In the end,
Each one is to himself
a haunted house.
The monsters grow big feeding on the
thoughts we won't air out.
Cobwebs form from private fears, and the stairs creak beneath our heavy doubts.
Let a little light in,
you're not as scary as you tell yourself.

I am the very bottom of a bag of chips
Small and Broken

Too Fragmented to be Functional

Too Crushed to carry the salsa to your mouth

you should  just throw me out !

Open up a new one
It's what I would do-
But you don't!
I'll never figure you out.

If I'm to find you,
Let me find you in the shade
The sun reveals too much
I might scare and run away

If I'm to love you
Let me love you slowly
                   over time
I'm so rapidly wrapped up
Still more rapidly
                   untied.

I've always thought I needed
this feeling of flying
But I could try
s l o w  and  s t e a d y
Less free fall,
more climbing

It isn't fair
Spinning you around like this
I know.

But I'm no good at gardening
Always pulling
flowers up
before they can grow.

You got me hooked on Moleskin journals.
It might not seem like much,
but when you consider that it's the vessel
into which I daily pour myself,
Like some bank account, holding all my emotional savings,
it's a pretty substantial influence.
So thanks.

You got me hooked on being known.
Not the "name her favorite color/album/flavor" kind of known.

The "ask me how I am, because you hear the trace amounts of fakeness in my laughter" kind of known.



Before you,
I thought being loved was like being admired but on steroids.

Now I see it's more like

a quiet walk
home from class every evening.

there are a dozen other ways,
different bike routes or
back roads you could take

but you would never think to.

Your day would be incomplete without the path your feet
first were drawn to,

you can't bear to miss it
the winding bends in the road and the blossoms you always pause to breathe in.

both familiar and new every evening.