Like a daisy
Rising curious from the charcoal ash
Of a forest fire scorch

Through all the anguish and doubt,
As broad as a still summer sky
Comes clarity.

So here's to all the arsonists of the world,
Lest the beauty of metamorphism
Succumb to stagnation
And turn to rot.

it was when
i realized that
the glint of silver
resting itself
like withered hands
on worn wooded counters
in the corner of my eyes
still hopeful,

it was then
that i realized it
glimmered from
the key to my freedom,
strung around my neck
within my reach but
beyond my sight

and all i had to do
was yearn for it
and open my eyes to the truth that always was.

I'm imprisoned
     Behind this static
          Screeching,
Echoing its sick
Reverberations inside my head
     But disguising itself
     As muck
Both in the expulsion
     Of my tongue
And the frantic scripture
     Of my pen working fruitlessly.

This morning,
     I pulled a flaming string
           Of *****, ruby tinted hair
     From the inside of a sock on my floor,
     And in the shower,
          I found a single thread
               Of burning, stranded follicle
     Wrapped around the drain's grate,

Which struck me as odd,
     Because you've never step foot
     In my shower (as much as I might have wished),
          You've never even set foot in
           That bathroom at all,
     It was always too ***** to touch your porcelin skin,
          To by seen by your eyes or feel your judgement,
     But even so,
           I still find your hair everywhere.

This morning,
     I put on a shirt,
     One that you said held me half as nice
          As you ever could,
     And I thought of your words
     And I thought of your gentle touch as I plucked
          A lingering fiber of a lost flame flicker
     From the breast of my attire,

And another wriggling yarn undone
     Soaked in the end of a sunset
          From the interior of my ripped jeans pocket
     That still embedded the whisper of your perfume,
     Your hair was absolutely everywhere.

This morning,
     I stumbled into my car
     And sulked in the sun
          As a hair of yours relaxed
          Among the dust of dashboard features,
     And the sight of it
          Prompted my mind to wake,
          My hand to shift into gear,
          And my tired legs to throttle the gas.

This morning,
     The cars and trees and blank-slated faces
     Hazed together in a fuse of
          Gray and brown and all the other ugly colors,
     The colors of dead things,
     Which must have been why
           I drove to the cemetery.
     The gates, rusted and lonesome,
          Creaked a "hello",
          And the ground was frosty
                To my arrival.

This morning,
     I found a hair of yours
     Draped over the head of a stone,
     And that struck me as utterly odd
          Since you've never been here before now,

And this morning at work,
     My pants were covered in dirt
          From kneeling before you as the sun came up,
     But I didn't care,
     I had to come see you
          And ask you to keep

Your ******* hair to yourself.

In the flames of my own hell,
     I have learned to mistake the fire's burn

For comforting warmth.

We all like to think
     Our lives as though they're
           Stories,

And ourselves to be
     The hero, grand and shining
          In some tale yet to be written,

An underdog,
     Burdened with the weight of the world,
          Waiting for that lucky break,

But sometimes our final act
    Never resolves to an exciting conclusion,
         Because no one is guaranteed anything more
              Than the role of a background character

In someone else's saga,
     Prose proposed entirely devoid
          Of our own happy endings.

I dreamt of you last night,
     smiling sweet like the sun
          with a surface cool to the touch,
Your chest rising against mine
     with a spark of
            never-close-enough,
And your chest falling
     as you exhaled flower petals
          and spring days
               right after it's rained,

And when I awoke
      in my stone-cold
            casket of a bed,
Even after pulling over
     Another blanket (twice as thick),

I shivered.