The trees tower over
as if they’re watching me,
eyes lurking in the tall shadows

I take a deep breath, well aware of the sound of my pounding heart, something that seems to align with the life breathing here, green and alive

I feel lost
Like I’ve slipped between the cracks of the comforts of what’s supposed to be mine,
Slipped away from the familiar memory of happiness
Away from the scent of faint lavender and drowsy eyes,
where I can hide from the troubles through sleep

But at the same time, I think this is home
That somewhere deep inside, lies the curve of the stone path, the veins of the leaves that have fallen, everything and nothing at the same time
That I could write myself into here, the life, and settle as if nothing has changed.

My fragile life, woven and held into the above branches, somehow daring to breathe

Home

I look up, taking in the thicket of leaves above, blocking the sun
The one hiding the sky, what really lies out there beyond this forest
The dark.

Yet even then, the light shines through,
the sun somehow managing to paint the leaves in a golden aura
Continuing to warm the land from the outside, never turning away. Filtering into the impossible, breaking all the barriers

Rays that will always reach

Maybe in the real world, in what’s outside in this little sanctuary, the real sun is too harsh for me
Maybe I’ll burn, sparks and flames hidden inside my flesh finally meeting the air
Turning into nothing but ashes washed away by soil.

But right now, in this home,
I'll always have light

I sit. The grass is damp with the light rain that falls upon my head.

“It’s been a while”, I say, breaking the silence. Not that there’s anybody here to respond. Not anymore. I close my eyes, inhaling deeply. Trying to calm down the nerves that are still here after all this time, the beating of my heart.

All this time. All those wasted years of space for nothing. It’s unbreakable, the heavy blanket in the air, the one holding all the words in the past that I cannot bear to bring up. The one that is better left alone, forgotten.

There is so much I want to say.
So much that I won’t say.

The rain begins to pour heavier. The drops are now pounding against me, my clothes soaking wet. The wind picks up sticks and pebbles, and I watch as they scatter across the ground,

I do not move.
Instead, I stay still. Letting the sky cascade against me, as it forms puddles in the soil. The pitter pat sound is strangely comforting. I take everything in and nothing in at the same time, only focusing on the noise, ignoring the cold, the want to go run back inside.

I’m tired of running.

I want to believe that you’re up there watching, proud. That you can find it within your heart to forgive me for being a coward, for being unable to take the step forward. That even after all these years of silence between us, we are still there, existing between the universe.

I hope that one day, in the future, I will return, changed for better.
That I will finally tell you all the things I should have said long ago.

I can feel myself fading

It’s not as chaotic as I thought it would be,
There are no screams and tears and last words,
warped in pain and grief ,
No sound of my expected to be rapidly beating heart,
as I fight to stay alive, to stay in this world

Instead, it’s eerily calm
Just me and the howling wind,
as my mind counts the seconds tumbling by,
As I wait for the end

Surely this is not it,
Surely there is a chance,
a sliver of hope glowing among these pitch black depths

I want to believe it,
That I can somehow live,
That this is not the end,
that I am not turning to dust and nothing more,
That in this timeline where I can feel every bit of me disintegrate and turn into nothing,
there is a future,
A future for me.

And I almost do

I almost do

My eyes close,
The world seems so still,
as if the earth has quit its spinning to watch
As if all the life out there is holding its breath,
waiting to see the very end

Maybe in another universe, I will live

But for now I am just another leaf of the fall,
ready to be buried underneath the snow.

The ghosts surround me

They glow, almost like stars, faint, transparent, barely seen
An eerie trace among the depths, trailing me
It almost feels suffocating, like I’m on the edge of losing it all
Like the phantoms will take me away from this world,
plunging me into the darkness

They then suddenly start singing
The language and words are strangely familiar,
like a distant memory too far away for me to remember
It feels as though I’m in a trance, a dream-like state, unaware of the boundaries of space and time.

It’s almost enough to make me forget you

Almost

I have questions, so many of them
They swirl around in my brain,
a mess of loose threads and ends I can’t quite tie together
I want to speak, to say the words lodged in my throat
To scream out loud for everyone to hear

Where are you?

No one replies

Everything is quiet, except for the soft sound of music
I feel tired, my eyelids heavy
I want to sleep, to wake up and see that you’re there
I want to escape this place, to run away from all these ghosts and shadows following me
I want you here

I miss you.

The ghosts are more visible now, their pale faces emotionless
They’ve stopped singing too
All eyes are on me, the air suddenly sticky and warm

They watch
They wait
No one speaks

They don’t need to
I know it’s too late.

But somewhere in time, if I could somehow rewind things far enough,
I still believe with every bit of me that you’re still there,
waiting patiently

Smiling

Alive

I close my eyes
I hear faint singing, notes and melodies strung from the past and future, intertwining together
The cold wind the ghosts brought has left,
replaced with a new warmth

They’re bringing me back, back out there without you,
And I let them.