"I love you."
Words can't touch me anymore.
My skin is coated in lies
Nothing penetrates.
My last hope is caught in my throat
And I can't swallow it,
Bumps and bruises are hidden behind
"I'm fine," "I'm just tired."
Words are branded into my skin.
They have left layers of scars
So thick there's no room left to carve -
So imprinted there's nothing left to root.
Nothing more to say to boot.
Prickly like a porcupine, consonants stick off of me,
Petruding like my long buried personality
Used to,
Like my personality used to.
Vowels form a new face of expressions
I was once able to pen for myself
But now
I can't.
I wear words instead of speak them;
I wear words like a coat of armor on top of my numb skin.
I swear words don't even touch me anymore.
There is no need to carry a shield ,
Instead you built for me a castle.
And I'm somewhere inside,
Untouched.

I want to write, but I don't know how
Nothing comes to mind, not a single word nor vowel
I look inside myself, but I cant feel a thing
Just overbearing loneliness eating me from within

So hard to write when I don't know how to feel
These wounds from the past that just wont heal
Eating me from within, torn up by guilt
Tearing down the emotional walls I've built

If people knew my secret, they'd see me as a monster
I'd lose it all, my pride and my honor
Should I just leave this world, quit while I'm ahead?
Maybe you'd all be better off if I was dead

Someone like me doesn't deserve to live
The things I've done, no one can forgive
So why am I still here? Why do I exist?
What reason is there for me to persist?

Then I was thinking about you and how you paint my life every colour imaginable,
that you make me feel like the moment when you're running and its effortless and you swear if you ran a little faster you could fly,
you make me smile like suddenly there is a sky of fireflies and their glow is lighting up the whole word,
you make me ache when I am not with you, feel whole when I am and I know that each snowflake is different but you are a snowflake all of your own, not pale or white, you glow and I know when you look at me everything is on show, like suddenly I am a personal library for your viewing only and you are reading every book I have ever owned... and that... well it's terrifying

The warm autumn breeze
         scatters the leaves
     like spring  snowflakes
      I carefully hand stack
        them each by color,
              one by one,
           as if they were
          befallen dreams
                     or
      similarly unholdable
               gathered
      garnered memories
                      •
        each leaf touched
             reminds me
       of how many times
          I've had to let go ―
         how many times  
                I've fallen
     without a place to land
   until the winds of change
         drew me back up
               as if I were
   evanescent autumn leaves,
      to be swept away again,
         touched by the spirit
             the true nature
                  of  love
                      • •        
        sown seeds of one love
           bestrewn hopefully,
             thusly cast about
              just as intended,  
   the grain and chaff together,
     sifted by the velvet breath
        of the samsara wind's
              sanguine touch

                     •  •  •
            

  autumn waters ... October 29, 2017