If only there was

a sea for my stream of tears --


a chest to cry on.

I'm being flooded

and I sink into the depths --


of my own echoes.

They call us,
The dead.
Lamenting the sway of entire fields of grain.
They,
With a mantle of countless lives we owe,
Call us.
When we quench the rough throat,
When we lay down the axes,
When we bow and pray,
When we strive and live.

The house with the swing was gray. It had once been yellow, but no one remembers that anymore. The swing remains the same, and the tree that holds it has stretched its roots through the garden for at least five generations.
Today, the house was ripped from the earth. It screamed. The tree, mute from birth, shook its dry leaves in protest.

Petals soft and pink,
Thorns hidden beneath their bloom,
Love’s gentle warning.

How many dreams,
how many wild and uncompleted schemes,
how many words
and the infant ghosts of poems I will never write
do I leave on my pillow at the end of every night