"It is like a wildfire that you cannot stop",
Burning all around, you in the middle,
Until all is burned down.

You stand looking out, wondering

How you made it through,
Made it out only slightly singed.
Life is a wildfire that you cannot stop.

Our star was rising,
Our sun, at its zenith

As our hidden desires,
Secrets of our hearts

Revealed under
A moon in culmination.

New
Like the dawn
The glorious sunrise
Pinkish hues awash with silent beiges
And the sun
Is a fiery orb
Coloring life into every living thing

I feel the new
With my breath
In and out
And I think of the ocean
The powerful ocean
I can feel it within my heart,
The waves rumbling through my veins

I can see the new
In not so distant visions
Of a future full of growth
I’ve healed so much
And yet there’s more
More of the new
I open my doors
Let it all in
All the gloriously soothing beauty
Of life’s simplest pleasures
Healing me

There’s been a crack made in my lifelong illusions
I’m beginning to feel clarity, and not confusion
Saying yes yes yes
To more beauty.

My Grandmère and I have long, gossipy conversations,
where we fall into our own chatty, slumber party rhythms.

She’s met or knows everyone important, and people tell her things.

They DM her or whisper secrets of lives ordered but loveless,
of careers choked by excesses and indiscretions.

She gets stealthy, leaked business reports of purported fortunes gambled and lost or of innocence wasted in bittersweet embrace - delicious, tangled narratives that expose the gaps between facades and realities that can’t be purchased.

Sometimes we pop popcorn on our private ends of the Atlantic,
watch Netflix, share secrets and laugh conspiratorially.
.
.
Songs for this:
Us by Regina Spektor
Young And Dumb by The Bird and the Bee

997

Crumbling is not an instant’s Act
A fundamental pause
Dilapidation’s processes
Are organized Decays.

’Tis first a Cobweb on the Soul
A Cuticle of Dust
A Borer in the Axis
An Elemental Rust—

Ruin is formal—Devil’s work
Consecutive and slow—
Fail in an instant, no man did
Slipping—is Crash’s law.

As drops of blood color water
That certain shade.  Pink?  Rose?
Lovely in themselves.  Coral?  

While the starfish slowly crawl
Across the mighty ocean floors,
The stars in heaven swirl overhead.

And we all continue to die each day.