained
in a perpetual state of melancholy.
The feeling thou hadst feigned
sufficient to say, I thought not.
Many years I waited and prepared
to bravely ask thou for the answer I got
with my heart’s true contents bared.

To figure things to be this way
No one had ever thought.
Thou threw my thoughts in disarray
all actions made for naught.
And into the sun's fire, I gazed
As the day's end drew nigh.
No hopes or dreams left to be saved
Nor stars in darkened sky.

I enter the woods of my childhood days
Green leaves form a canopy above me and blot the sky
Saplings and ferns spring from the ground
and critters scatter into the undergrowth as I pass by

The farther in I travel, the darker it gets
The mingling leaves smother the light
a deer glances my way
its eyes drooping and no longer bright
Its cadaverous form limps away
Hidden by the mortifying flowers from my sight

The forest I had known turns grey with fog
the plants die with a gasp of breath
The trees holding up the sky
stand crooked, rotting like the rest
While all the critters disappeared
until their corpses line my path

Reluctantly, I continue along this sadly familiar path
until I stumble upon a clearing where in the center is a tree
Mushrooms mark as stepping stones and surround the base
of its massive trunk and branches suspended between
the balance of life and death, neither dead nor alive.
The infamous tree of withering
And from its boughs hangs a woven noose
in its loop a human . . .
                                                     . . . me.

I love the summer rain
like how I love the earth
The sound when it comes down
and when it hits the ground
The soft rumble of thunder
that echoes through the clouds
The darkness that it brings
A temporary night
with lightning as the stars
and fireflies blinking bright

The mist cascading over
the forests and the fields
The raindrops' pitter-patter
leaves ringing in my ears
And with the distant rumble
and gasping of the clouds
sunlight breaks the storm
and faintly paints in gold

And in the rhythmic song
the raindrops sing to me
the warmth the soft wind
brushes through the swaying trees
I remember peace
and what it truly is
Peace is the summer rain
euphoria amidst

I step out of bed each day
and collapse upon the floor.
Why I pick myself up and how
are a mystery every morning.

Like someone whispering,
"Don't give up yet.  You still have hope.
And hope is the light that will guide you home."
So I keep moving, keep breathing,
keep loving, keep failing.
But I keep living.

And every morning
when I'm tired of this life,
ripped to shreds and worn to the bone,
I hear a voice that reminds me,
weary I may be,
I know that when I fall
someone will catch me,
even if it is the ground.

they said only a fool
would fall in love with her
I guess that's what I am