I stand and wait for the 115
Or 15 bus to arrive
It's cold, I blow an icy vapour with every breath

A sea of umbrellas
Hoodies
Raincoats
Dreary faces

Longing for freer times
since fleeting, since forgotten, since lost
Pudless stepped in without hesitation
Or avoided with passive agression

Like their lives
Like ours

The water adresses what we can (could)
not

What happens when you try to break the backs
Of backs that are already familiar with and have adapted to the pain of being trampled on?
What happens when those backs have adapted to the pain of breaking and aching and
Making themselves as hard as stone and as flexible as water?
What happens to us?

Our backs become bridges.
Sometimes, they become gates, or tethers.
They leak.
They reek.
They break.
They mend.
They rust,
Never do they break.

You don't deserve to suffer
You can start over
Start over start over start over
Begin again
Leave
You don't belong here/ need to stay
Where do I belong then?
Not at home, not here, not anywhere?

I am not tethered
Not yet
Not ever
I exist exclusively outside your gaze
I belong to myself now
You will not keep me here,
In fear and in folly
And I, I will not stay
Though I am weary of what awaits me
No!
Let me rise, now
The strength of my atonement and courage
Will protect me
As I wonder into a page without your expectations of failure.
Yes!
I choose to be free.

Dusk settles over the plains
A horse neighs as the village awakens
It smells like new beginnings and dew
A familiar scent
On a summer's eve

The butterfly rests its wings on a bench
Soaking in the rays of the sun
Before the shadow of the night approaches
It meets its friend the ladybug
They converse
And share
And motion

To the sky they would like to fly
And to the sky they eventually go
But first, a suggested pause
At the wonder of life's flow

An evening shower often begins
with a conversation
between myself and my body.

I turn on the music;
a comforting melody that sets the tone for this dialogue

I caress my left arm with my right hand.
"Why can't I be thinner?
Why can't I be lighter?"

My skin hears me and whispers,

"Though you are not thin, you are full.
I hold the muscles that allow you to articulate and move.

Who told you that your darkness was not as beautiful or as powerful as the light?
You come from generations of spirits that fought for their darkness
and fought for its freedom."

I look at it and begin to weep
and a tear drop falls,
rolling down the volume of my tummy

Wiping the tear, I reply

"Thank you for reminding me of my inherent beauty.
I am sorry that I do not recognize how much you do for me,
I am sorry for the verbal abuse that both myself and the world have spewed at you,
I am sorry to not have been your protector,
But

I pause
and cradle my chest
wrapping my arms tightly around myself

"I am here now.
I am here."

The brain
How it disregards space and time
Memories are insignificant and the present
is only a reminder of what the past
was not
Why do you harass me so?
Why do you disturb my ignorant slumber?
My fabrication of a reality that
excludes extreme contemplation and melancholy
It is lonely.
I don't like it here.
But
This is the brain
And without it, I am reduced to a shrub
Easily moved by the surrounding currents
of air
Nothing memorable
Nothing irreplaceable
A peace that would scare and debilitate me
So,
I will continue to live with
The brain

I want to kiss you
My lips quiver when I look at you
My heart screams, it wants more of you
It wants to hold and cradle its own

I wanted to kiss you
But you looked at me with an air of logic
and not of love
And the two are like oil and water
Medicine and wine
Forgiveness and the lack thereof

I waited to kiss you
I never did
That year flew away from me
Our time together
Stifled by the irreversible wind
Of neverending past lives
and loves

But still,
I wish I had kissed you

Tenderness
is lost after a heart is ****** dry of all it has and is
This
translates to the lack of passion in your voice
(when you say my name)
I can hear the blood being pumped thoughout your body
Your apathy echoes
It projects onto me like a spotlight
I mistake this light for love
For both glisten and reveal
Your face

Running, running,
Running into the new wave of life that has splashed over
With the promise
Of light and
Love
Running , running,
Running into the inevitable