Grains of sand
Suspended in their
Journey beyond
The crevice,
A raindrop
Halted before
Imprinting on
The pavement,
Musty air caged
In my lungs,
Dust in a cloud
Frozen in the room,
Time has not
The decency to
Even crawl
But instead hangs
In perfect entropy,
Dangling the future
In front of me
On the broken hand
Of a clock.
Seconds acquiesce
To each their
Own eternity
And I scream
Into the stillness
But the sound
Never escapes
My own head,
Encased in
A personal, torturous
Epithelium.

For these twenty eight
I'll search for you
In every cadence and ripple.
I'll listen for your
Whispers on the wind
And your laughter in
The pattering rain.

For these twenty eight
I'll disappear in my mind
Where I can find you
Even an ocean away.
I'll be distinctly alone,
Distinctly separate, and
Distinctly myself.
A slave to my own devices.

For these twenty eight
Every stray thought
Will infect my vulnerable brain.
Every rhythmic beat
I stumble over will
Reverberate.

And every day,
Every hour,
Everywhere I go,
Every word I say,
On every unsatisfying sigh,
Through every crash of thunder,
In each lingering moment,
Across every ambient sunset,
Every glowing moon,
Every idyllic twilight,
No matter how I resist,
I'll think of you.

Be still, be still
And hear my voice;
*In you, my heart refills.

Am I alive?
I feel the words reverberate
In my head
Like a pulsing stereo.
Everyday my mechanical
Monotony ticks away
Each output I'm prompted with
Just like I program
My brain to.
Every bit man in flesh
But how much so in practice?
Resistance is only
A grinding of the gears,
A squeaky belt
In the cogs
That industrialize me.
Free thought but
Guarded speech hails
Guarded thoughts.
Standardized thoughts.
Every bit man in flesh
But I could swear I'm
A machine
Rigged to ignore
My own humanity.
Let's see what happens
When we're allowed to be
Strictly
Our own.

Hail hail
To the people's voice.
How long in death you'll lay
Will tell the world
Of mistakes we've made
Of how our moral beginnings frayed.

Whisper about
Our vaporous hope.
Don't let them smell your fear.
We'll wait until
The fire breaks
And forget this reprobate year.

And when the lions
Return as sheep,
Their den echoing a remnant rage,
We'll stand before
This broken ground.
There will be hate to assuage.

I built my walls miles high
And you sauntered over them
Like they were blades of grass.
My face was stone
But you mold it
However you see fit.
I slept to escape
A grey world
Because I dreamt in color
But now I wake to everything
I could ever dream of
And I hesitate to sleep
Because you aren't always
In my dreams.
I cracked jokes as a front
But now I do it
Just to see you smile.
I was empty
And I didn't even know it.
I wandered through life
With my eyes shut
And my ears plugged
Until you hit me
Like a myriad of colored paints
Colliding with a blank wall.
You're everything
I never even knew
I wanted.
You're an apparition.
I saw the world in
Black and white
And you're my color vision.

The word eludes me
Because I let it.
I don't think I'm attuned to be
So in tune with these feelings.

I was grey before you
And great at hiding it
But you're a sunburst
And my greys are fighting it.

You don't just color in my lines,
You're cutting through them
Without even trying.
You silence my repining.
You're electrifying.
These feelings are a curse
And it's terrifying.

Suddenly the world is vibrant
And when the wind
Slides up my face,
It drags the corners of my lips
With it.
I see nomads wander the sky
Where clouds should be and
Trees whisper to me
The secrets of the Earth
Through their rustling leaves.

I'm afraid to know what
I feel for you
Because I think I know
What it is.
But I'll let the word elude me
A while longer.

I thought maybe she was like
The Sun.
I wrote about her warmth
And the way she lit up
The world around her.

But that wasn't quite right.
So I started over.

Perhaps she was autumn.
Her cool gaze evanescent but
Always a wonder to admire
And enigmatic in the way
Her smiles sauntered up her cheeks.

Something was still missing though.
So I started over.

For a while I felt she was the ocean.
Alluring, polarizing, hiding secrets
She pretends even she doesn't know about.
A riptide pulling me closer
Until there was nothing but her.

Frustrated, I scrapped everything.
I knew what she was like,
The way she felt when I held her,
How beautiful she was when she laughed,
The peace I felt when I would lie next to her.
And even when I poured over my brain
For the right words,
They wouldn't come.

And that's when it hit me,
When a realized
I know what she is.

She's poetry.